Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Macbeth Open-ended question

Today we finished reading act 1, scene 3 and completed the following assignment in class:

Macbeth thinks about what the witches have told him.

• How is he responding emotionally to what he has learned?
• Do you think he will leave it to “chance”?

Use the passage to provide support for your responses



This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,
Without my stir.


Students who did not finish in class are to hand it in at the beginning of class on Thursday.