MACBETH CHEAT SHEET:
TALK ABOUT THE AUDIENCE/PLAY
A)
FORM:
- Soliloquy
- Prose
- Blank verse
- Heroic couplet
- Meter (Iambic pentameter usually) (look out for lines that break the meter/erratic meters)
STRUCTURE:
- Long, multiclausal sentences
- Line sharing
- Caesurae, enjambments
- Imperative, rhetorical question, exclamation, direct speech (to quote someone else)
- Superlatives, intensifiers, possessive/personal pronouns
- Tense (conditional)
- Pace
- Textual dominance
- Perspective (1st/3rd person)
- Monosyllabic/polysyllabic words
- Asyndeton/polysyndeton
- Repetition
LANGUAGE:
- Metaphor, personification, simile
- Semantic field
- Powerful, visceral, emotive, dynamic, forceful, assertive, definitive verb
- Imagery
- Juxtaposition/contrast
- Tricolon
- Symbolism
- Irony
- Theme
- Euphemism
SOUND:
- Fricatives (‘f’)
- Sibilance (‘s’)
- Aspirates (‘h’)
- Plosives (‘p’, ‘b’)
- Consonance
- Alliteration
B)
, POINT, EVIDENCE, EXPLANATION (how it makes the audience/King James feel), ENGAGEMENT
(personal response, perhaps, I think), CONTEXT, LINK (hence, thus)
INTRODUCTION: Quick flash, define the theme, context
CONCLUSION: Personal response, small conclusive point
BE PRECISE WITH YOUR TEXTUAL REFERENCES BY CONTEXTUALISING THEM (showing where
exactly in the play a quote is)
QUOTATIONS:
‘in thunder, lightning or in rain?’ Witches
‘to meet with Macbeth’ Witches
‘fair is foul and foul is fair’ Witches
‘such a foul and fair a day I have not seen’ Macbeth
'Then live, Macduff, what need I fear of... Thou shalt not live’ Macbeth
‘I am in blood stepp’d in so far’ Macbeth
‘this disease is beyond my practice’ Doctor
‘the night has been unruly’ Lennox
“vaulting ambition” Macbeth
‘juggling fiends’ Macbeth
‘Have pluck’d my nipple from [her baby’s] boneless gums / And dash’d the brains out’ Lady Macbeth
‘Tarquin’s ravishing strides’
‘we but teach bloody instructions, which being taught return to plague the inventor’ Macbeth
‘Out, damned spot! Out I say!’ Lady Macbeth
‘smell of blood’
‘if it were done... / It were done quickly’ Macbeth
‘look like th’innocent flower but be the serpent under’t’ Lady Macbeth
‘I have almost forgot the taste of fears’ Macbeth
‘till from my bones my flesh be hacked’ Macbeth
‘Are you a man?’ Lady Macbeth
‘pluck mine eyes out’ Macbeth
Horses ‘[ate] each other’ Old Man
‘it will have blood they say – blood will have blood’ Macbeth
‘she should have died hereafter’ Macbeth
‘i will not yield... before young Malcolm’s feet’ Macbeth
‘out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow’ Macbeth
‘All my pretty ones? Did you say all?’ Macduff
TALK ABOUT THE AUDIENCE/PLAY
A)
FORM:
- Soliloquy
- Prose
- Blank verse
- Heroic couplet
- Meter (Iambic pentameter usually) (look out for lines that break the meter/erratic meters)
STRUCTURE:
- Long, multiclausal sentences
- Line sharing
- Caesurae, enjambments
- Imperative, rhetorical question, exclamation, direct speech (to quote someone else)
- Superlatives, intensifiers, possessive/personal pronouns
- Tense (conditional)
- Pace
- Textual dominance
- Perspective (1st/3rd person)
- Monosyllabic/polysyllabic words
- Asyndeton/polysyndeton
- Repetition
LANGUAGE:
- Metaphor, personification, simile
- Semantic field
- Powerful, visceral, emotive, dynamic, forceful, assertive, definitive verb
- Imagery
- Juxtaposition/contrast
- Tricolon
- Symbolism
- Irony
- Theme
- Euphemism
SOUND:
- Fricatives (‘f’)
- Sibilance (‘s’)
- Aspirates (‘h’)
- Plosives (‘p’, ‘b’)
- Consonance
- Alliteration
B)
, POINT, EVIDENCE, EXPLANATION (how it makes the audience/King James feel), ENGAGEMENT
(personal response, perhaps, I think), CONTEXT, LINK (hence, thus)
INTRODUCTION: Quick flash, define the theme, context
CONCLUSION: Personal response, small conclusive point
BE PRECISE WITH YOUR TEXTUAL REFERENCES BY CONTEXTUALISING THEM (showing where
exactly in the play a quote is)
QUOTATIONS:
‘in thunder, lightning or in rain?’ Witches
‘to meet with Macbeth’ Witches
‘fair is foul and foul is fair’ Witches
‘such a foul and fair a day I have not seen’ Macbeth
'Then live, Macduff, what need I fear of... Thou shalt not live’ Macbeth
‘I am in blood stepp’d in so far’ Macbeth
‘this disease is beyond my practice’ Doctor
‘the night has been unruly’ Lennox
“vaulting ambition” Macbeth
‘juggling fiends’ Macbeth
‘Have pluck’d my nipple from [her baby’s] boneless gums / And dash’d the brains out’ Lady Macbeth
‘Tarquin’s ravishing strides’
‘we but teach bloody instructions, which being taught return to plague the inventor’ Macbeth
‘Out, damned spot! Out I say!’ Lady Macbeth
‘smell of blood’
‘if it were done... / It were done quickly’ Macbeth
‘look like th’innocent flower but be the serpent under’t’ Lady Macbeth
‘I have almost forgot the taste of fears’ Macbeth
‘till from my bones my flesh be hacked’ Macbeth
‘Are you a man?’ Lady Macbeth
‘pluck mine eyes out’ Macbeth
Horses ‘[ate] each other’ Old Man
‘it will have blood they say – blood will have blood’ Macbeth
‘she should have died hereafter’ Macbeth
‘i will not yield... before young Malcolm’s feet’ Macbeth
‘out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow’ Macbeth
‘All my pretty ones? Did you say all?’ Macduff
