1. Shakespeare’s Macbeth Background and Important Terms

2. Macbeth and Shakespeare Facts  Shakespeare wrote 36 plays and 154 sonnets.  Shakespeare wrote to satisfy his patrons, not as a means of personal expression.  Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s shortest plays.  Macbeth is considered a play that brings “bad luck.”  Macbeth is based on a real Scottish king and Shakespeare got the historical information from Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1577).

3. Macbeth’s Context  Renaissance: 1485-1660; began in Italy  Renaissance means rebirth, as Europe was recovering from the Black Death and the Middle Ages.  During the Renaissance, people became curious about themselves and human nature and lost faith in the church.  People turned to Latin and Greek classics to discover new answers to life’s big questions, leading to an intellectual movement called humanism.

4. Macbeth’s Context  In 1455, Johannes Gutenberg invented the first printing press.  Queen Elizabeth I greatly encouraged the creative arts, so a great deal of literature emerged and she inspired many writers.  Shakespeare wrote Macbeth during King James I’s reign, who was originally from Scotland.  During the Renaissance, women were not permitted to perform on stage, so boys or effeminate men played the female roles.

5. Macbeth = Tragedy  Tragedy: a literary work depicting serious events in which the main character, who is often high-ranking and dignified, comes to an unhappy end  Tragic hero: protagonist of a tragedy who usually wins some self-knowledge and wisdom, even though he or she suffers defeat, possibly even death.  Tragic flaw: an error in judgment or character weakness which usually causes the tragic hero’s downfall

6. Macbeth Literary Terms  Paradox: an apparent contradiction that is actually true  Aside: private words that a character in a play speaks to the audience or to another character, which are not supposed to be overheard by others  Soliloquy: a long speech in which a character who is usually alone onstage expresses his or her private thoughts or feelings

7. Macbeth Literary Terms  Motif: a word, character, object, image, metaphor, or idea that recurs in a work or in several works  Iambic pentameter: a line of poetry made up of five iambs. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.  Blank verse: poetry written in unrhyming iambic pentameter

8. Macbeth Characters  Macbeth  Lady Macbeth  King Duncan  Macduff  Banquo  Malcolm  Donalbain  Numerous minor characters (All are listed on page 301 in your textbooks)