Macbeth Act 5, Scene 5: Dunsinane. Within the castle summary and analysis

Act V: Scene 5

 

Summary

Now fully armed, Macbeth confidently turns all his scorn on the advancing armies, only to find his brave rhetoric interrupted by an offstage shriek. The queen is dead — whether by her own hand is not made clear — and Macbeth is left to contemplate a lonely future of endless tomorrows "signifying nothing." Yet another blow comes with the announcement that Birnam Wood appears to have uprooted itself and is even now advancing towards Dunsinane. Again Macbeth recalls the prophecies of Act IV, sure of, but still wishing to deny, their powerful truth.

Analysis

This scene, like Scene 3, starts with a bold imperative: "Hang out our banners on the outward walls." Macbeth's speech is warlike and defiant, his strength mirrored in that of the castle and men who surround him; his curse on the enemy vivid and graphic in its use of metaphor: "Here let them lie / Till famine and the ague (disease) eat them up . . . " (3-5). But the curse is empty rhetoric: In his play Troilus and Cressida, written two or three years earlier, Shakespeare had written that man's ambitious appetite for power, once it has preyed on everything in its path, can eat up only itself. Power-seeking tyrants tend toward self-destruction; if this curse falls on anyone, it's likely to be the curser.

At this point, Macbeth hears a heart-stopping scream. While a servant is dispatched to find the cause, Macbeth confesses in a brief soliloquy that such noises no longer have the power to frighten him. The audience recalls other noises: the owl-shriek that Lady Macbeth heard during Duncan's murder; the voice that Macbeth heard crying "Macbeth shall sleep no more!" and the fateful knocking at the door, all in Act II, Scene 2. But in a phrase that calls to mind the banquet scene (Act III, Scene 4), Macbeth admits that he has "supp'd full with horrors" and that his familiarity with slaughter means that such sounds can no longer amaze him.

The report of Lady Macbeth's death perhaps comes as no surprise, either to Macbeth or to Shakespeare's audience. The word "hereafter" recalls the "hereafter" of the Witches' first prophecy; their "hereafter" was the future that Macbeth was to inherit as king. But the word also refers, ironically, to the heavenly "hereafter," which Macbeth seems intent on denying for himself. In the hands of a sensitive actor or director, this exact word is what triggers the poetic outpouring on the nature of Time, which follows it.

The famous lines "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" have a resigned, almost wistful tone to them, occasioned not only by the death of his wife but also by Macbeth's entire loss of purpose. Although there is perhaps an underlying bitterness at lost opportunity in the words "petty," "fools," "frets" and "idiot," for a man who has received such desperate news, this is not a desperate speech. In fact, compared with some of Macbeth's earlier "set pieces," its rhetoric is controlled, its metaphors precise: Time is like a path to "dusty death," and our lives are as "brief" as a candle. We are like shadows, or actors, on the stage of life. Again, the question occurs, as it did in Act I, Scene 7: How can a man who is capable of such poetic thought act as he does?

Macbeth's musings on this topic are cut dead by still another message, which reports what the audience already knows, the fulfillment of the second prophecy, the movement of the woods. Once again, Macbeth's response is both angry and reflective: "I . . . begin to doubt th'equivocation of the fiend — / That lies like truth . . . " (42-44).

To the servant, he must hotly deny the truth he has been told — to keep his public appearance and satisfy his own doubt — but he must also secretly accept the truth of the prophecy, even if logic persuades him that a moving wood is a lie. It is an understandably human reaction to such a paradoxical problem that Macbeth admits that he is literally stuck — "There is no flying hence, nor tarrying here" (48) — or, in his words from Act III, Scene 4, "Returning were as tedious as go o'er." On a psychological as well as a military level, Macbeth can neither move forward nor backward, neither advance nor retreat.

In this case, and with his gaze firmly fixed on the universe as a whole, Macbeth can only call, like King Lear, on the elements themselves: "Come wind, blow wrack!" he cries. It is the bold cry of a hopeless man.

Glossary

ague (4) disease

forc'd (5) reinforced

fell of hair (11) the hair on my flesh

treatise (12) tale

sooth (40) truthfully

estate of things (40) the physical frame of the universe

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Macbeth Act 5, Scene 4: Country near Birnam wood summary and analysis

Act V: Scene 4

 

Summary

The English and rebel Scottish armies, under the leadership of Malcolm, meet at Birnam Wood. With military foresight, Malcolm orders each soldier to cut a branch and carry it in front of him as camouflage "to shadow the numbers of our host" — that is, to conceal the actual size of the advancing army.

Analysis

Malcolm's hope "That chambers (bedrooms) will be safe" in the future recalls both the location of King Duncan's murder and the motif of sleeplessness that runs through the play. Menteth's assured response — "We doubt it nothing" — is in heavy contrast to the "saucy doubts and fears" that have shaken Macbeth since even before the killing of Duncan and which will return to haunt him in subsequent scenes.

The order to each soldier to "hew . . . down a bough" as a leafy camouflage is taken direct from Holinshed's Chronicles; the aim is not to hide the advancing army but to confuse Macbeth as to the exact number of soldiers. Although Malcolm does not know it, his trick will not only fulfil the second of the prophecies of Act IV, Scene 1, but it will also play upon exactly the equivocation that has troubled Macbeth's mind since he first remarked (in Act I, Scene 3) that "nothing is but what is not."

In both Act V, Scene 2 and here, Macbeth's command over his few remaining followers is said to be based on constraint, not loyalty. His heartlessness is thus contrasted with the genuine feelings of loyalty which, it is implied, are felt towards Malcolm. In Act IV, Scene 3, Malcolm announced that Macbeth, like a rotten fruit, was "ripe for shaking"; now, according to Siward, "The time approaches," and in a final couplet adds "Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate / But certain issue strokes must arbitrate . . . " (19-20). Once more, the impression is that the time for guesswork is over; certainty, and the assurance of goodness, must inevitably triumph over Macbeth's lack of it.

Glossary

constrained things (13) conscripts

just . . . event (14) righteous criticism awaits the outcome

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Macbeth Act 5, Scene 3 Dunsinane A room in the castle summary and analysis

Act V: Scene 3

Summary

Macbeth dismisses reports of invasion by trusting to the prophecies of the apparitions, which seemed to promise him invincibility in battle. When a servant enters to announce the approach of a huge army, Macbeth appears momentarily to lose courage and then angrily spurns his servant and orders his armor to be put on. The Doctor, whose news concerning Lady Macbeth is just as grim, is treated with similar contempt.

Analysis

Macbeth's tone is typically brazen. The reports he has heard can have no consequence, given the prophecies of the three apparitions of Act IV, Scene 1. Throughout this scene, any doubts he may have are quelled by his bold imperatives: "Bring me no more reports," "Fly, false thanes," and more. We see a man completely self-assured, a "confident tyrant," as Siward calls him in the subsequent scene. These angry words do much to assert his own manhood, in contrast to the cowardice he perceives in others — not only his servant, whom he calls "cream-faced" and "lily-livered," but also the rebel soldiers, whom he insultingly refers to as "epicures" (that is, self-indulgent and lazy).

In the dialogue with the servant, Macbeth orders him to "prick his cheeks" in order to "put colour" back in his face, an ironic reminder of the earlier color symbolism when Macbeth was accused by his wife of having a white heart, as opposed to her own red hands. Another imperative — "Give me my armour" — has to be repeated when Macbeth's armourer, Seyton, initially refuses to do so. Similarly, when the Doctor confesses that he has been unable to cure Lady Macbeth's madness, Macbeth mocks his ability, challenging him to "Throw physic (medicine) to the dogs."

But there is also another Macbeth, who admits to being "sick at heart" and who feels he has entered the season of the "yellow leaf," that is, literally, the fall of his own reputation; and who, in a further moment of self-realization, recognizes the sickness of his own land: "If thou could'st, Doctor, cast / The water of my land, find her disease, / And purge it to a sound and pristine health / I would applaud thee to the very echo / That should applaud again" (50-54).

Earlier, referring to his wife's sickness, Macbeth has questioned the doctor's ability to remove from her those thoughts and feelings "Which weigh upon the heart." The Doctor's response: "Therein the patient must minister to himself" is particularly interesting. Where we expect "herself," Shakespeare instead uses the masculine pronoun, referring to a patient of either sex, particularly in proverbial statements such as this one. The suggestion is that Macbeth, too, must find the cure to his own disease. Macbeth's military preparation, which the Doctor says he has heard about, is unlikely to be any more effective than a medicinal preparation or remedy which he might prescribe for the sick nation of Scotland.

Glossary

English epicures (8) the self-indulgent English

sway (9) command

goose (12) cowardly

sere (23) dry

fain (28) rather

skirr (35) scour

oblivious (43) that brings oblivion

physic (47) medicine

cast the water (50) examine the urine (here, used metaphorically)

rhubarb . . . drug (55) purgatives

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Macbeth summary and analysis Full play Act 1 Scene 1

Act I: Scene 1

 

Summary

In a desolate place blasted by thunderstorms, Three Witches meet to predict the future.

Analysis

Macbeth begins in "an open place" — a place without any landmarks or buildings — with the appearance of the three "weird sisters," as they later call themselves. The Old English word "wyrd," or "weird" means "Fate," which is exactly the origin of these Witches: They are the Fates of classical mythology, one of whom spun the thread of a person's life, one of whom measured it, and one of whom cut it. The bleakness of the scene is a dramatic representation both of the wild Scottish landscape in which the play is set and the more universal wilderness of man's existence.

The Three Witches' speech is written in short rhyming verse that imitates the casting of a spell. The women's language is also full of the imagery of witchcraft and of chaotic weather: thunder, lightning, rain, fog, and "filthy air." The lines "When the battle's lost and won" and "Fair is foul and foul is fair" are the most significant in the scene. On the one hand, these contradictory statements are the kind of riddles we would expect from witches; on the other, the lines suggest a paradox that runs throughout the play: Life frequently presents a confused picture of events in which discerning truth from falsehood is difficult.

Glossary

Graymalkin, Paddock (8) grey cat, toad; both "familiars" or witches' assistants

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Twelfth Night Act 2 Scene 1 Summary and Analysis

Act II: Scene 1

Summary

The second act begins on the seacoast of Illyria. Viola's twin brother, Sebastian, was not drowned after all. He survived the shipwreck and enters on stage talking with Antonio, a sea captain (not the same sea captain who managed to reach shore with Viola). Sebastian, like his sister Viola, is deeply grieved; he is sure that Viola was lost at sea and perished in the storm. He blames the stars and "the malignancy of [his] fate" for his dark mood and his misfortune. He turns to the sea captain, and, feeling that he can be straightforward with him because of what they have both just experienced, he tells the captain that he wants to be alone. He needs solitude because of his terrible grief; his troubles are many, and he fears that they will spread like an illness and "distemper" the sea captain's mood. He cares too much for the captain to unburden his woes on him.

Antonio, however, will not leave Sebastian; his friendship for the young man is strong enough to withstand Sebastian's emotionalism. Sebastian's composure suddenly breaks, and he bewails his lot; if Antonio had not saved him, he would now be dead at the bottom of the sea, alongside his beloved sister. "If the heavens had been pleased," his fate would have been the same as his sister's. He then recalls his sister's beauty, and he remembers her keen mind, a mind that was extraordinary and enviable. At this point, Antonio protests. Sebastian was correct when he spoke earlier of his dark moodiness being able to "distemper" Antonio's temperament. The sea captain says that Sebastian's lamentations are "bad entertainment," a fact that Sebastian quickly realizes and quickly apologizes for.

Antonio changes the subject to matters more practical and more immediate. He asks Sebastian if he can be the young man's servant. That single favor would please him immensely. That single favor, however, Sebastian cannot grant him, for as much as he would like to do so, he dare not take Antonio with him. His destination is Duke Orsino's court and Antonio has "many enemies" in Orsino's court. Yet "come what may," Antonio says that he will always treasure his friendship with Sebastian. Thus, he will go with Sebastian. Antonio's devotion to Sebastian is admirable; he recognizes the dangers ahead if he follows Sebastian to Orsino's palace, but after the horrors of the shipwreck, future "danger shall seem sport."

 

Analysis

This scene takes us away from the regal households and out to the seashore on another part of the coast of Illyria. The two new characters who are introduced, Sebastian and Antonio, form the third plot line of the comedy. Sebastian is Viola's twin brother whom she believes was probably drowned at sea, and this fact will create comic complications, which will be resolved in the fifth act. Like his sister, Sebastian is kind and good-looking. When Sebastian describes his sister as a lady "though it was said she much resembled me, was yet of many accounted beautiful," we are being prepared for the confusion later in the play when Sebastian will be mistaken for Cesario (Viola), and Viola (as Cesario) will be mistaken for Sebastian by Antonio, the sea captain.

Sebastian will appear throughout the rest of the comedy as more impulsive and more emotional than his twin sister; for example, he will consent to marry a woman (Olivia) whom he has just met — an act of extreme impetuosity. But yet we must assume that Sebastian possesses many good qualities to have attracted the loyalty of such a stalwart man as the sea captain, who decides to risk his life to accompany the handsome young lad to Duke Orsino's court.

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Twelfth Night Act 1 Scene 2 Summary and Analysis

Twelfth Night 

Act I: Scene 2

Summary
Viola and a sea captain and several sailors enter. They have been shipwrecked on the seacoast of Illyria and have barely escaped drowning. The captain congratulates Viola on not being drowned, for he tells her that when their ship split in half, he saw her brother, Sebastian, tie himself to a mast; yet even that, he fears, did not save Sebastian, for he saw him and the mast borne away on the waves. According to the captain, there is a slim chance that Sebastian survived, but there is a strong possibility that only the captain, Viola, and these few sailors are the sole survivors. Viola is appreciative of the captain's kind, if cautious, optimism; she gives him some gold coins and asks him if he has any idea where they are. The captain does; he knows Illyria well. He was born and reared here, and he tells Viola that the country is governed by a "noble Duke," Duke Orsino. Viola recognizes the name; her father spoke of him. The duke is a bachelor, she believes.

The captain is not so sure that this fact is still true; he says that according to current gossip, the duke has been seeking the love of "fair Olivia," but he says that Olivia is a virgin and that she is determined to remain so. Following the death of Olivia's father (a year ago) and the death of her brother (just recently), Olivia forswore men altogether.

The story intrigues Viola; she herself is now in mourning for her brother, Sebastian, and nothing would please her more than to serve Olivia. The captain, however, says that such a plan is impossible. Olivia will see no one. For a moment, Viola ponders, then she devises an ingenious scheme. She will disguise herself as a young eunuch, and she will pay the captain handsomely for his aid if he presents her to Duke Orsino. She will sing for the duke, play any number of musical instruments for him and — in short — she will ingratiate herself in his household. The captain agrees, and they exit.

Analysis

With the shift of this scene to the seacoast of Illyria, we meet another principal character in the comedy — Viola — and in meeting her, we hear more about the Lady Olivia, and even though their names are almost perfect anagrams (a rearrangement of the same letters in the names), and even though they are in similar dramatic situations in this play, they are vastly different women. Both of them have recently been orphaned, and, to all outward semblances, both have lost a brother and are therefore alone in the world. But here the similarity ends. Olivia is indulging in her grief, but whereas Viola deeply grieves for her brother, she is still able to function in the practical world. Unlike Olivia, Viola, shipwrecked and alone, does not have time to indulge in her grief. Being a shipwrecked virgin maid on a strange shore and knowing no one, she must use her wit, her intelligence, and her ability to analyze situations and characters. Consequently, Viola decides to disguise herself as a man for a very practical purpose — to assure her own protection in an alien world which would not respect a young virgin maiden. And with the assumption of this disguise, we will have the beginning of a complicated series of disguises which will run throughout the remainder of the comedy.
Viola's uncanny ability to intuit other people's ideas enables her to trust the sea captain; he can help her carry out her plans and keep her identity secret. Without his trust, her plans would fail, and after she has assumed her disguise, she uses it to its fullest potential — that is, she never passes up the opportunity to use her disguise in order to make puns and double entendres for parodies and satires and, ultimately, to comment subtly on the disguised biological difference between herself and the Lady Olivia. In other words, while the disguise provides Viola with security and protection, it also allows her to utilize her wit for her own enjoyment and also for the enjoyment of the audience.

Click here for Twelfth Night Act 1 Scene 3 Summary and Analysis  

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Twelfth Night Act 1 Scene 1 Summary and Analysis

              Twelfth Night

By William Shakespeare                                                                                

                                

               Summary and Analysis

Act I: Scene 1

              Twelfth Night

By William Shakespeare                                                                                

                                

               Summary and Analysis

Act I: Scene 1

Summary

Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, is sitting in his palace and enjoying himself by listening to music. He is in love and is in a whimsical, romantic mood, luxuriating in the various emotions which the music evokes. But he impulsively decides that he has heard enough, and after sending the musicians away, he expounds on the subject of love. Curio, one of his pages, asks his master if he wouldn't like to hunt; perhaps exercise will cure his master's soulful, philosophical moodiness. Orsino replies that he would like to hunt — but he would like to hunt the lovely Olivia, to whom he has sent another of his pages, Valentine, as an emissary. At that moment, Valentine enters. But he brings such bad news that he begs "not [to] be admitted": Olivia's brother has died, and she has vowed to mourn her brother's death for seven years. Surprisingly, the news does not dampen Orsino's spirit. He rhapsodizes on how a girl with such sensitivity can express her emotions; if she "hath a heart of that fine frame," he says, then she would be even more devoted and loyal to a lover.

Analysis

Twelfth Night has always been one of Shakespeare's most popular plays on the stage. On a first reading of the play, some students find the play difficult to come to grips with. This is because so much of the delight of the play comes from viewing the play. One must imagine the opening of the play with musicians entering and playing lovely music of a languid and melancholy nature to match the mood and personality of Duke Orsino's mood.

The general setting of the play is also significant. Shakespeare always set his comedies in faraway places so as to emphasize the ethereal quality of the romance. The name "Illyria" would be as little known to his audience as it is to today's average person; the fact that such a place did in fact exist on the Adriatic coast is of no importance to the play, for the name itself evokes images of faraway places filled with intrigues and love, and this is the concept that is emphasized throughout the play by the extensive use of music. In some productions, in addition to the songs played and sung on the stage, languid background music is played throughout the comedy.

The duke is in love, and his famous first lines announce this feeling:

If music be the food of love, play on!

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die. (1-3)

But the duke is not in love with any one particular person (even though it would be foolish not to acknowledge, of course, the Lady Olivia); but most of all, the duke is in love with love itself; after all, the Lady Olivia has rejected his protestations of love, and yet he continues to insist that she marry him. The duke thoroughly delights in giving himself up to the exquisite delights of his own passions, but actually he does little to try to possess the object of his affections. In fact, this is the reason why he will later use Viola (Cesario) to do his courting for him.

The duke's character is set in his first speech. At the same time that he indulges in the sentimental music, he impetuously grows tired of it and dismisses the musicians. The duke then evokes the metaphor of the sea, which he likens to love. The sea is vast, as is the duke's capacity for love, but the sea is also changeable, unstable, and constantly shifting its mien. At the end of the comedy, the duke, significantly, will shift his love from the Lady Olivia to Viola within a moment; thus we should not be disturbed by this quick change. Feste later compares the duke's love to an opal, a gem which constantly changes its color according to the nature of the light.

When we hear that the Lady Olivia is going to mourn her brother for seven years, her desire to remain "cloistered like a nun" for seven years identifies her as a person of extreme romantic sentimentality, one who is not in touch with the real world; thus, she is a romantic counterpart to Duke Orsino. When the duke hears the news, he is pleased: if she can remain devoted to her brother for so long, it means that she has a constant heart; therefore, she will be constant to a lover forever, when the time comes. The duke then lies down; he goes to his "sweet beds of flowers" (usually an ottoman or lounge) in order to sleep and dream, believing that "love thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers." In this short opening scene, we have seen the duke restless and enamored of love, tired of love, and finally ready to sleep and dream of love.

 Click here for  Act 1 Scene 2 

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