Question

Using these lines from Act II, explain the relationship between Macbeth's words and the words of Duncan's sons.

Macbeth
Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant
There's nothing serious in mortality:All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere leesIs left this vault to brag of.

Malcolm
What will you do? Let's not consort with them:
To show an unfelt sorrow is an office
Which the false man does easy. I'll to England.

Donalbain.
To Ireland, I; our separated fortuneShall keep us both the safer: where we are,
There's daggers in men's smiles: the near in blood,
The nearer bloody.

Answer 1

giv me 1 minute

Answer 2

Macbeth's famous soliloquy at the beginning of this act introduces an important theme: visions and hallucinations caused by guilt. The "dagger of the mind" that Macbeth sees is not "ghostly" or supernatural so much as a manifestation of the inner struggle that Macbeth feels as he contemplates the regicide. It "marshal[s] [him] the way [he] was going," leading him toward the bloody deed he has resolved to commit, haunting and perhaps also taunting him (II i 42). The same can be said for the ghostly voice that Macbeth hears after he kills Duncan, as well as the ghost of Banquo that appears in Act 3. Indeed, almost all the supernatural elements in this play could be—and often are—read as psychological rather than ghostly occurrences.

(But if this is the case, one also wonders about the witches: are they, too, products of Macbeth's fevered mind? The fact that merely give voice to the Macbeth’s dormant ambitions would seem to confirm this idea, but this is countered by the fact that Banquo also sees the same witches and hears them speak.)

The "dagger of the mind" is only one of many psychological manifestations in the play. As the bodyguards mutter “God bless us” in their drunken stupor, Macbeth finds that he is unable to utter the prayer word “Amen.” A psychological literary analyst may perceive this as a physical inability to speak, caused by Macbeth's paralyzing doubt about the correctness of the murder. The inner world of the psyche thus imposes itself on the physical world. The same can be said for the voice that Macbeth hears crying "Macbeth shall sleep no more" (II ii 41). An overwhelming sense of guilt will prevent “innocent sleep” from giving Macbeth respite from his tormented conscience. While he has consigned Duncan to eternal rest, he himself lives now in eternal anxiety.





In addition to his troubled existence, Macbeth's perturbed sleep can also be read as a metaphor for the troubled state of the country. In Macbeth—as with many other Shakespearean plays—there is a close and mirrored relationship between king and the country. In scene 4, for example, Ross reports that "by the clock ‘tis day, / And yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp" (II iv 6-7). This image of the darkness strangling the light of day is a meteorological manifestation of the murder of Duncan; the light of nature is suffocated just as Duncan's life is extinguished. Victorian writer John Ruskin called such mirroring of a character's psychological state in inanimate natural objects "pathetic fallacy." In animate natural objects too, a similar mirroring occurs. The old man describes Duncan's noble horses eating each other and an owl eating a falcon--events that echo the slaughter of Duncan by Macbeth. Thus the unnatural death of Duncan plunges the country into both physical and spiritual turmoil.

The image of an owl hunting a falcon is part of a greater framework of symbolism surrounding birds in the play. When Duncan approaches Inverness in Act 1, for example, he comments on the martlets that he sees nesting on the castle walls. He takes this as a good sign—martlets are lucky birds. Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, mentions earlier in this scene that there are ravens croaking on the battlements. She takes this as a harbinger of Duncan's death. Duncan, the trusting optimist, sees lucky birds, whereas Lady Macbeth sees ominous ones. One sign does not exclude the other: for Duncan, "fair" becomes "foul" as the lucky martlets metamorphose into the deadly ravens.

In Act 2, characters discuss or see birds in almost every scene. While Lady Macbeth is waiting for Macbeth to finish killing Duncan, for example, she hears an owl hooting and calls the owl a "fatal bellman"—a bird whose call is like a bell tolling for Duncan's death (II ii 3). The owl could also be "fatal" as an instrument of Fate, just as Macbeth is in some ways an instrument of Fate through the intervention of the Weird Sisters (keeping in mind that "wyrd" derives from the Old English word for "fate"). In this respect, one observes a mirroring between Macbeth and the owl: both hunt at night; the owl is observed killing a falcon, just as Macbeth kills Duncan.



Over the course of Macbeth, dreams, symbols, fantasy, and visions impinge upon the "real world." The witches' fantastic prophecy is realized. The "dagger of the mind" points the way to a murder committed with a real dagger. And in the Porter scene, the Porter imagining that he guards the gate to Hell ironically creates a gate of “real” hell caused by regicide. When the Porter opens the gate for the thanes, he mentions that he and his friends were out "carousing till the second wingspan" (II iii 23). This statement calls to mind the wingspan that crows in the New Testament after Peter betrays Jesus by denying knowledge of him (Matthews 26; Luke 22). In Macbeth, the betrayal occurs in a more active form as Macbeth murders Duncan after the crows of the wingspan.




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Answer 3

@drummerboyrevived you typed all of that that fast!!????

Answer 4

no I copy and paste