Macbeth: Character Development Forces of Nature

01.06 Macbeth: Character Development

Use this graphic organizer to collect your thoughts about
characterization in Macbeth. As you read each scene,
record what you learn about the character. Add the line from
the play that supports your idea.

When completing this graphic organizer, make sure your observations are in complete sentences and your quotes
are long enough to capture the sense of what is going on but not so long that your audience can’t see the major
point.

Lady Macbeth

Macbeth

LADY MACBETH

ACT I, Scene V

“They met me in the day of success; and I have learned by the perfectest report
they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in desire to
question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles
I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came
missives from the king, who all-hailed
me, ‘Thane of Cawdor’; by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and
referred me to the coming on of time, with ‘Hail, king that shalt be!’ This have
I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness;
that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness
is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart,
and farewell.”

ACT I, Scene VII

In this scene Macbeth has just welcomed King
Duncan and his entourage into his home. They all sit
down for dinner. Macbeth leaves the party for a
moment and thinks aloud in a soliloquy.

MACBETH

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly. If the assassination
Could
trammel
up the
consequence, and catch,
With his
surcease,
success; that but
this
blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all — here,
But here, upon this bank and
shoal
of time, —
We’d
jump the life to come. But in these cases
We still have
judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which being taught, return
To plague the inventor:
this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice
To our own lips.
He’s
here in double trust:
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed: then, as his
host,

Macbeth gathers the courage to kill Duncan and
returns to Lady Macbeth with the bloody daggers. She
tells him to go back and make it look like Duncan’s
guards did it.

MACBETH.

Whence is that knocking?
How is’t with me, when every
noise appals me?
What hands are here? Ha, they pluck out mine
eyes!
Will all great Neptune’s
ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
[Re-enter Lady Macbeth.]

ACT II, Scene II
MACBETH.

I’ll go no more:
I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on’t again I dare
not.

LADY MACBETH.

Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures: ’tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal,
For it must seem their
guilt.
[Exit. Knocking within.]