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As we enter Act IV of the play, we get something that’s very reminiscent of the Prologue in both Henry V & Troilus and Cressida.  This one seemed more like the Prologue in Henry V, as it is asking for the audience’s suspension of disbelief and is somewhat apologizing to the audience for something that may seem jarring or confusing.  The Prologue here is called simply “Time”, leading me to wonder how Shakespeare would have costumed the man playing this role.  In one of the essays in the back of our Signet edition, Sylvan Barnet claims that in one production, the man who played the bear in 3.3 came out again at this time and revealed himself to be Time.  

I thought the use of Time here as a personification was very smart on Shakespeare’s part; there are very few Shakespearean plays in which he has a passage of time like this, and therefore the audience would not be expecting it, and may have had a hard time if all of a sudden Perdita was onstage as a teenager with no explanation.  I took a screenplay writing class a few semesters ago in which we spent a long time (no pun intended) on this issue of time passage.  You can show a clock speeding up, you can show the seasons changing, you can show someone rapidly aging – but that’s all on camera.  Showing time passage onstage is a very tricky matter and I think the use of Time here works well.

What I found most interesting as Lady Macbeth is that she keeps prodding her husband to “be a man”. In some ways, Lady Macbeth seems to be having so much more courage than her husband. However, we see that Lady Macbeth probably would not have been able to murder King Duncan herself, as she mentions how he looks too much like her father. I just thought it was humorous how she keeps telling Macbeth to be a man. It just brings me to question the roles that each of them are playing and how much influence Lady Macbeth has over her husband. For some reason I feel as if she really doesn’t have the influence over her husband. She also lacks the mental capability to keep living after murdering the King. Also, if Macbeth and Lady Macbeth switched genders, would the murder and ascendancy to the throne been ever more possible? And, who really is wearing the pants?

I think Macbeth’s destiny was out of his control. The interference of fate, in the form of the witches, is what caused his inevitable downfall. Macbeth didn’t exhibit any ambition to usurp the throne until he heard the prophecy. Once the idea was placed inside his head, however, it consumed him. He was extremely indecisive on what course of action to take, and rationalized against doing anything several times. His wife really forced it upon him, using tactics such as questioning his manhood and assuring his success.

Macbeth is a victim of his options. Recall, Macbeth was a religious man. Imagine you were told by a prophetic visionary (whether its angelic or demonic is irrelevant, as long as you believed in it) that you would come across immense wealth.; Immediately, you’d start looking left and right for the first opportunity to make this vision true. It’s only a natural response. Macbeth was already aware Malcolm was the next heir to the throne, so he could infer that his kingship had to be seized. When the opportunity to murder Duncan arose, he would believe it was his destiny.    

Also, take his initial character into question. He was a brilliant warrior, known for brutally slaughtering his opponents. Yet he shook with fright he had to murder whom he perceived an innocent man, and inevitably lost his grip on sanity as a result. That is not the appropriate characterization of the ruthless man Macbeth became by the end of the play. All of his subsequent murders and actions were a result him being trapped on a slippery slope. Towards the end of the play Macbeth laments on the futility of life. He is still able to regret his actions. He suffered greatly; losing his wife, reputation, power, and everything that once formed his identity   
                                                                                                           
Although Macbeth is very intelligent and appeared to have thought through his plan, I don’t believe he really did. His mind was completely focused on the task at hand – he kept rationalizing whether or not to kill the King. The fact that he didn’t consider he had no children to be heir to the throne until AFTER he murdered Duncan attests to that. I doubt he considered the grand scheme of his actions. He acted out of character by jumping the gun and murdering the King due to a perceived urgency of time, and was unable to really think things through. It didn’t help that he had his wife was emasculating him every step of the way. In my opinion, the destiny was forced upon Macbeth. How much blame you can put on the man for giving into tantalizing temptation, the original sin of man?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUJzFdcuIyE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=332yOI50TBg

I thought it was very interesting when the Professor introduced the idea that Macbeth could have had PTSD. It raised a stimulating argument that I had never thought about before. However, I don’t necessarily agree. Macbeth, in my opinion, is a character that thought things over before actually putting his plans into action. He did begin to lose his sanity after he killed.

This quick paced play, covers many different tragedies in a matter of acts. Some of the murders were unexpected and unnecessary. I believe Macbeth and Lady Macbeth got what they deserved in the end. Lady Macbeth took her own life and Macbeth was killed by Macduff.

Shakespeare’s homage to Homer and even Chaucer could be related to today’s Hollywood (even though Shakespeare doesn’t sell out). He took a very famous work of literature and adapted it into a screen play. He took creative license and created and original story line through a classic story.
One of the aspects of the original that I missed during the adaptation was the gods of Olympus. During the Iliad they were a very strong influencing force throughout the epic poem. It would have been nice to see how Shakespeare would have adapted the gods into his play.
It was nice to see Shakespeare’s version of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. During Act 5 iii, when Hector was departing to war this scene mirrors Book 22 of the Iliad. In the Iliad he was being persuaded by his parents. The scene is very emotional and very intense. In the play Hector is being asked by many people and it is not as intense.
There were things that I would have liked to have seen in the play from the original but that being said I still enjoyed it.