Gk En OI¹/Br             1. Klausur 13.I                            Nov 5^th, 2002

Theme: Shakespeare's Macbeth – Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair

Text: Extract from Act 1 Scene III

MACBETH [Aside]

Glamis, and thane of Cawdor!
The greatest is behind.
To ROSS and ANGUS

Thanks for your pains.
To BANQUO

Do you not hope your children shall be kings,
When those that gave the thane of Cawdor to me
Promised no less to them?
BANQUO

That trusted home
Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,
Besides the thane of Cawdor. But 'tis strange:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence.
Cousins, a word, I pray you.
MACBETH [Aside]

Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme. -I thank you, gentlemen. -
This supernatural soliciting

Cannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.

BANQUO

MACBETH

[Aside] If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,
Without my stir.
BANQUO

New horrors come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould
But with the aid of use.
MACBETH [Aside]

Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
BANQUO

Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure.
MACBETH

Give me your favour: my dull brain was wrought
With things forgotten. Kind gentlemen, your pains
Are register'd where every day I turn
The leaf to read them. Let us toward the king.
Think upon what hath chanced, and, at more time,
The interim having weigh'd it, let us speak
Our free hearts each to other.
BANQUO

Very gladly.

333 W

Annotations: 11 trusted home – believed completely 12 enkindle – excite your hopes 14 win …. Consequence – tell us truths in small matters in order to deceive us in important ones 23 soliciting – temptation 24 ill – evil  25 earnest – promise/assurance 28 doth – does 34 nothing is … is not – nothing seems real to me but my fantasies 36 rapt – deeply delighted 43 cleave not … mould – his new clothes do not fit him 51 wrought – agitated 55 chanced - happened

Assigments:

11. Why is the variation of monologue and dialogue important in this scene? Refer to the text in your answer. [Contents and formal Analysis]

22. Show how the concept of fairness and foulness is presented by Shakespeare on various levels of this extract. [Contents + Analysis]