Unit Test Answers

Read the excerpt from act 4, scene 2 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Then, review the photo, which shows the scene being acted out in a 2011 production of the play. Macduff’s son is attempting to protect his family by fighting the murderers who have come to kill them.Lady Macduff. What are these faces?First Murderer. Where is your husband?Lady Macduff. I hope in no place so unsanctifiedWhere such as thou mayst find him.First Murderer. He’s a traitor.Son. Thou liest, thou shag-hair’d villain!First Murderer. What, you egg![Stabs Macduff’s Son.]Young fry of treachery!Photo by Ellie Kurttz (c) RSC

Read the excerpt from act 3, scene 2 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is reflecting on her feelings after the coronation.Lady Macbeth. Nought’s had, all’s spent,Where our desire is got without content:’Tis safer to be that which we destroyThan by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.

Read the excerpt from act 3, scene 4 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have just finished giving a banquet following Macbeth’s coronation. They are discussing the future of their kingdom and their rule.Macbeth. It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood:Stones have been known to move and trees to speak;Augurs and understood relations haveBy maggot-pies and choughs and rooks brought forthThe secret’st man of blood. What is the night?

Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 3, of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Macbeth. The Thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress meIn borrow’d robes?Angus. Who was the thane lives yet;But under heavy judgment bears that lifeWhich he deserves to lose. Whether he was combin’dWith those of Norway, or did line the rebelWith hidden help [and] vantage, or that with bothHe labour’d in his country’s [wreck], I know not;But treasons capital, confess’d and prov’d,Have overthrown him.

Read the passage from act 1, scene 5 of The Tragedy of Macbeth.[Lady Macbeth.] Come, you spiritsThat tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here,And fill me from the crown to the toe top fullOf direst cruelty; make thick my blood,Stop up the access and passage to remorse,That no compunctious visitings of natureShake my fell purpose, nor keep peace betweenThe effect and it!

Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 3, of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Second Witch. Show me, show me. First Witch. Here I have a pilot’s thumb,[Wreck’d] as homeward he did come. [Drum within.] Third Witch. A drum! a drum!Macbeth doth come.

Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 3 of The Tragedy of Macbeth.Macbeth. [Aside.] Two truths are told,As happy prologues to the swelling actOf the imperial theme. [To ROSS and ANGUS.] I thank you, gentlemen.[Aside.] This supernatural solicitingCannot 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 suggestionWhose horrid image doth unfix my hairAnd make my seated heart knock at my ribs,Against the use of nature? Present fearsAre less than horrible imaginings;My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,Shakes so my single state of man that functionIs smother’d in surmise, and nothing isBut what is not. Banquo. Look, how our partner’s rapt. Macbeth. [Aside.] If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,Without my stir.

Read the excerpt from act 5, scene 1 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking while she desperately attempts to remove an unseen spot from her hands. A doctor and a gentlewoman look on and discuss her state of mind.Lady Macbeth. Yet here’s a spot.Doctor. Hark! she speaks: I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.Lady Macbeth. Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One: two: why, then, 'tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.Doctor. Do you mark that?Lady Macbeth. The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?—What, will these hands ne’er be clean?—No more o’ that, my lord, no more o’ that: you mar all with this starting.Doctor. Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.Gentlewoman. She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that: heaven knows what she has known.

Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 2, of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Duncan. No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive Our bosom interest. Go pronounce his present death, And with his former title greet Macbeth. Ross. I’ll see it done.

Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 5 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth explains to Macbeth that it is important to behave appropriately as the King and his attendants are about to arrive. The word thane is a title for a Scottish nobleman.Lady Macbeth. Your face, my thane, is as a book where menMay read strange matters. To beguile the time,Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,But be the serpent under’t.

Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 2 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. The sergeant is relaying events from the battlefront to King Duncan.Duncan. Dismay’d not thisOur captains, Macbeth and Banquo?Sergeant. Yes;As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion.If I say sooth, I must report they wereAs cannons overcharg’d with double cracks;So theyDoubly redoubled strokes upon the foe

Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 2 of The Tragedy of Macbeth.Duncan. Whence cam’st thou, worthy thane? Ross. From Fife, great king;Where the Norweyan banners flout the skyAnd fan our people cold. Norway himself,With terrible numbers,Assisted by that most disloyal traitor,The Thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict;Till that Bellona’s bridegroom, lapp’d in proof,Confronted him with self-comparisons,Point against point, rebellious arm ’gainst arm,Curbing his lavish spirit: and, to conclude,The victory fell on us.—

Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 2 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. An army sergeant has just returned from battle and is speaking to King Duncan.[Sergeant.] So theyDoubly redoubled strokes upon the foe:Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,Or memorize another Golgotha,I cannot tell—But I am faint, my gashes cry for help.

Read the excerpt from act 3, scene 2 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Macbeth, who has just become king, is speaking to Lady Macbeth before the evening’s feast.Macbeth. Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,[While] night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.Thou marvell’st at my words: but hold thee still;Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill:So, prithee, go with me.

Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 2, of The Tragedy of Macbeth.Duncan. Great happiness! Ross. That nowSweno, the Norways’ king, craves composition;Nor would we deign him burial of his menTill he disbursed, at Saint Colme’s Inch,Ten thousand dollars to our general use.

Read the excerpt from act 3, scene 4 of The Tragedy of Macbeth.[Macbeth.] [To Ghost of BANQUO.] Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,The arm’d rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger;Take any shape but that, and my firm nervesShall never tremble

Which of Macbeth’s quotations from act 1, scene 3 of The Tragedy of Macbeth is an example of antithesis?

Read the excerpt from act 4, scene 3 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Macduff is discussing the possibility of Malcom taking the throne of Scotland from Macbeth.Malcolm. It is myself I mean: in whom I knowAll the particulars of vice so graftedThat, when they shall be open’d, black MacbethWill seem as pure as snow, and the poor stateEsteem him as a lamb, being comparedWith my confineless harms.

Read the excerpt from act 5, scene 5 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Macbeth is in his castle, waiting to be surrounded by the enemy army. He suddenly hears women crying, and his servant Seyton goes to investigate.Macbeth. I have almost forgot the taste of fears;The time has been, my senses would have cool’dTo hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hairWould at a dismal treatise rouse and stirAs life were in’t: I have supp’d full with horrors;Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughtsCannot once start me.

Excerpt 1: Read the excerpt from act 3, scene 1 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. King Duncan has just been murdered, and Macbeth is now king. Banquo remembers the witches’ prophecy and wonders whether Macbeth played a part in Duncan’s murder.Banquo. Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all,As the weird women promis’d; and, I fear,Thou play’dst most foully for ’t; yet it was saidIt should not stand in thy posterity,But that myself should be the root and fatherOf many kings. If there come truth from them,—As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine,—Why, by the verities on thee made good,May they not be my oracles as well,And set me up in hope? But, hush! no more.Excerpt 2: Read the excerpt from act 3, scene 2 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are preparing for a feast. Macbeth is king, but he cannot forget the witches’ prophecy that Banquo’s sons, not his own, will succeed him.Macbeth. O! full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife;Thou know’st that Banquo and his Fleance lives.Lady Macbeth. But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne.Macbeth. There’s comfort yet; they are assailable;Then be thou jocund. Ere the bat hath flownHis cloister’d flight, ere, to black Hecate’s summonsThe shard-borne beetle with his drowsy humsHath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be doneA deed of dreadful note.

Read the excerpt from act 3, scene 5 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Hecate is annoyed at the witches for not including her when they prophesied to Macbeth that he would become king. The excerpt mentions the Acheron, a river in Greece that is featured prominently in Greek mythology as the entrance to the underworld.[Hecate.] And I, the mistress of your charms,The close contriver of all harms,Was never call’d to bear my part,Or show the glory of our art?And, which is worse, all you have doneHath been but for a wayward son,Spiteful and wrathful; who, as others do,Loves for his own ends, not for you.But make amends now: get you gone,And at the pit of AcheronMeet me i' the morning: thither heWill come to know his destiny:Your vessels and your spells provide,Your charms and every thing beside.

Excerpt 1: Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 7 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Macbeth, who is alone in his castle, is contemplating whether to kill Duncan.Macbeth. If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere wellIt were done quickly; if the assassinationCould trammel up the consequence, and catchWith his surcease success; that but this blowMight 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 casesWe still have judgment here; that we but teachBloody instructions, which, being taught, returnTo plague the inventor; this even-handed justiceCommends the ingredients of our poison’d chaliceTo our own lips.Excerpt 2: Read the excerpt from act 2, scene 2 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Macbeth, who has just killed Duncan, is speaking to Lady Macbeth.Macbeth. Methought I heard a voice cry "Sleep no more!Macbeth does murder sleep,” the innocent sleep,Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,Chief nourisher in life’s feast,—Lady Macbeth. What do you mean?Macbeth. Still it cried, "Sleep no more!” to all the house:"Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore CawdorShall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!”

Read the excerpt from act 3, scene 4 of The Tragedy of Macbeth.Macbeth. Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect;Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,As broad and general as the casing air:But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound inTo saucy doubts and fears. But Banquo ’s safe?First Murderer. Ay, my good lord; safe in a ditch he bides,With twenty trenched gashes on his head;The least a death to nature.

Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 3 of The Tragedy of Macbeth.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 mePromis’d 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’sIn deepest consequence.[To ROSS and ANGUS.] Cousins, a word, I pray you.

Review the photo. This scene from a 1999 production of Macbeth depicts the witches.Photo by Jonathan Dockar-Drysdale (c) RSC

Read the passage from act 1, scene 4 of The Tragedy of Macbeth.Macbeth. [Aside.] The Prince of Cumberland! that is a stepOn which I must fall down, or else o’er-leap,For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires!Let not light see my black and deep desires;The eye wink at the hand; yet let that beWhich the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

Read the excerpt from act 5, scene 8 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Macduff has just killed Macbeth. The stage direction at the beginning of the excerpt has been expanded.Re-enter MACDUFF, with MACBETH’S head in one hand and MACBETH’S crown and sword in the other.Macduff. [To MALCOLM.] Hail, king! for so thou art: behold, where standsThe usurper’s cursed head: the time is free:I see thee compass’d with thy kingdom’s pearl,That speak my salutation in their minds;Whose voices I desire aloud with mine:Hail, King of Scotland!All. Hail, King of Scotland!

Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 3 of The Tragedy of Macbeth.Ross. The king hath happily receiv’d, Macbeth,The news of thy success; and when he readsThy personal venture in the rebels’ fight,His wonders and his praises do contendWhich should be thine or his. Silenc’d with that,In viewing o’er the rest o’ the self-same day,He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks,Nothing afeard of what thyself didst make,Strange images of death. As thick as hailCame post with post, and every one did bearThy praises in his kingdom’s great defence,And pour’d them down before him.

Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 5 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are discussing Duncan’s upcoming stay at their castle. Lady Macbeth. And when goes hence?Macbeth. To-morrow, as he purposes.Lady Macbeth. O! neverShall sun that morrow see.Your face, my thane, is as a book where menMay read strange matters. To beguile the time,Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,But be the serpent under ’t. He that’s comingMust be provided for; and you shall putThis night’s great business into my dispatch;Which shall to all our nights and days to comeGive solely sovereign sway and masterdom.