The "Chaucer" group should answer TWO of the following:
Q1: In Act 4, scene 3, Malcolm tells Macduff that "black Macbeth/will seem as pure as snow, and the poor state/Esteem him as a lamb, being compared/With my confineless harms...there's no bottom, none/In my voluptousness" (143). Why does he threaten to be an even worse ruler than Macbeth, and vow to debauch women, ruin men, and destroy order?
Q2: In Scene 2, Lady Macduff tells her son that Macduff (who has fled lest he be killed by Macbeth) is "dead" and "a traitor." Why does she say this, especially as her son knows that neither of them are true. Is she joking with him, or being deadly serious? You might also account for her line, "Why, I can buy me twenty [husbands] at any market."
Q3: In a theatrical sense, how does Shakespeare 'stage' the witches to his audience? Consider, too, that witches were believed to be real in Elizabethan/Jacobean England, and many women were still burned as witches at this time. Does he want us to think that the witches have 'bewitched' Macbeth and used their magic against him? Or is their power and presence more metaphorical, not to be read as literal and overpowering?
Q4: How does Macduff compare to Macbeth in scene 3? Considering that he left his family to die (more or less), do we read him as another power-seeking opportunist, or a cowardly politician? Or does Shakespeare redeem our suspicions through his language in this act? (you might consider, too, how the language of 'manhood' is invoked in this scene).
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