Act+II

__Act II Discussion Questions **ONLY DO QUESTIONS 1 AND 2**__

1. Use the text to compare Lady Macbeth's character in Act One to her behavior in Act Two. What do you find? Why doesn’t she kill the king herself ?

2. What does “//A little water clears us of this deed//,” mean? Who says this? Can this statement ever be true?

3. Read the following Macbeth soliloquy. What is going on with him mentally? Diagnose him based on his experience below.

//Is this a dagger which I see before me//...(2.1.33-61).

Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, [|fatal] vision, [|sensible] To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the [|heat-oppressed brain]? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou [|marshall'st] me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use. [|Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses,Or else worth all the rest]; I see thee still, And on thy blade and [|dudgeon] [|gouts] of blood, Which was not so before. There's no such thing: It is the bloody business which [|informs] Thus to mine eyes. [|Now o'er the one halfworldNature seems dead], and wicked dreams abuse The [|curtain'd] sleep; [|witchcraft celebratesPale Hecate's offerings], and wither'd murder, [|Alarum'd] by his [|sentinel], the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. With [|Tarquin's ravishing strides], towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very [|stones prate] of my whereabout, And [|take the present horror from the time,Which now suits with it]. Whiles I threat, he lives: [|Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives]. //A bell rings// I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell.