Lab 9

April 6, 2019

Rhetoric in Act 5 and the play as a whole

This week in Professor Waits English 1302 1st Period class, we discussed Act 5 of Shakespeare’s Macbeth throughout the week, and finished reading Macbeth in class. There were no chapter pages to read. Rhetoric in Act 5 and the play as a whole is shown through the lines, “So foul and fair a day I have not seen,” as Macbeth compares the day as foul and fair at the same time (Shakespeare 0130). Another example of rhetoric is found in the line, “The Wood began to move,” as trees cannot move (Shakespeare 2298). The lines “Our castle’s strength/Will laugh a siege to scorn. Here let them lie/Till famine and the ague eat them up./Were they not forced with those that should be/ours,/We might have met them dareful, beard to beard,/And beat them backward home” in which Macbeth believes the castle is strong enough to protect him from Macduff’s attack, although he was wrong (Shakespeare 2261-2267). When Macbeth states “I have almost forgot the taste of fears” he knows he could be defeated (Shakespeare 2270).

This week I noticed rhetoric and argument in Act 5 and throughout the entirety of William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth.

Constructing my own Rhetorical Piece: Question/Problem: In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Why does Macbeth not shows grief when Seyton announces “The Queen, my lord, is dead”? (Shakespeare 2278). Answers/Solutions: In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth was too concerned with possibly being defeated to focus on the death of his wife.

Work Cited:

Macbeth from Folger Digital Texts, ed. Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Folger Shakespeare Library. https://www.folgerdigitaltexts.org/download/pdf/Mac.pdf. Accessed 06 Apr. 2019.

Lodge, Guy. “Cannes Film Review: ‘Macbeth’.” Variety, 23 May 2015, variety.com/2015/film/festivals/macbeth-review-michael-fassbender-marion-cotillard-1201500514/.