A Year in the Life of an English Class

In this scene Macbeth’s wife talks to him.  She has read his letter, telling her about the good news that he heard from the witches, and she wants to make sure that he acts quickly in order to become king.

It’s hard to know exactly how Macbeth feels about the news, however.  In scene 3, he has several different asides that vary in emotion from elation (“The greatest is behind”) to horror (“let light not see my black and deep desires”).  I’m not sure of what Macbeth wants to do at this point, but my sense is that he has very strong reservations against killing his King. 

The question, then, is what he wants from Lady Macbeth:  Did he send the letter in hopes that SHE would get excited about becoming queen and talk him into committing the murder that he is afraid to commit?  Or did he send it innocently?  Does he really want to be pushed into action, or does he already know what he wants to do?

In the following passage, I am inventing a subtext for Macbeth that suggests that he can’t stand his wife, and just wants to go on living as he is (perhaps without having his crazy, nagging wife around).  This interpretation is unlikely, but I hope will get a few (cheap) laughs.  Enjoy:

Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!
Greater than both, by the all-hail hereafter!
Thy letters have transported me beyond
This ignorant present, and I feel now
The future in the instant.

MACBETH

Oh God, why did I send that stupid letter?!  Now I have to deal with my wife nagging me about killing Duncan!  Ugh.

My dearest love,
Duncan comes here to-night.

WHAT?  Why did I just say that?  Now she’s going to bug me even more.  When will I learn?!

LADY MACBETH

And when goes hence?

MACBETH

To-morrow, as he purposes.

Great.  Here it comes… she’s going to start talking about murder.

LADY MACBETH

O, never
Shall sun that morrow see!

See… I knew it.

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May 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 coming
Must be provided for: and you shall put
This night’s great business into my dispatch;
Which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

MACBETH

I knew it!!!  What can I say to get this crazy wife off of my back? 

We will speak further.

LADY MACBETH

Only look up clear;
To alter favour ever is to fear:
Leave all the rest to me.

Yeah, whatever… I’m never getting out of this.  At least I didn’t tell her that I’d clean out the moat…

Over the past twenty years or so, I’ve thought a lot about… well, myself.  Sometimes, as I think about the man in the mirror, I consider this question:  What are my ambitions?  To what extent am I willing to work for them?  Do I want too much — or do I expect too little from myself?

Macbeth wants to be King (as anyone in his position would) but he allows this desire to get in the way of his true success.  He is a great warrior, recognized for valor in battle.  Why not stick with that and wait for the next thing?  Would he be un-ambitious — or lazy — if he did?  Perhaps making honest opportunity happen, rather than taking a shortcut is his real downfall.

When I consider my own definition, and my own job, I think that that “ambitious” is probably the wrong word to describe good teachers.  In my experience, “ambitious” teachers want to get nominated for teacher of the year, or want to become administrators, or they want to publish books about teaching.  The ones who have been my greatest mentors, however, have not been interested in any of these things.  When I think of “ambitious” teachers, I think of self-promotors.  The most inspirational teachers to me, however, have been teachers who focus on one thing:  teaching.  I suppose that one could say that their focus on teaching is ambitious — aspiring to be a great teacher.  But most of the connotations that I see when I look at Dictionary.com have to do with aspiring to be “something more.”  The definition I refer to cites the word’s origin as coming from a word used in the 1300’s that meant “going around to canvass for office.”  

I think that the world needs ambitious people.  If nobody wanted to be president, for example, we might have a problem of leadership.  On the other hand, however, I think that the ambitions for wealth or power or creating some kind of a name or legacy can actually get in the way of true achievement.  If I worry about publishing my next book, or about getting recognized and promoted into my next position, can I really do justice to the job that I’m doing right now?  I also suspect that the more that people are influenced by the symbols or signs of success and achievement, the more easily one can be deceived by the appearances of success, rather than authentic success.  So perhaps the question that I still have is about ambition itself:  Does it get in the way of achievement, or does it drive achievement?  Or does it do both at once?

Three Witches – eNotes.com Reference.

I noticed a couple of things as I tried to do the blog post I assigned to students on images of characters.

1. It was very hard for me to think of anything to do besides going to Google Images and looking for “Macbeth,” or “Macbeth King” or the name of some other character.
2. When I searched for images in this way, I inevitably found multiple images, but most of them were un-cited.  So then a moral dilemma comes up:  Do I post these images, which I don’t know how to cite, or do I ignore the rules and post them like everyone else has?  There’s one thing for certain:  I can’t draw.