Welcome back my fellow students!
We kicked off the lesson by mind mapping some of the characteristics of witches. The following is what we agreed to be the most common among witches:
- Old women
- Isolated from society
- Alone and ugly
- Black cat
- Devil worshipper/ assistant
- Sorcery/ does evil magic
- Broom stick/ hat
- Witches are bad side to religion- opposite to God.
Then Sir asked us, as to why Shakespeare would use witches to open the play Macbeth. The class struggled to answer this question. Mr Chatterley, kindly told us that it is due the Historical context of the play (1606, or 17th century). This is indeed AO4, he then told us when using AO4 to consider the context in which the text is written, as well as the context the piece is received. Before we began reading we read a little about the context of King James I who was the King during the period the play was written (although the play is set 600 years before). We then read a bit about the structure of theaters and how they used to have limited crops, therefore had little scenery. This is part of AO2 as the FORM of the text is a PLAY, which we need to consider when writing essays.
Finally we began to read Macbeth, we read up to Act 1 scene 3. We stopped each time to make sure everyone understood what was happening. After reading the play, Sir asked us to consider the elements in the play that could be considered GOTHIC. He then asked us to make a plan for the following question:
“How does the start of Macbeth confirm it as a gothic text?”
We came up with the following :
- The use of Witches.
- The theme of oppositions , i.e. foul/ fair
- Use of Kings, castles and battle. (Although, the battle seems less gothic )
- However, to argue against the question, you can mention that the play was in fact written before the Gothic Genre was invented.
Homework:
-Research about James the first and other historical context, see page 162 of Macbeth.
That’s all I can remember, I hope it helped. Aisha M
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