Scansion

Macbeth

Last week was "one of those weeks", you know? I did have the time to read Macbeth and look more into the play, but alas, I didn't get around to posting. Here's some of last weeks work:

When my mom mentioned scansion in my interview with her sudden flashbacks of my sophomore literary analysis class came flooding back. I hadn't scanned lines for awhile, so I thought I should take another stab at it with Macbeth's "dagger" speech. Shakespeare tends to stray from straight iambic pentameter in moments where character's are conflicted with emotions, or mentally out of whack. What better play to pay close attention to that than a tragedy? Macbeth's "dagger" speech is an important moment in the play where we watch him grapple with murdering King Duncan or not. Driven by ambition and Lady Macbeth's approval, Macbeth addresses the dagger in his hand almost as if it's his conscience.

I went through the speech and marked the stressed & unstressed syllables, the feet, and wrote notes and terms to the side. I'm a visual person so I thought this would be an excellent way to delve into the language of Shakespeare while at the same time delve into the character of Macbeth & his emotions. I've scanned this into the computer so my handwriting might not be the easiest to read, I apologize.

As you can see from my notes, this speech evokes a lot of questions and is open to interpretation. Some think that Macbeth hasn't yet decided when he ends this soliloquy whether or not he will murder Duncan. I think that line 14 where his mind is imagining blood on the dagger is an indication that his subconscious has already decided and Macbeth's mind is about to overtaken by that

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I also highlighted the "extra" syllables on ends of some of the lines. With some searching I found here that they are "masculine endings" if the last syllable is stressed, and "feminine endings" if the last syllable is unstressed. It made me think about the gender focus in this play and I wonder if Shakespeare consciously thought the same on such a micro level. The lines ending in a "feminine ending" refer to the dagger, false creation, being marshaled to murder and murder itself, which makes me immediately think of Lady Macbeth and how, in my opinion, she is more the murderer than Macbeth. The lines ending in a "masculine ending" refer to witchcraft and design, which are what Macbeth feels trapped and propelled by--a sort of destiny he has no control over.

 I may be reading too much into it, but it's definitely got me thinking about how much more I can find in the text if I really look closely.