Tip: While the audio is playing, you should take notes. Try to identify main points if possible. After listening to the audio clip, you will be given five to six multiple choice questions. You will not be given a transcript or be allowed to listen to the recording again.    Narrator: Listen to the lecture in a literature class and then answer the questions. Female professor: As we’ve been discussing, one element of Shakespeare’s writing that sets him apart from his predecessors, and arguably made him a great playwright, was his ability to create characters with intricate and interesting... Show more

Tip: While the audio is playing, you should take notes.

Try to identify main points if possible. After listening to the audio clip, you will be given five to six multiple choice questions. You will not be given a transcript or be allowed to listen to the recording again. 
 

Narrator: Listen to the lecture in a literature class and then answer the questions.
Female professor: As we’ve been discussing, one element of Shakespeare’s writing that sets him apart from his predecessors, and arguably made him a great playwright, was his ability to create characters with intricate and interesting psychologies. Many of Shakespeare’s main characters are written in general compliance with “good” and “evil” archetypes, but just like generally “good” and “evil” people in real life, the motives of his characters are complex. These complexities um…evoke his audiences’ sympathies, and subsequently heightens their interest in the play. Shakespeare’s most famous characters are those that do not conform absolutely to typical protagonist and antagonist roles. These characters prevent audiences from considering and appreciating the play on strictly superficial levels.
So, now that we’ve had to chance to finish Macbeth, I think you’ll see how Shakespeare’s portrayal of Lady Macbeth contains these additional dimensions that make her character realistic and engaging. In public, she recognizes and behaves within her social limitations and expectations as a woman, but violates those boundaries while alone or with her husband. Lady Macbeth shifts between the passive role of a wife, the aggressive attitude of a leader, and the tempting behaviors of I don’t know…a seductress, in order to advance her and her husband’s social and financial status.
Lady Macbeth reveals her scheming and violent nature within her first few lines of the play. She is completely aware that she and her husband have common goals, but that without her influence, Macbeth himself lacks the primal instinct needed to commit the murder of King Duncan. Macbeth’s horrible vision of murder is not his own, his ambition has been purposefully implanted by his wife. Macbeth’s is extremely passive, and speaks in a tone much like that of a scared child; he asks his wife if they are going to be suspected of the murders. Essentially, the moment that Macbeth submits to his wife’s leadership is the moment that the traditional marital and gender roles are reversed.
Do you guys see how the key to Lady Macbeth’s strategy for gaining influence over her husband is to somewhat switch the gender roles within her marriage? Just before Macbeth arrives home, Lady Macbeth pleads “unsex me here.” So, essentially, Lady Macbeth seeks to lose her female restrictions in order to gain total control over the situation, or...uh…what she sees as her opportunity to gain power over her husband. Lady Macbeth successfully “unsexes” herself by assuming the male role and aggressively taking matters into her own hands throughout the play. Lady Macbeth adjusts her language and tone to make herself more masculine in these instances, which intimidate Macbeth’s actions in turn.
In order to avoid suspicion, Lady Macbeth alters her behavior for the public eye as well. She knows that self-effacement and politeness are necessary behaviors to adopt so that she and her husband are able to climb social and financial ladders. The tone of her speech as she addresses King Duncan is apologetic and submissive. She behaves this way to put the King at ease, and you know, probably to make him more susceptible to her husband’s violence. Lady Macbeth plays both of these contrasting roles at the appropriate times in order to move the play in the direction which is most beneficial to her ambitions.
I can see I’m losing some of you because I bet many of you have your minds on last week’s midterm, so let’s end our discussion here today and go over your test, but next class, I want to pick up with the different styles of language Lady Macbeth uses to gain what she needs from the other characters in the play.

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