MacBeth reading journal: Act Five

Scene One:

• Enter a Doctor physic and a waiting gentlewoman (Lady MacBeth's gentlewoman)
• 5 - Lady MacBeth sleepwalks and while sleeping she has been seen to 6- "take forth paper, fold it, write upon't, read it afterwards seal it and again return to bed" says the gentlewoman about Lady MacBeth. Lady MacBeth could be writing a confession to her and her husband's crimes.
• 22 - Lady LacBeth has a light by her "continually". Is she afraid of the the unknown?
• 27 - Lady MacBeth rubs her hands 29- "washing her hands". Like Pontius Pilate in the Bible washing his hands after he authorised the execution of Jesus. 
• 34 - "Out damned spot! Out, I say!" Lady MacBeth. 38- "who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?" Lady MacBeth is going mad and thinks she sees Duncan's blood on her hand physically still in her dreams rather than just metaphorically.
• 62 - "There's a knocking at the gate" Lady MacBeth still remembers the knocking on the gate that happened after the murder. It was caused by MacDuff, the man who in Act Four Scene Three vows to kill MacBeth. Significant or what?
• 64 - "What's done cannot be undone" says Lady MacBeth. Earlier, after the murder of Duncan, her character said that "what's done is done". Shakespeare is now making her sound more negative.
• Blood is a symbol of Lady MacBeth's guilt she feels.
• This is the first scene in the play that Lady MacBeth speaks in bland verse! She has changed!

Gothic elements of Scene One:

• The supernatural: (Now known to be a natural phenomenon, but in Elizabethan times sleepwalking was seen as supernatural and not right)
• Psychological torment: (This scene lays it on thick. Really thick. Poor Lady MacBeth... It's obvious to the audience that her character is racked with guilt and deeply troubled)
• The Past: (Lady MacBeth just can't escape from it's long and bloody shadow)
• Darkness and Light - Symbolised: (Lady MacBeth always has a torch with her. Presumably because she is afraid of the unknown [the darkness which the torch cuts through])
• Fear: (And how! Lady MacBeth is having a nightmare about her bloody hands and is afraid of the knocking on the gate that happened on night of the crime. Also, the gentlewoman and Doctor are afraid to hear from the horse's mouth as it were about Duncan's murder)

Scene Two:

• A scene with MacBeth's enemies in England
• 6 - "Birnan wood" is meantioned as a meeting place of MacBeth's enemies. The same Birnan wood that the third apparition told MacBeth would move when MacBeth would be defeated
• 13 - "Some say he's mad" Cathness about MacBeth. Lady MacBeth is mad...
• 17 - "His secret murders sticking on his hands" like the blood on Lady MacBeth's hands...
• 19/20 - "Those he commands move only in command, nothing in love" Angus about MacBeth. Nobody is loyal to MacBeth, they just fear for their lives

Gothic elements in Scene Two:

• Fear: (MacBeth's army fears him and only acts if they are commanded, never out of love for king or country)

Scene Three:

• 6 - MacBeth exactly quotes the witches prophecy showing that he hasn't stopped thinking about it...
• MacBeth is clearly mad or delusional. He is going to fight a battle against a 10,000 strong coalition army of English and Scotish soldiers with his force of people who don't believe in him.
• 11 - MacBeth calls his own servant a "cream-faced loon"
• 15 - "lilly-livered boy" MacBeth is completely dominant over other characters. What a bad guy...
• There are lots of references to the colour white, as if everything in this act is going to come clean
• 24 - MacBeth references his old age
• 36 - MacBeth puts his armour on hours before he needs to. This shows that he is more afraid than he is showing on the outside. Is he noble (defending his country), pathetic (imagine waiting around your castle in armour for hours before you need to wear it) or does he simply feel vulnerable
• 37 - MacBeth calls his ill wife "your patient" when talking to the doctor
• 39 - When MacBeth is told that Lady MacBeth's mind is "diseased" with a "rooted sorrow" by the doctor, MacBeth says in characteristically unsympathetic way "cure her of that" he thinks that the doctor can just cast a spell and his wife will be cured, like the witches could.
• 45/46 - "Therein the patient must minister to himself" The doctor referring to MacBeth. Almost as if the doctor were saying if lady MacBeth is ill, then so are you, MacBeth. This is an astonishingly brave thing to say

Gothic elements in Scene Three:

• The supernatural: (MacBeth talks to the doctor as if he were a witch)

Scene Four:

• 8 - MacBeth is called a "confident tyrant" by Seyward, but is that true? Is MacBeth really confident? He put on his armour hours before the attack was expected...

Scene Five:

• 9 - "I have almost forgot the taste of fears" MacBeth has lost all feelings
• 16 - "The Queen, my lord, is dead". The one person who truly stood by MacBeth committed suicide
• 17 - "She should have died hereafter" Everyone is going to die eventually. "Memento Mori"
• 23 - "out, out brief candle!" A metaphor for life, but also Lady MacBeth was carrying a candle earlier in the play...
• 26 - Life is a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". That MacBeth is really down in the dumps! This speech is significant because it might be MacBeth attempting to justify his killings to himself. Nice try, loser! It is also very nihilistic
• 35 - "Birnan...began to move" says the messenger. The witch's apparition's prophecies are coming true!

Scene Six:

• 108 - MacBeth is described as a "butcher". Fair enough. However, Lady MacBeth is described as a "fiend-like queen" this is unfair.
• There is a definite parallel between MacBeth's head being chopped off and the description of him unzipping his enemy at the beginning of the play. Violence begets violence; you reap what you sew ect... This is used by Shakespeare to show that nothing has changed. The new king has murdered the old, just as has happened for centuries before hand and will continue for centuries afterwards. Watch your back Malcolm, you're next!