PROMPTS FOR COMPARISON
In the extracts:
1. What do both Macbeth and Leontes say that reveal their minds are under stress?
2. What (or who) has caused Macbeth and Leontes’ angst? Try to be really exact here.
3. Which phrases make Macbeth and Leontes appear: vulnerable/powerful; sympathetic /unsympathetic?
4. How are asides used? How are questions used?
5. How are the concepts of truth and falsehood/fiction explored?
6. How does the theme of appearance versus reality reveal itself?
7. How does the structure of each extract create tension?
Now consider the comparisons across the plays as a whole:
1. What decisions do Macbeth and Leontes make whilst under the influence of these stresses? What are the consequences of these decisions?
2. How do Macbeth and Leontes’ courts and/or subjects react to their decisions? Does this change across each play?
3. What role do Lady Macbeth and Hermione play in their husbands’ states of mind?
4. Some critics suggest that both plays explore tyranny. To what extent do you agree? Make notes to explain your answer.
5. What is the relationship between the genre of each play and Macbeth and Leontes’ states’ of mind?
The Winter’s Tale
LEONTES
[Aside] Too hot, too hot!
To mingle friendship far is mingling bloods.
I have tremor cordis on me: my heart dances;
But not for joy; not joy. This entertainment
May a free face put on, derive a liberty
From heartiness, from bounty, fertile bosom,
And well become the agent; ‘t may, I grant;
But to be paddling palms and pinching fingers,
As now they are, and making practised smiles,
As in a looking-glass, and then to sigh, as ‘twere
The mort o’ the deer; O, that is entertainment
My bosom likes not, nor my brows! Mamillius,
Art thou my boy?
MAMILLIUS
Ay, my good lord.
LEONTES
I’ fecks! Why, that’s my bawcock. What, hast
smutch’d thy nose?
They say it is a copy out of mine. Come, captain,
We must be neat; not neat, but cleanly, captain:
And yet the steer, the heifer and the calf
Are all call’d neat.--Still virginalling Upon his palm!--How now, you wanton calf!
Art thou my calf
Macbeth
MACBETH
[Aside] Two truths are told, As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.--I thank you, gentlemen.
Aside
This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.
BANQUO
Look, how our partner’s rapt.
MACBETH
[Aside] If chance will have me king, why, chance may
crown me,
Without my stir.
The Winter’s Tale (cont...)
MAMILLIUS
Yes, if you will, my lord.
LEONTES
Thou want’st a rough pash and the shoots that I have,
To be full like me: yet they say we are
Almost as like as eggs; women say so,
That will say anything but were they false
As o’er-dyed blacks, as wind, as waters, false
As dice are to be wish’d by one that fixes
No bourn ‘twixt his and mine, yet were it true
To say this boy were like me. Come, sir page,
Look on me with your welkin eye: sweet villain!
Most dear’st! my collop! Can thy dam?--may’t be?--
Affection! thy intention stabs the centre:
Thou dost make possible things not so held,
Communicatest with dreams;--how can this be?--
With what’s unreal thou coactive art,
And fellow’st nothing: then ‘tis very credent
Thou mayst co-join with something; and thou dost,
And that beyond commission, and I find it,
And that to the infection of my brains
And hardening of my brows.
POLIXENES
What means Sicilia?
HERMIONE
He something seems unsettled.
POLIXENES
How, my lord!
What cheer? how is’t with you, best brother?
HERMIONE
You look as if you held a brow of much distraction
Are you moved, my lord?
LEONTES
No, in good earnest.
How sometimes nature will betray its folly,
Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime
To harder bosoms!
Macbeth (cont...)
BANQUO
New horrors come upon him,
Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould
But with the aid of use.
MACBETH
[Aside] Come what come may,
Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.
BANQUO
Worthy Macbeth, we stay upon your leisure.
MACBETH
Give me your favour: my dull brain was wrought
With things forgotten. Kind gentlemen, your pains
Are register’d where every day I turn
The leaf to read them. Let us toward the king.
Think upon what hath chanced, and, at more time,
The interim having weigh’d it, let us speak
Our free hearts each to other.
BANQUO
Very gladly.
MACBETH
Till then, enough. Come, friends.
Exeunt
