A film version of the St. Matthew Gospel

This is Pier Paulo Pasolini's movie The Gospel According to St. Matthew.

Ian McKellen on Macbeth

Ian McKellen is one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of our time. This YouTube video shows him analyzing Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech. I would highly recommend that you watch it. His analysis of the language is a great example of the kind of thinking you can bring to the work we're doing.

Macbeth's Speech

Here's Patrick Stewart as Macbeth. Give a look and listen:

Poems for Tuesday!

On Tuesday, we'll be discussing the following. Do the assignment as outlined in class on Friday. John Donne is perhaps the greatest poet to live in the generation after Shakespeare's. (DON'T FORGET TO PRINT OUT!)

Here are the poems:

Shakespeare's Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

(This is from the scene in the play when Macbeth finds out that his wife, Lady Macbeth, is dead.)

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Death, be not proud (from Holy Sonnets)

BY JOHN DONNE

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

The Good-Morrow

    BY JOHN DONNE

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I

Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?

But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?

Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den?

’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.

If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,

Which watch not one another out of fear;

For love, all love of other sights controls,

And makes one little room an everywhere.

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,

Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,

Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;

Where can we find two better hemispheres,

Without sharp north, without declining west?

Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I

Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Response to Act IV soliloquy

Here is an example of a response to the soliloquy we discussed in class today. Please note that this is one possible response. There are probably thousands of ways to respond to this particular passage. Though I'm not expecting you to necessarily respond in the way I have, I believe there are several points in this response that may be helpful to you in shaping your own. 1) The response discusses most of the lines in the passage; 2) the response selects several metaphors and discusses them; 3) the response links aspects of the passage to other elements of the play as a whole; 4) the response is written in as clear a way as possible. 

In the opening lines of the soliloquy (IV, 4), Hamlet says that every event pushes him to revenge but also shows how off-base his reluctance to act is. He then goes on to philosophize (which he often does) by asking what is the purpose of a human being. He sets up the contrast, which he has repeatedly made earlier in the play regarding his uncle and the queen, between the beast like and godlike nature of humans. This is a central metaphor of the play.

He next, however, applies this thinking to himself, and asked in lines 40 to 41, whether it’s his bestial side or his tendency to think too much (his godlike side) that is keeping him from acting against the king. In lines 44 to 45, he frankly says he doesn’t know why he has failed to act, endowed as he is with every necessary motive and quality to get the job done.

From there, he reasons how the example of Fortinbras shows an almost opposite tendency to act that reveals Hamlet’s own lack of character. This argument is drawn out over the rest of the soliloquy, in which Hamlet shows how Fortinbras’s willingness to attack Poland is a willingness to risk all over an “eggshell” (line 53) — a metaphor that compares the Polish field of battle to an eggshell, that is, to something of no great substance, value, or use. He then relates how he himself will “let all sleep” (line 59), despite the far greater damages to honor and moral right that he has sustained in the murder of his father. This metaphor is extended when he goes on to say that Fortinbras’s soldiers will go to their “graves like beds” and fight over a plot of land that doesn’t even have room to bury all the dead (line 64). 

All of this may be linked back to the "to be or not to be" soliloquy in which Hamlet develops the metaphor of death as sleep. Yet Hamlet is doomed to sleep (as in action) while the soldiers go to actual death for nothing. The soliloquy ends quite oddly with Hamlet saying “my thoughts be bloody” — thus even in telling himself he will act, he is locked in his thoughts (he does not say “my deeds be bloody” — and anyway he is leaving Denmark, presumably further still from his revenge.