After you collect evidence for these three arguments, select the one you feel you is the strongest claim. Thesis :

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1 Essay Test Macbeth : Who s to Blame for the Tragedy? Your Task : Review the excerpts from the play and decide who is to blame for the tragedy. Is it Macbeth himself? Are the Wyrd Sisters controlling Macbeth s destiny? Or is it Lady Macbeth? Support your claim using analysis of character development, motifs, and central ideas (themes). Macbeth Is to Blame (Quotes) Macbeth Is to Blame (Explanation) The Wyrd Sisters Are to Blame (Quotes) The Wyrd Sisters Are to Blame (Explanation) Lady Macbeth Is to Blame (Quotes) Lady Macbeth Is to Blame (Explanation) After you collect evidence for these three arguments, select the one you feel you is the strongest claim. Sample Thesis Format: Although played an important role in, was primarily responsible for the tragedy. Thesis : Remember: Introduction and Conclusion Paragraphs: So What?! How/Why is this play relevant today? Think theme! Topic Sentences and Concluding Sentences : Link your evidence back to the thesis. Quotation Sandwiches: Surround quotations with your own words and cite the line numbers. For example:

2 Macbeth is an unwilling murderer at first, wishing chance would crown him king without [his] stir ( ). He thinks of murdering the king but hopes he doesn t have to get his hands dirty. WITCHES Fair is foul, and foul is fair, Hover through the fog and filthy air. ( ) So foul and fair a day I have not seen. (1.3.39) FIRST WITCH All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis! SECOND WITCH All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! THIRD WITCH All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter! ( ) 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. ( ) [aside] If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, Without my stir. ( ) [aside] The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap, For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires. The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. ( ) LADY To beguile the time, Look like the time. Bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue. Look like th innocent flower, But be the serpent under t. ( )

3 I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself And falls on the other ( ) Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use. ( ) LADY [ ] The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. Stop up th' access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between Th' effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark To cry "Hold, hold!" ( ) LADY Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures; tis the eye of childhood

4 That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, I ll gild the faces of the grooms withal; For it must seem their guilt. ( ) Whence is the knocking? How is t with me, when every noise appalls me? What hands are here! Ha! They pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune s ocean was this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red. ( ) ROSS Ha, good father, Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man's act, Threaten his bloody stage. By th' clock, 'tis day, And yet dark night strangles the traveling lamp. Is't night's predominance or the day's shame That darkness does the face of earth entomb When living light should kiss it? ( ) OLD MAN 'Tis unnatural, Even like the deed that's done. On Tuesday last A Falcon, tow ring in her pride of place, Was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed. ( ) We have scorched the snake, not killed it. She ll close and be herself whilst our poor malice Remains in danger of her former tooth. But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep In the affliction of these terrible dreams That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead, Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace. ( ) There's comfort yet; they are assailable. Then be thou jocund. Ere the bat hath flown His cloister'd flight, ere to black Hecate's summons The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums Hath rung night's yawning peal, there shall be done A deed of dreadful note. ( )

5 For mine own good All causes shall give way. I am in blood Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er. ( ) HECATE Have I not reason, beldams as you are? Saucy and overbold, how did you dare To trade and traffic with Macbeth In riddles and affairs of death, And I, the mistress of your charms, The close contriver of all harms, Was never call'd to bear my part, Or show the glory of our art? And which is worse, all you have done Hath been but for a wayward son, Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do, Loves for his own ends, not for you. ( ) ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. ( ) THIRD APPARITION Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are. Macbeth shall never vanquished be until Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane Hill Shall come against him. ( ) THE WITCHES Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. ( ) LADY Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One, two. Why, then, tis time to do t. Hell is murky!... Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him. ( ) Thou wast born of woman. But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn, Brandished by man that s of a woman born. ( )

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