Macbeth Active Reading Notes: Act IV

SCENE I:

• enter the witches 
• here comes that famous "Double, double, toil and trouble" line

• enter Hecate ('witch boss'), next Macbeth (another famous line: "...Something wicked this way comes")
• Macbeth is seeing things again (three apparitions; think A Christmas Carol)
• an armed head ("Beware Macduff")
• a bloody child
• a crowned child holding a tree

• next, eight kings, the last king with a glass in his hand; ghost of Banquo follows
• exit witches, enter Lennox
• Macduff has fled to England

SCENE II:

• Ross and Lady Macduff discussing why Macduff would leave his family
• Lady Macduff speaking to her son: How will you go on without a father?
• She assumes her husband is a guilty man (murder), because he has fled and she is not suspicious of Macbeth like the others
• enter the three murderers, who call Macduff a traitor (to his son; this makes the boy angry)
• one of the murders stabs the boy, and kills him (stab-die!)

SCENE III:

• Macduff speaking to Malcolm
• Malcolm says he can understand bloodlust, but Macduff disagrees with him
• Enter a Doctor
• "what's this disease he means?"/"'Tis called the evil" (in reference to Macbeth)

• Scotland is suffering
• Ross gives Macduff the news about his castle being "surprised" and his family, servants being killed
• "not for their own demerits, but mine": Macduff feels guilty, as they were killed because of him

•  "Be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it."