Macbeth Word Journals

Macbeth Word Journals

With your group, you have been assigned a word, which you will trace throughout Macbeth by keeping a Word Journal. This will be kept in your regular journal notebook, and will help you keep track of wordplay, symbolism, tone, and more. There will be four groups: blood, hand, night, and sleep.

You will not just be looking for the word itself, but also for the whole lexicon it represents:

lexicon (ˈlɛksɪkən) — n 1. A dictionary, esp. one of an ancient language such as Greek or Hebrew 2. A list of terms relating to a particular subject 3. The vocabulary of a language or of an individual 4. Linguistics the set of all the morphemes of a language (dictionary.com)

For example, if you have the word “blood,” you might also look for references to family/ blood relations (father, mother, brother, cousin, etc.), hearts, health, red, death/life, love, etc. Remember that this means looking for connotations (implied meanings and connected ideas) as well as denotations (explicit meanings/ dictionary definitions).

It’s also a great idea to use the online Shakespeare Concordance to track down examples you might have missed, or to help find explanations. This tool allows you to search for individual words in the text of a Shakespeare play, and it can be invaluable to the kind of work we are doing in this journal.

This assignment is worth 100 points (each act = 20pts; 15 for thorough, thoughtful notes, plus 5 for each act analysis paragraph) and is due on the day of the graded discussion for Macbeth.

Sample Journal:

Word: DEATH

Speaker / Act.Scene.Lines / Quote / Paraphrase and Context
Duncan / I.2.91-92 / “…go pronounce his present death, / And with his former title greet Macbeth” / Duncan is talking about the Thane of Cawdor’s death in battle. He’s naming Macbeth the new T of C because of his bravery in the battle that just took place.
Macbeth / II.1.609 / “Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight?” / Macbeth is seeing things?? He sees a dagger but can’t touch it, and he refers to the hallucination as “fatal” because it’s a dagger, which is an instrument of murder.

Analysis paragraph: At the end of each act, you will take stock with your group and draw conclusions from your notes: *Which characters used the word and its lexicon the most? *How does the denotation and connotation of the word change from character to character? *Are any of the usages unusual in any way? *How does this word affect the act overall (consider tone, symbolism, motifs, etc.)?

Thus, each act in your journal will be followed by a paragraph that explores the usage of the word throughout the act, and answers each of these questions. To help with this, it is important that you note these in the “context” section of your notes (include denotation if it is unusual in some way, connotation, weird usage, etc.)

***NOTE: While the entire journal is due after we have finished the entire play, I will check them at the end of each act. If your journal is up-to-date for the most recent act, your journal will get a stamp. Journals that do not have five (5) stamps when they are turned in will not receive full credit.