Also--you need to acquire a copy of this play by Tuesday. I've checked out several copies, and sold a handful I bought off of a website last spring for a dollar apiece, and the BHS library has 50 or so copies still available for checkout, but some of you still don't have one. And as a friendly reminder: you might be interested in a version carried by Barnes and Noble called "No Fear Shakespeare," which retails for under five dollars and features fairly good paraphrasing for each line of dialogue.
Terms to Know for Act I:
regicide: killing a king
hautboys: oboes (usually signifies a royal presence on stage)
martlet: a bird who was thought to only make its nest in churches during Shakespeare's time
alarum: trumpets (usually signifies something meaningful about to happen)
anon: immediately
sooth: truth
henbane: insane root, a drug that caused hallucinations
mark: pay attention "Mark, King, Mark!"
The Seven Deadly Sins: lust, gluttony, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice (greed), vanity
law of tanistry: the opposite of the law of primogeniture (in which lineage is from father to son); the throne goes to the oldest adult male relative, regardless of how distant.
Setting: 1050 Scotland, at the end of the Dark Ages. (Note that this is 16 years before the Battle of Hastings, when Edward the Confessor was King of England.) One scene in Act IV takes place in England but the rest of the play is in Scotland.
Major themes and interpretations: appearance v. reality; the nature of ambition; human savagery; blood imagery; symbolism of clothing; gender relations; sexual imagery; sleep and its symbolism; the garden and what happens when the gardener becomes corrupt
Characters: Duncan is the King of Scotland, and he has two sons--Malcolm and Donalbain. At the opening of the play, Scotland is at war with Norway and Duncan is not on the battlefield--a bad sign for him in a warlike state. He is in a military camp awaiting a report from his two generals, Macbeth and Banquo. Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, is his wholly trusted cousin, and Banquo, no slouch in the thane department, is perhaps the only decent man in the kingdom thus far. Macbeth's wife, Grauch Macbeth (although in this play we call her Lady Mac) is more ambitious than even he is, and as the first act progresses we see how she interacts with her spouse--in very surprising ways. Banquo is a single father devoted to his small son, Fleance.
3 witches, the Weird Sisters, appear in Act I and serve as an ominous portent of things to come.
Other thanes manifest themselves--Ross, Angus, Lennox, MacDuff.
As we continue into this play, we will meet more people and see what their agendas are. Trust me--this play is awesome. AWESOME.
