Reading Macbeth

I am looking forward to posting my observations as I read Shakespeare's MacBeth. Last year, I encouraged my students to post often, but they mostly waited until they were nearly finished reading the whole play before they posted. This is contrary to the purpose of a blog, I feel. I want to encourage them to use a blog as a place to react to the text in real time. To encourage this, we will focus more on what I will call, "significant moments"--short instances that can be examined more closely.

One can take a single moment or line from Shakespeare and react to it out of its context. For instance, in Act 1 scene 1 a witch says, "When the hurly-burly's done, / When the battle's lost and won." Hurly-burly means busy or boisterous activity. She is referring to the battle going on down below where they are flying. Hurly-burly makes light of the fact that men are dying in a violent manner. I don't think the soldiers would consider what they are doing as a hurly-burly, but to the witches it is just a bunch of men throwing stuff around. Hurly comes from "hurl" which means throw. So the soldiers are truly hurling, throwing spears and other weaponry. I think this means that war is both dangerous and unnecessary business--lots of wasted energy and trouble, which is possibly the witches' business.