Hello everybody, lovely to see you today.

Welcome to our first lesson in this unit, Macbeth: a tragic hero.

My name is Mr. Barnsley, and today's lesson is called Macbeth as a Tragedy.

Okay, and then by the end of today's lesson, you should be able to explain how the play "Macbeth" meets the conventions of a Shakespearean tragedy.

So let's start by looking at five key words we should expect to encounter in today's lesson.

These are hamartia, anagnorisis, peripeteia, hierarchy, and catharsis.

So let's take a moment to look at what each of these words mean.

Read each definition clearly.

Okay, so the outline of today's lesson.

First, we're gonna do a quick recap of the story and the plot of "Macbeth." Then, we're gonna move on to thinking about some of the conventions of a Shakespearean tragedy.

And then, we're gonna think about how a Shakespearean tragedy is structured.

But let's start with a recap.

Okay then, so we are gonna start with a discussion.

I would like you to discuss, in your opinion, what do you think are the five most important plot points in "Macbeth"? Not easy, I know, lots of exciting things happen, but I want you to try and decide what you think are the five most important.

Here are some sentence starters that you may wish to use to support you with discussion.

So I want you to pause the video, take some time to discuss, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Fantastic, I heard some really interesting discussions there and unsurprisingly, not everyone agreed with each other, and some of you picked out some different plot points.

So I'm gonna share some of the things that I heard and I'm gonna ask you if you agree with me.

So I heard lots of people saying that the prophecies, the witches sharing the prophecies with Macbeth and Banquo was a really important plot point.

Ultimately, this is what started the main story here, Macbeth hearing that he had the chance to become King.

I heard lots of people talking about Lady Macbeth's involvement and particularly how Macbeth and Lady Macbeth plot and then carry out the murder of Duncan.

That's a very significant moment in the play.

Lots of people were mentioning Banquo and the importance of Banquo.

Not only the prophecies that Banquo heard, but the impact this has on Macbeth.

And ultimately, we know by Act III, Macbeth is starting to feel very insecure having Banquo around him.

So he has Banquo assassinated.

I also heard lots of people talking about Macbeth's descent into madness, that he feels very guilty.

And as the play continues, he gets more and more guilty and we see more and more reckless behaviour from him.

So some of you might have mentioned the murder of MacDuff's family as being really pivotal, a kind of a key moment where we see Macbeth's desperation to keep the crown.

And I heard lots of you talking about Macbeth's death, obviously a pivotal part of the play.

And we know that Macbeth dies in battle and he dies in battle against Macduff who is feeling incredibly vengeful having lost his wife and all of his children.

So did you agree with that? Do you want to pause the video and have another think? Is there anything else that we've missed here that you might want to add to this diagram? Pause the video and press play when you are ready to continue.

Right, we're gonna do a quick check for understanding now.

True or false? It could be argued that the murder of King Duncan is one of the most pivotal parts of the play.

What do you think? True or false? It could be argued that this is the most pivotal, most important parts of the play.

Press pause, make your vote, and press play when you're ready to continue.

Well done to anyone who said true then.

I think whether you agree, whether this is the most important part, I think it can definitely be argued.

But let's think about why it can be argued.

So I wanna share two justifications.

I want you to decide which one you think is the most appropriate.

So is it A? This illustrates that Macbeth will do anything the witches say.

Or is it B? That once King Duncan is dead, Macbeth cannot go back.

He becomes king and therefore, he's desperate to keep the crown.

Pause the video, set your response, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Well done to everyone who said b.

It definitely is the turning point in the play.

Once Duncan has been murdered, Macbeth cannot undo that.

He cannot go back.

And as a result, we see Macbeth's behaviour change and spiral as he becomes more and more desperate to keep the crown.

Okay, let's have a go at our first practise task today.

You are gonna practise using some conjunctions below, which I will share with you, to help you structure a very short summary of the plot of "Macbeth." I want you to look very carefully at the conjunction as it may change the meaning of sentence that which will follow it.

So the conjunctions we're gonna use are firstly for our first sentence.

Then, we're gonna say as a result.

Then, we're gonna say however, followed by a sentence starting with then.

And our final sentence is gonna start with consequently.

Okay, over to you, pause the video and write yourself a five-sentence summary using each of these conjunctions.

Press play when you are ready to continue.

Well done, I could see some really good work going on there.

Okay, you could have said many things.

I'm gonna share a response with you that some of the things you could have said.

So why don't you check this and compare it to what you have written? So you may have said: Firstly, the witches make prophecies that Macbeth will become king, as will Banquo's sons.

As a result, Macbeth and his wife plot and carry out the murder of Duncan, resulting in Macbeth on the throne.

However, plagued by Banquo's prophecies, Macbeth orders his murder.

Then, spurred by the witches' second prophecies, Macbeth orders the murder of Macduff and his family.

Consequently, Macduff survives and gains vengeance by killing Macbeth.

You might have had other things, but now is a good point to just pause your video and compare your response to the summary on the screen.

And then, press play when you are ready to continue.

Okay, we are ready to move on to our second learning cycle of the day.

And now we're gonna focus on the conventions of a Shakespearean tragedy.

So to start, could you pause the video and have a quick discussion? What do you think the definition of a tragedy is? Press pause and then press play when you are ready to continue.

I heard some really interesting discussions there.

So the word tragedy comes from Greek, ancient Greece, and it means an event that causes great suffering, destruction, and distress.

And it's actually a genre of drama that also can be argued to have originated in Greece.

And this drama focuses on human suffering and distressing events that can be experienced by a main character.

Now, Greek philosopher Aristotle, he said that a tragedy was made of three key elements.

They were: hamartia, a character's fatal flaw; anagnorisis, a moment where a character realises what's been going wrong, perhaps for them; and peripeteia, a sudden turning point from which a character could not go back.

Three key points that Aristotle argued made a tragedy.

Let's do a check for understanding then.

Which of these following key features of a tragedy means a character noticing the true nature of their own circumstances? So realising that things might not be going as well for them as they first thought.

Is that hamartia, anagnorisis, or peripeteia? Pause the video, make your guess, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Well done if you said anagnorisis, that is correct.

Another one here, another check for understanding, which of the following means a sudden change in circumstances? So a moment that you cannot go back from.

Is that a, hamartia; b, anagnorisis; or c, peripeteia? Pause the video, give it a go and press play when you are ready to continue.

And congratulations if you said peripeteia.

You might have been able to work that one out because we used the word hamartia.

And obviously, anagnorisis, we've just learned that means something else.

So well done if you managed to get all of those, both of those questions correct.

Right, so now time to move from ancient Greece to William Shakespeare who wrote many of his own tragedies.

These were based on the idea of ancient Greek tragedies, but they are not completely similar in the way that they're made up.

So let's have a look at some of the conventions, some of the things we might expect to see in a Shakespearean tragedy.

So the first one is hierarchy.

A lot of Shakespearean tragedies were based on the idea of noble men, nobility, the upper classes, having a fall, having a massive fall, things going wrong for them.

Pause the video, have a discussion.

Why do you think the fall of noble men might be deemed as being particularly tragic? Pause the video, have a discussion, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Lots of lovely discussions going on there.

I just wanna pick out some of the things that I heard.

I heard people saying that maybe noble and wealthy men have farther to fall, they're further to fall.

They are higher up in society.

They've got more to lose.

And therefore, seeing them fall from their high positions can be particularly tragic.

Nice if you said something similar to that.

In Shakespearean tragedies, it's also very usual for there to be external pressures.

This means the protagonist, the main character, is likely to fall victim to pressure from others.

Again, let's discuss where we might see this in "Macbeth." So who provided the external pressures that impacted and caused Macbeth's downfall? Pause the video, have a discussion, and press play when you are ready to continue.

I heard some very interesting debates, some people arguing there might have been more than one external pressure.

Well done to people who said both the witches and their prophecies, but also Lady Macbeth and her manipulation could both be seen as being external pressures that Macbeth feels maybe forces him or pushes him down the path that he goes down.

Another convention we might expect to see in a Shakespearean tragedy is that the story induces catharsis.

This means that the audience may feel potentially some compassion as the protagonist takes responsibility for their downfall.

They feel that the ending of the play is satisfactory because the character has learned something.

So let's pause.

Do you think Macbeth takes responsibility for his downfall? Why/why not? Do you think the end of "Macbeth" induces catharsis? Pause the video, have a discussion, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Interesting discussions there.

This one's a little bit more contentious, isn't it? I think it's arguable.

I heard people kind of arguing both ways.

We know he does face Macduff in a final battle.

He continues to fight to the end.

Some people may argue that's an honourable death.

We'll see on that one.

Throughout this unit, this is something that we are gonna be really thinking about, whether Macbeth does end at the play in an honourable fashion.

Up in the air, at the moment, I agree.

So the next one, we recognise this from Aristotle's interpretation of Greek drama or Greek tragedy.

This is hamartia and social isolation.

So it means that an individual is gonna face consequences for their actions.

And actually, they should face consequences for their actions.

That's what we'd expect to see in a Shakespearean tragedy.

So a discussion.

What do you think is Macbeth's hamartia? What is his fatal flaw that leads to him suffering consequences? You know what to do now.

Pause the video, have a discussion, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Really interesting idea.

Again, not clear cut.

Some of you might be arguing different things but I heard, kind of probably the most common response I was hearing that Macbeth's hamartia is his ambitious nature, the fact that he's so ambitious and so driven and so desperate to become king.

And finally, another convention of a Shakespearean tragedy is that it really stresses and underlines there will be consequences if you disobey the natural order.

If you disregard and disobey the natural order, there will be consequences.

So I want you to think about the play of "Macbeth." Do you think there is a moral message? Is there something that Shakespeare is trying to teach his audiences through the story of "Macbeth"? Pause the video, discuss, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Lovely job on that discussion there.

Yeah, I think there are definitely some consequences.

I could hear you talking about them.

One of the most obvious is about betraying the king, but there might be some greater messages there about.

Disloyalty in general, like betraying those who you are supposed to protect and lots of messages in I'm sure for an audience to take away.

So one last question before we move on.

Thinking about these five conventions of a Shakespearean tragedy, do you think it is fair to say that Macbeth, the play "Macbeth" is a Shakespearean tragedy? Pause the video, have a discussion, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Okay, time for another check for understanding.

True or false? "Macbeth" is a Shakespearian tragedy? Pause the video, make your guess, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Of course, you should have said true there.

"Macbeth" definitely has many of the features of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Let's see if we can justify this answer then.

So two answers, pick which you think is the most appropriate justification.

Is it a, it tells the story of the fall of a noble man due to external pressures and his harmatia? Or is it b, the play ends by inducing catharsis for all audience members who will agree the protagonist has taken responsibility for their downfall? Pause the video, select your response, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Well done if you said a, definitely the most appropriate response.

The second one is not completely inappropriate, but I think as we found out from our discussions, it's very hard to say whether the story of "Macbeth" induces catharsis for all audience members.

I think it can be quite arguable whether we feel that Macbeth takes responsibility for his own downfall.

Okay, over to you again, another task for you.

I want you to complete the table below by listing a plot point which demonstrates a convention of a Shakespearean tragedy.

So here's the table.

I want you to think about any moments in the play where you see hierarchy.

I want you to see any moments in the play where you think relate to this convention of external pressure, any moments from the play that are an example of Macbeth's harmatia, and any moments from the play that are an example that there are consequences for disobeying the natural order.

So press pause, give this activity a go, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Okay, really, really good job there.

Let's have a look at some of the things you may have said, okay? These are not the only right answers, but here are some of the things that you might have put in the table.

So for hierarchy, you could have talked about the fact that Macbeth is a respected soldier.

He's a Thane of Glamis, he's a Thane of Cawdor, all of this before becoming king.

So he was already a very successful and a noble man even before his fall, his downfall.

For external pressures, we mentioned this in our discussions earlier.

You could have mentioned either the witches or Lady Macbeth, both of whom manipulate Macbeth at different points in the play.

For Macbeth's harmatia, sorry, you could have talked about his ambitious nature, which leads him to believing the witches prophecies.

We noticed Banquo doesn't jump to believing them straight away, Macbeth does, this is probably a sign of his very ambitious nature.

And finally, for the consequences of disobeying the natural order, we know that both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth die in quite isolated conditions.

This can be seen as being a punishment because they choose to defy the natural order and they commit regicide, the killing of the king, which is obviously one of the most terrible crimes someone could commit.

Okay, time to move on to our final learning cycle of the lesson.

This one is all about the structure of a Shakespearean tragedy.

So before we get started, let's have a quick discussion.

What do you think it means if we are talking about structure? Pause the video, have a quick discussion, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Okay, I had some really good discussions there and well done to everyone who mentioned that structure is about the way a text or a play is put together, how it's ordered.

So I really want us to spend a moment thinking about the history of the structure of dramas.

So we mentioned earlier on in the lesson about Aristotle, a Greek philosopher.

And he wrote a lot about plays and he mentioned that plays should have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

And following him, there was a Roman poet Horace, he said that plays should have five acts, so it should be broken down into five sections, five acts.

Fast forward for a long, long period in time, we then meet Shakespeare who wrote all of his plays.

But it was actually Rowe, a gentleman who lived kind of just after Shakespeare.

He started writing or rewriting Shakespeare's work and dividing the plays into acts and scenes.

So re-breaking Shakespeare's tales down into sections.

And then in 1816 to 1895, we have Freytag and he developed something that's called the five-act structure.

And this is a structure that we commonly use to analyse both classical and Shakespearean dramas.

So it's this structure that we are gonna look at today and think about how we can apply this to the works of Shakespeare.

So Freytag, a structure can be described as Freytag's pyramid and it breaks any piece of drama down into five clear sections.

The first is the exposition.

The exposition is where the audience learns plenty of things.

So they learn about where the drama is set, who the characters are, and we start to get an understanding of what some of the conflict might be.

In the next section is the rising action.

This is where complications start to arise, things start to go wrong.

The play starts, the pace of the play might start to speed up.

And as the audience, we can see that there's gonna be some problems arising.

This all leads to the climax of the play, which is the turning point.

This is where the biggest moment and from that moment, every single thing changes.

Then, we move into the falling action.

This is where the story starts coming to an end.

Any unknown plot points are coming to light the audience, for the audience and for the characters.

And things might start to feel like they're getting ready to be wrapped up.

And that ends with the denouement.

Denouement is a French word and it comes from unknotting and it means we can start to tie things up together.

It's the final outcome of the drama.

And this is where we might, particularly in Shakespearean tragedies, kind of work out what the moral of the story had been.

So working through Freytag's pyramid, we're gonna move from exposition to rising action to the climax to the falling action, and finally the denouement of the tale.

Okay, time for a check for understanding.

Which section of Freytag's pyramid means the turning point of the play? Pause your video and press play when you are ready to continue.

Well done if you said climax, that is the correct answer.

And another check for understanding.

Which section of Freytag's pyramid means the unravelling or final outcome of the play? Is that falling action, exposition, or denouement? Pause your video and press play when you are ready to continue.

Well done if you said denouement.

That is, of course, correct.

Okay, it's over to you.

I want you to work out how does "Macbeth" follow this structure? So I want you to label the five sections of Freytag's pyramid with key plot points from "Macbeth." Pause the video and press play when you are ready to continue.

Okay, like with lots of discussions we've had today, there are no necessarily right answers.

You may have slightly disagreed with your partner or someone else.

I'm gonna share my responses or things that you might have said, but please be aware there might be more than one answer.

So for the exposition, I thought the witch's prophecies were the clearest example of this.

For the rising action, I thought Lady Macbeth's manipulation.

The climax could be the murder of either Duncan or Banquo.

Both are very key moments which change Macbeth's journey for the rest of the play.

The falling action, there's lots of things that happen as Macbeth's kind of downfall starts to unravel.

So Banquo's ghost appearing, the second prophecies, the murder of Macduff's family could all be argued to be the falling action.

And then in the denouement, we've got Macbeth dying and Malcolm, who's the rightful heir to the throne, ending up with the crown.

I wonder if you agreed with what I pulled out there.

So finally, we're gonna have one last discussion.

Thinking about the play, let's see if we can now apply this to the Greek elements of a tragedy.

So which part of the play could be described as the peripeteia? Which part of the play could be described as the anagnorisis? In which parts of the play is Macbeth's harmatia particularly important? And at what point may an audience feel catharsis? Pause the video, have a discussion, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Some really interesting discussions there on some quite complex ideas and some very tricky new keywords vocabulary.

So well done there.

Here are some things that you may have said in your discussion.

Listen out and see if you agreed.

So Duncan's murder is arguably the climax of the play and this could be described as the peripeteia.

Because once Duncan has been killed, there's absolutely no going back for both Macbeth or Lady Macbeth.

The anagnorisis is arguably the falling action of the play.

This could be when Macbeth sees Banquo.

It's a sign of his guilt.

And we could say at this point, Macbeth is potentially realising that there are gonna be consequences to his actions.

Macbeth's harmatia, which we said could be argued to be his overly ambitious nature, is particularly important in both the rising and the falling actions of the play.

It allows him to be manipulated by both the witches and his wife, but it also makes him continue to be determined to keep hold of the crown.

And finally, an audience may feel catharsis.

We are still in a little bit of agreement/disagreement here.

But if they are going to feel catharsis, they're gonna feel this in the denouement of the play as Macbeth finally receives punishment for his crimes.

Okay, that's it.

We've come to the end of the first lesson.

Well done, some really interesting discussions today on some quite complex ideas, but I hope now you all feel a lot more confident in understanding how the play of "Macbeth" fits the criteria of a Shakespearean tragedy.

Do make sure you join us for future lessons in this unit, Macbeth: a tragic hero.