Hello and welcome to today's lesson.

My name is Mr. Barnsley, and today's lesson is called Macbeth the tragic hero.

So by the end of today's lesson, you are gonna be able to identify the ways in which Macbeth is a tragic hero.

Let's start, as we always do, by looking at some of the key words we should expect to see in today's lesson.

They are hubris, stubborn, disregard, and palpable.

The definitions of each of these keywords are about to appear on screen.

Take a moment to read through each of them individually.

So I'm gonna challenge you to look out for these four words in our lesson and to use them in your own discussions.

Okay, let's have a look at today's lesson outline.

Two learning cycles in today's lesson.

Firstly, we're gonna be looking at the characteristics of a tragic hero, and then we're gonna be looking at the idea of Macbeth being a tragic hero.

But let's start with the characteristics of a tragic hero.

Okay, let's start with a discussion.

What are the conventions of a tragic, a traditional Shakespearean tragedy? What makes a traditional Shakespearean tragedy? Pause the video, have a discussion or write some notes down, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Well done.

I heard some lovely ideas there.

I heard things about death and a tragic ending.

I heard things about having a moral to a story.

So maybe the audience are gonna learn from this tragedy.

So lots of great ideas around there.

Second discussion question then.

How would you expect the protagonist, the main character in a Shakespearean tragedy to behave? So in a second you're gonna pause the video, have another discussion.

Think about how would you expect the main character, a protagonist to behave in a Shakespearean tragedy? What qualities would they have? Pause the video and press play when you are ready to continue.

I heard some great ideas there.

Well done for that discussion.

I heard things about bravery, some quite conflicted ideas actually, some things about bravery, some things about treachery or betrayal.

So lots of good ideas.

Let's have a little bit, let's have a look at this in a little bit more detail now.

So there are many different characteristics of a Shakespearean tragic hero.

Today we're gonna look at five of them.

The first is hamartia.

This is a word that we've looked at before if you've studied any of the the other Oak lessons in the Macbeth units.

Hamartia, it means a character's fatal flaw.

So let's start by thinking, what would you say is Macbeth's hamartia? Pause the video and press play when you've had time to have a discussion.

I heard lots of great ideas there, some back and forths.

Not everyone agreeing there.

Well, some people may have argued that Macbeth's ambition is his hamartia.

We know he's incredibly ambitious.

Others might have said something along the lines of how easily he is influenced by other characters such as the witches and Lady Macbeth.

The second characteristic then of a Shakespearean tragic hero is hubris.

And this is one of our keywords from today's lesson.

Hubris is excessive pride.

And that might show itself particularly in Macbeth, in a disregard for the natural order, ignoring the way that things are meant to be done.

Can you have a think then, in which scenes does Macbeth disrupt the natural order? Does he kind of ignore it or does he refuse to follow it? Which scenes in the play, which specific moments can you remember that Macbeth does this? Pause the video, have a discussion, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Again, lots of great discussion there and lots of back and forth.

Not everyone always agreeing.

I think you could find many scenes where Macbeth doesn't follow the natural order.

Here are some of them that you may have said.

So when he listens to the witches, okay, we know the witches are a supernatural force and they shouldn't be listened to.

We know the murder of the king, regicide, is going against God's word, so that is clearly an example of disrupting the natural order.

But then so is any murder, so the murder of Banquo, or you could have said the murder of Macduff's wife and children, all of which are examples of Macbeth disrupting the natural order.

So our third characteristic of a tragic hero then is discovery and self-knowledge.

The idea that a hero will learn some lessons throughout the course of a story or a play.

So do you think Macbeth learns a lesson over the course of the play? Would you say he is a changed man by the end? Pause the video, have a discussion, and press play when you are ready to continue.

I knew this one would be a contentious one.

Definitely not everyone agreeing here.

So I think we could argue that if he does learn any lessons, he certainly learns them too late, okay? He certainly doesn't learn them in enough time to change the course of his actions.

I heard some of you saying that, well, at least he dies in battle, and arguably that's a noble death.

Notice the question mark.

Something we will continue to look at over the course of this unit.

Is it a noble death? One thing I could hear people agreeing on a bit more was the idea that there are lessons that the audience can learn even if Macbeth himself doesn't learn them.

So contentious here whether Macbeth goes on a journey of discovery and self-knowledge.

So our fourth characteristic then is this idea of stubbornness.

Another one of our key words today, stubbornness.

So do you think, discussion question, do you think Macbeth has an opportunity to change his path once Duncan is dead? So once he's made that decision, does he have an opportunity to change his path, and does he take it? Pause the video, have a discussion, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Okay, a quite a challenging question here.

I heard some interesting ideas.

So I heard people talking about it's actually quite hard for Macbeth to go back once he's killed Duncan.

Remember that kind of that turning point, the point of no return, the peripeteia, is a structural term.

We do know after this, he still continues to make some very treacherous and murderous decisions.

So even if he could change his path, he chooses not to.

He chooses to continue to go down this path of destruction.

And finally our last characteristic we're gonna look at today is heroism.

So do you think, discussion time again, do you think Macbeth's position as a trusted soldier and a brave warrior at the beginning of the play, a hero, if you will, do you think this downfall or do you think this makes his downfall more tragic? Pause the video and press play when you are ready to continue.

Great discussion there and welcome to those of you who have done lesson one in this unit.

We're pulling some ideas from the structure of a Shakespearean tragedy and saying that, well, yes, it's arguable that Macbeth fall from a noble warrior to disgraced villain does make his story more tragic because he was once held in really high regard.

This might be kind of more particular to a contemporary audience, a Jacobean audience where hierarchy was so important that seeing this kind of fall from nobility to evil tyrant makes it his story much more tragic.

Okay, time for a check for understanding.

Which of the following is not a characteristic you would expect to see in a tragic hero? So in the character themselves.

Is it A, peripeteia? Is it B, hamartia? Or is it C, hubris? Pause the video, make your selection, and then press play when you are ready to continue.

Okay, well done to all of you who said A, peripeteia.

This was a little bit of a tricky one here.

A peripeteia is a characteristic you would expect to see or you might expect to see in a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy, but I'm not sure it's a, well, it's not a characteristic of an individual character.

Hamartia, a fatal flaw, is a characteristic a character may have.

And hubris, excessive pride, is also a characteristic that a character may have.

Peripeteia is more of a structural device that we might expect to see in a tragedy.

Okay, over to you and your first task of today's lesson.

I want you to explain how Shakespeare portrays each of the characteristics below through his protagonist Macbeth.

So let's have a look at this table.

Here are three characteristics we are going to try and find examples of.

They are hamartia, hubris, and stubbornness.

So you're gonna complete this table by finding at least one example in Macbeth where we see the character in Macbeth expressing these characteristics, hamartia, hubris, and stubbornness.

So pause the video and press play when you are ready to continue.

Welcome back.

Well done.

I could see you were working really hard on that activity.

So let's have a look at some of the things that you may have said, bearing in mind that there are more than one example for each of these characteristics of a tragic hero.

Macbeth does show these things many times across the play.

So for hamartia you could have talked about his ambitious nature and particularly this allows him to be manipulated by feminine external influences.

So you might have talked about how Lady Macbeth really plays on his ambitious nature to convince him to murder King Duncan and commit regicide.

For hubris, you may have said that actually the act of revisiting the witches in Act 4 was very hubristic in nature.

He's actively seeking, he's actively seeking to disrupt the natural order and go against God word and go and find out more from the supernatural.

And it really takes an excessive amount of pride to think that this is an acceptable action to take.

For stubbornness, again, I'm sure you could have picked many things, but one of the things that you could have said is the fact that he continues to murder his allies to cover up his crimes.

It really means he's very stubborn and he's determined to remain on the throne.

All of these are examples of how Macbeth kind of shows the traditional characteristics of a tragic hero.

Now onto our second learning cycle of today's lesson.

Really starting now to to bury a little bit deeper into this idea that Macbeth is a tragic hero.

So I want to start by looking at this discussion between two pupils, Sam and Izzy.

They are discussing to what extent they believe Macbeth to be a tragic hero.

Let's have a look at what they said.

So Sam says, "Ultimately, by being presented as a noble soldier destroyed by his hubris, Macbeth is a typical tragic hero.

Shakespeare uses Macbeth to warn audiences about disregarding the natural order." Izzy says, "Well, I agree to a certain extent." But she's got a slightly different idea interpretation.

She says, "Whilst Macbeth is clearly a hubristic and ambitious man, it is in his death he truly becomes a tragic hero.

He dies guilt-ridden and alone.

He's a man who has surely learnt his lesson." Okay, so these two pupils have taken slightly different aspects of a tragic hero and started to think about what, how they apply it to Macbeth.

Sam is questioning though Izzy.

They're saying, "Did he really learn a lesson?" I want you to pause the video now and have a discussion.

Which student do you agree with most and why? Pause the video and press play when you are ready to continue.

Some really, really interesting discussions there.

And it was great to see that lots of you didn't agree with one pupil in particular.

Some of you liked some of Sam's idea but liked some of Izzy's as well.

We're trying to kind of combine those idea to maybe get an even more nuanced response.

Okay, I want us to think about what evidence do we have from the play that these pupils could have used to come to these conclusions.

So let's start with Sam.

How have they come to their conclusion? So a reminder that they said, "Ultimately, by being presented as a noble soldier destroyed by his hubris, Macbeth is a typical tragic hero.

Shakespeare is using the character of Macbeth to warn audiences about disregarding the natural order." So let's start by having a little bit of discussion here.

Which scenes might Sam draw on to support their argument and what textual evidence and analysis, so any specific quotes that you can remember could Sam use to support their argument? So pause the video, have a discussion, or make some notes.

What moments, quotations, scenes, ideas from this play could Sam use to support their argument? Pause the video and press play when you are ready to continue.

Okay, well done.

I could see you were collecting lots of evidence there.

Here's some of the things that I heard you saying or that you could add to your notes.

So first of all, we could see Macbeth's early responses to the witches' prophecies in Act 1, Scene 3.

They really show a lack of humility.

Straight away he's thinking about the potential of him becoming king.

We also know that he plots to murder Banquo in Act 3, Scene 1.

And this shows that he believes he can override fate, he can override the prophecies.

He wants to kill Banquo and his sons to stop the witches' prophecies coming true.

We also see this excessive hubris when he believes that he cannot possibly be killed by Macduff.

And he claims that his mind and heart will never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.

So these really show an excessive pride.

So all of this can prove this idea that Sam thinks that he has been destroyed by his hubris.

And again, you know, this idea that he believes that no man born of woman, which is all men, will be able to kill him.

Again, he believes the witches' prophecies, he believes them and shows a really excessive amount of pride here.

Okay, let's do the same for Izzy then.

How might Izzy have come to her conclusion? So we're gonna think about which scenes Izzy might draw upon to support her argument.

We might think about what textual evidence, quotations, any analysis Izzy could use to support her argument as well.

A reminder that Izzy's argument is that whilst Macbeth is clearly a hubristic and ambitious man, it is in his death that he truly becomes a tragic hero.

So he dies guilt-ridden and alone.

He's a man who has surely learnt his lesson.

How can Izzy prove that? How is Izzy gonna prove that Macbeth is a man who learnt his lesson? Pause the video, have a discussion, make some notes, and press play when you are ready to continue.

Again, really good discussion there.

Great work.

Let's have a look at some of the ideas that you may have said.

So first of all, this quotation from Act 1, Scene 7, the fact that he has no spur to prick the sides of intent, but only vaulting ambition.

So we've got this quotation that is suggesting that, yes, he is ambitious, but that doesn't really mean he wants to kill the king.

So, but you know, we can see that he's guilt-ridden before he even starts to think about murdering King Duncan.

So we know that he claims, but, you know, if we want to prove Izzy's first point that he's an ambitious man, we know that Macbeth claims that it is ambition that leads him to killing King Duncan.

So these early actions show that there is a sense of guilt in Macbeth before he kills Duncan, but also that it is his ambition that leads him to committing regicide.

But we know he feels instant regret when he kills King Duncan.

So we can see early in Act 2 that he shows regret for killing Duncan.

He talks about how Macbeth shall sleep no more, Macbeth has murdered sleep, that this is a real sign of his guilt.

We also know that he continues to commit treacherous crimes.

So he still murders Banquo, but yet we do see guilt from this.

We see a man who is guilt-ridden and this is best shown in Act 3, Scene 4, when his guilt kind of intensifies and he sees Banquo's ghost.

We could also hear the, or we could also think about when he hears of Lady Macbeth's death.

And he describes his life as a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.

At this point, by Act 5, we see a man really regretting a lot of his choices and acknowledging that the throne and the crown and power really didn't give him anything, didn't satisfy him in any way, and has made his his life really worth nothing.

This can definitely be used as a man, to suggest that he's a man who has learnt his lessons, one would argue.

But I guess we could counter this by saying Macbeth is beheaded.

He dies off stage.

I mean this definitely supports the idea that he dies alone in Izzy's argument.

But you may say that this is not a noble death, it's not a death of a hero, but it is a very tragic end.

So potentially you could use this that he is not a hero but maybe he's a tragic hero.

So plenty of evidence we could use to support Izzy's interpretation.

Okay, time for another check for understanding.

Macbeth's hubris is the only characteristic that makes him a tragic hero.

True or false? Pause the video and press play when you are ready to find out the response.

Okay, well done.

If you said false, it is not the only characteristic that makes him a tragic hero.

Let's have a look at two ways we could justify our answer, and I want you to pick the most appropriate one.

So is it A, that Macbeth's hubris is the most important characteristic he possesses, or is it B, Macbeth has many characteristics of a tragic hero including hubris, his hamartia, which is ambition, and his stubbornness.

Select a response, press pause, select a response, and press play when you're ready to continue.

Well done if you said B.

Yes, his hubris is one of his characteristic, but there are many characteristics which we can use to suggest Macbeth is a tragic hero.

Okay, our final activity for today's lesson, and this is going to be a discussion.

So quick thoughts, to what extent do you believe Shakespeare has presented Macbeth as a tragic hero? Pause video, quickly share your thoughts, and then press play when you are ready to formalise your ideas.

Okay, lots of great ideas there, but we know whenever we have a discussion we really want to think about formalising our ideas, because that could be really helpful in future when we come to write them down.

So we're gonna use the grid below to formalise the thoughts that we've just had.

So there's two things I'm gonna challenge you to do today.

One of them is to use conjunctions to justify, and the other is to use specific ideas from the text.

So conjunctions we might use are because, as, since, but, yet, however, or so and therefore.

An example of this might be, "Shakespeare has presented Macbeth as a tragic hero because he is presented in a hubristic manner." And we're also gonna make sure we use specific from the text to really support our arguments.

So phrases like for example, more specifically, more precisely, and namely are all useful for introducing examples from the text.

So, "Namely, when he plots Duncan's murder, he is clearly willing to defy the natural order to become king." So pause the video, take your ideas from your initial discussion, and now let's formalise them.

Press play when you are ready to continue.

Well done everybody, really great to hear you formalising those thoughts.

And I really heard like an elevation from your first discussion to that second one there.

Let's have a look at some of the other things that you may have said while you were having a discussion then.

So, "Shakespeare has presented Macbeth as a tragic hero so that audiences can learn from his mistakes.

More specifically, Macbeth's isolated and lonely death served to warn of the consequences of regicide." Really nice idea there.

Another one.

"Macbeth's guilt is palpable throughout the play, yet it is unclear whether he actually learns a lesson.

More precisely, even though Macbeth feels guilt after murdering Duncan, this does not prevent him from betraying Banquo." So this one's a really nice argument for weighing up about to what extent Macbeth actually goes on a journey of self-discovery.

And I think that was the one that we felt was the most contentious when we discussed that earlier in learning cycle one.

Okay, well done.

We've reached the end of today's lesson, so there is a summary of everything we have learnt on screen.

So do take a moment to read that.

And I just really want to thank you for joining me for today's lesson.

It is been great having these discussions with you about to what extent Macbeth is a tragic hero.

I do hope you continue looking at some of the other lessons in this unit.

Thank you very much and hopefully see you soon.