Elementary Discussion Questions: Macbeth

Compare and Contrast

1. Who is your favorite character and why? Who do you dislike, why?

2. If you were acting in a production of the play, which character would you want to be?
   Why? Who would you not want to play? Why?

3. Who do you think the hero was? Who was the villain? Why?

Relational

1. Who made Macbeth do the things he did?

2. Was Lady Macbeth more powerful than Macbeth at the beginning of the play? At the end?

3. Was Macbeth really bad from the beginning, or was he a good man who did bad things? What good qualities can you find in him?

Textual

1. One of the themes in the play is that if you do bad things, bad things will happen to you. What happens in the play that makes this evident?

2. Read the scene where Macbeth first meets the witches. How would things have been different if they had never revealed the future to him?

3.Read the banquet scene. Do you think the ghost of Banquo is really there? Or is Macbeth just imagining him because he feels guilty?

Shakespeare’s World

1. Is there anything that happens in this play that you wouldn’t see in the world today?
   Were these events common in Shakespeare’s time? Why?

2. How do you think Shakespeare would react if he knew that you were learning about his play more than 450 years after he wrote it?

3. What would it be like to see this play at Shakespeare’s theatre, The Globe, in the hot afternoon, standing up, with men playing all the roles? (even Ophelia)