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The form of a text is the type of text you are reading or watching. The form of Macbeth is a dramatic play. More specifically, it is a tragedy. The simplest definition of a tragedy would be "a play with an unhappy ending". While this is true, it is probably just a bit too simple. Tragic plays can be traced back all the way to the beginnings of drama in Ancient Greece. In Poetics, one of the first books of literary criticism, Aristotle set out the key features of tragedy. He stated that tragic plays would involve a protagonist (the leading central figure) who is usually of royal or noble birth. In the course of the play, the protagonist reveals a fatal flaw (a character defect) which causes him or her to go from success and happiness to failure, misery and, often, death at the hands of an antagonist (his opposite). Tragedy set out to stir up feelings of fear and pity in the audience – this is known as catharsis. All of these things can be seen at work in Macbeth. The protagonist is clearly Macbeth himself, a thane of the Scottish nobility. His fatal flaw is his ambition and this drives the action forward. Macbeth is basically a good man who goes wrong. He is driven by a need for power which eventually sets him on a path to his own destruction. His wife shares this fatal flaw with him. While Macbeth clearly achieves his ambition to become king, it is at the expense of his happiness. He feels he needs to murder, lie and behave brutally to others in order to keep his power. Eventually he goes too far when he slaughters Macduff's family. This causes Macduff to take up a position as the play's antagonist – Macbeth's opposite. Eventually Macduff kills Macbeth in face-to-face combat. While exciting to watch, all of this should cause feelings of horror and regret in the audience. The structure of a text refers to the way in which events are organised inside the play as a whole. In the case of Macbeth, the structure is strictly chronological. This is where events are revealed to the audience/reader in the order in which they have happened. Sometimes events are described rather than shown (eg Macbeth becoming king). Others happen offstage (out of sight of the audience) for example, Duncan's murder. The events of this play are organised into five acts, each containing a number of scenes. However, it is important to note that Shakespeare himself almost certainly did not organise the play in this way and that this structure would have been added later during the editing process when the plays were turned into published text after being performed that way. The idea of the five-act structure is a useful one, though, as it follows the model designed by Gustav Freytag, a German author from the 19th-century. Having carefully studied classical drama, he suggested there were five stages in a tragic dramatic structure. He named these stages: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and catastrophe. Freytag's pyramid, showing the five-act structure of Macbeth, with labels indicating exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and catastrophe Freytag's pyramid shows how a drama is divided into five acts How this applies to Macbeth is shown in the table: Stages What? When? Exposition Introduces the characters, setting, events and key ideas. Act 1: Main characters are introduced; the Witches make their predictions; thoughts of murder start to form. Rising action A series of related events occur leading up to the key moment in the plot. Act 2: Macbeth keeps changing his mind; Lady Macbeth takes control; King Duncan’s murder (key moment). Climax Marks the turning point of the play. Up to this point things have gone well for the main character – now things will go rapidly downhill. Act 3: Macbeth becomes King; Banquo is murdered and Fleance escapes; Macduff joins Malcolm in England. Falling action The main conflict between the protagonist (the central character – Macbeth) and the antagonist (his opposite – Macduff) is established. Act 4: Macbeth returns to the Witches; Macduff’s family is slaughtered; Malcolm and Macduff plan their invasion. Catastrophe The protagonist is defeated by the antagonist and events return to a state of normality. Act 5: The invasion is carried out and Malcolm becomes King; the Witches' predictions come true in unexpected ways; both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth die. Examining poetic structure In a play such as Macbeth, examining structure might also refer to the poetic structure which is used. As you will have observed, the majority of the writing in Macbeth is in poetic form, though sometimes prose is used. There are three areas to look out for: lines with a five-beat rhythm lines with a four-beat rhythm lines written in prose Lines with a five-beat rhythm This is how the majority of the play is written. It is often called blank verse or iambic pentameter. Each line has five beats with an unstressed (x) syllable followed by a stressed (/) syllable: eg x / x / x / x / x / So fair - and foul - a day - I have - not seen Try saying this aloud while tapping out the rhythm of the five beats to see how it works. The ends of lines are not generally rhymed which helps to maintain the flow of the speech and carry through the meaning of what the character is saying. Sometimes a character is given an unfinished line to say. This is called a half line (even if it is less or more than half the five beats). It makes us think about why the line is incomplete – for instance, is it a hesitation or an interruption? Two (or more) characters may have a shared line where the five beats are divided up between them. This tends to quicken the pace of the speeches as characters overlap their words.