The Porter scene you have read is widely discussed among literary critics. Some say it is meant for comic relief, some say a stage-filler giving the actors playing Macbeth and Lady Macbeth time to wash and change clothes, some say a startling dramatic contrast to the scene of horror that we have just lived through. Coleridge and some other critics have felt that this babbling, ribald speech cannot be by Shakespeare. One writer calls it "strangely out of place amidst the horrors which surround it." The late Professor J. W. Hales and others fairly demonstrated both its fitness and its Shakespearean quality. The powerful incident of the knocking at the gate is inseparably bound up with it; and its bitter irony is intense.
Closely read the Porter scene (pg 61-62) again, and write a well thought out, though informal paragraph about your impressions. At least in preparation, you should notice the imagery, detail, wordplay, motifs, characterization, etc. Questions you may want to address are as follows: Is it an example of Shakespeare clumsily filling time? A convention of the actors' need to change clothes? Does it achieve something specific and/or meaningful? Does the differing tone affect the play as a whole?
You MUST post tonight (by 11:59pm), but I would prefer earlier :)
Come to class tomorrow prepared to discuss both your thoughts and the thoughts of one other response you found interesting.
