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Honour essay (LEWIS WALKER ((The climactic confrontation of the Prince and…
Honour essay
LEWIS WALKER
Hal’s offer to fight Hotspur in single combat on the field of Shrewsbury is a sign of Hal’s “chivalrous nobility”.
King is not heroic as recorded in the chronicle- defensive, cautious, and even deceptive picture of him implied by the many doubles wearing his identifying arms on their coats.
focuses on Vernon's description of the Hal which is richly emblematic - compared to classical Mercury and Christian exemplars of mastery.
Horses in the robbery - Falstaff is on foot, not on a horse. Falstaff is a knight and is forced to go on foot is an ironic reflection on what he ought to be doing. Potential to sink even lower than walking - ‘lie down, lay thine ear close to the ground’ The fat rogue is of the earth, not just on it. Hal gives him a ‘charge of foot’ Falstaff’s numerous violations of knightly code.
The climactic confrontation of the Prince and Hotspur, is not on horseback and is intertwined with the ludicrous encounter of Douglass and Falstaff
Falstaff’s counterfeiting of death at ground level while the Prince and Hotspur are fighting beside him drains their combat of some of its chivalric glory- as well as having to duel on foot.
By the end of the play, chivalry has been brought down to earth.
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Macbeth key passages
hospitality and allegiance- e.g the spectacle of feasting is a public exhibition of estimable allegiance and respect of authority. Therefore makes Macbeth's murder a twofold violation of honour - as a host and as a royal subject.
Macduff and Malcom's attitude to violence is generative? Rhetoric of duty and honour validate their cause, but is it actually so valid? Where is the line drawn? TEXTUAL PRODUCTIVITY
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Macduff family murder are a moral turning point as they show Macbeth completely violating the chivalric code wherein the private domestic sphere is protected from violence - also an unnecessary act, brought on by his tortured paranoia.
STEVEN MULLANEY
The traitor stands at an uncertain threshold of Renaissance society, athwart a line that sets off the human from the demonic, the natural from the unnatural, and the rational from the enigmatic and obscure realm of unreason.
Treason is a twice monstrous act - twice monstrous. Shows itself in both speech and spectacle.
Confession and execution mark the return of the traitor to society and to himself, even in death. In the display of execution, Macbeth’s body becomes naturalised once again- the body of the traitor is condemned by the law.
Marilyn French
Both argue that manliness is the higher standard of behaviour, although they can’t decide on what this terms actually comprehends.
The murder of the Macduffs is what happens in a world in which power can no longe distinguish the elements it was designed to protect. Moral climax but also moral turning point.
Redemption arch - Hal contrives his own narrative and therefore goes onto fulfil his own predictions. Hal produces bad reputation as a foil for himself. Mysteriously almost divine? DOTY.
Nobody expects Hal’s ruinous behaviour to be political strategy at all. He therefore cannot be accused of being a vile politician.
EMMA SMITH
Homer Simpson. counter-cultural. Set up to demand
a pious answer, but instead is anti-climactic.
Completes cliché-morality with his own bathetic
conclusion. Not up to cultural bombardments.
Queued by structure of repentance which governs the play - we expect that the drunk is going to come clean, something heroic and self sacrificial. What is honour? A word. His catechism. Statement of belief to puncture pious and clichéd definitions of honour, instead filling with realistic body which is vulnerable. Way we ought to behave countered by taboo’d truth.
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Repentance and apology - structured like prose texts around the theme of the prodigal son. Helgerson points out that the theme of the prodigal is used to characterise the narrative voice.
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Terry Eagleton - textual productivity, similar to Sylvia Plath. How one metaphor springs the growth of another. The Macbeth’s are finally torn apart in the contradiction between body and language, between the frozen bonds of traditional allegiance and the unassuageable dynamic of desire.
Official society can only imagine its radical ‘other’ as chaos rather than creativity, thus condemns sisters as evil
‘to transgress these determining bonds, for Macbeth is to become less than human in trying to become more, a mere self-cancelling liberty’. Being human is creatively constrained?
Lady Macbeth holds that transgression, the ceaseless surpassing of limits, is the very mark of the human.
Bradley would maintain that Hotspur was a tragic hero as he has a particular flaw that dictates his end - his passion and lack of rationality. Macbeth could also be perceived as a tragic hero but admittedly we are less sympathetic towards him due to the violent nature of his crimes against innocents.