Excerpt 1: Read the excerpt from act 1, scene 5 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth has just read Macbeth’s letter about the witches’ prophecy and his promotion to thane of Cawdor.
[Lady Macbeth.] Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top full

Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,

Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry, "Hold, hold!"


Excerpt 2: Read the excerpt from act 3, scene 2 of The Tragedy of Macbeth. Macbeth has killed Duncan, but he warns Lady Macbeth that they are still in danger.


Macbeth. We have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it:

She’ll close and be herself, whilst our poor malice

Remains in danger of her former tooth.

But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,

Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep

In the affliction of these terrible dreams

That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead,

Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,

Than on the torture of the mind to lie

In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;

After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;

Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing

Can touch him further.


How does Shakespeare most develop the universal themes "the relationship between violence and human nature" and "the consuming power of guilt" in these excerpts?

A. through the comparison of Lady Macbeth’s resolve and Macbeth’s uncertainty
B. through each character’s appeal to the supernatural
C. through the contrast between Macbeth’s disloyalty and Duncan’s trustworthiness
D. through the conflict between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth