Unit 4: Witches, Kings, and Deconstruction Things

Summary and Purpose of Unit

This unit invites students to engage with the complexities of Shakespearean drama through the lens of deconstruction. Centering on Macbeth, students will analyze how Shakespeare uses language, symbolism, and dramatic structure to create multiple, often conflicting, interpretations of ambition, power, fate, and identity. Through close reading and performance-based analysis, students will grapple with how meaning in Shakespeare’s work is never fixed—how language itself can be unstable, contradictory, and open to endless questioning.

The unit emphasizes both linguistic precision and interpretive ambiguity. Students will develop skills in paraphrasing Shakespeare’s intricate language while learning to appreciate the layers of irony, contradiction, and uncertainty within the text. By applying deconstructive analysis, students will question traditional binaries (good/evil, fate/free will, appearance/reality) and uncover how Macbeth reflects the instability of human ambition, morality, and meaning itself.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze Shakespeare’s use of language, structure, and symbolism to explore themes of power, ambition, and moral ambiguity.

• Apply deconstructive theory to uncover contradictions, complexities, and unstable meanings within dramatic texts.

• Develop advanced close-reading and paraphrasing skills to engage with Early Modern English and complex literary structures.

Key Graded Assignments

Passage ‘Translations’: Students will practice paraphrasing and annotating key excerpts from Macbeth, focusing on both linguistic clarity and layered meaning. Found on Macbeth Page.

Reading Logs

Paradise Lost Reading Log (Link)

Macbeth Reading Log (Link)

Macbeth Guiding Questions (Link)

Timed-Writing Exams (2+): In-class essays requiring students to apply deconstructive analysis, support claims with textual evidence, and articulate nuanced interpretations of the play.

Text Bank

👉 First ~350 Lines of "Book I," Paradise Lost (Link)

👉 Macbeth by William Shakespeare (Text)

Shakespeare's Life by Folger (Text)

Macbeth Graphic Novel (Link)

Macbeth Context by Norton (Link)

Macbeth Text Page (Link)

Tretyak's Direction of the Dagger (Link)

Tretyak's "Kingly Lesson" (Link)

👉 "The Dead" by James Joyce (Link)

Ellmann's Essay on "The Dead" (Link)

"The Allegory of the Cave" by Plato

Hamlet by William Shakespeare 

Shakespeare's Life by Folger (Text)

Hamlet Movie Scene Guide (Text)

Hamlet Text Page (Link)

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe (Text)

Tamburlaine the Great by Christopher Marlowe (Text)

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (Text)

Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett (Text)

👉 = Required Reading

Ancillary Materials

Shakespeare

"Why Shakespeare Loved Iambic Pentameter" (Link)

"The murderous medieval king who inspired 'Macbeth'" - Benjamin Hudson (Link)

Christian

Classics Summarized: Paradise Lost (Link)

Dante's The Inferno Page (Link)

Milton's Paradise Lost Page (Link)

Buddhist Connections

Selections from The Diamonds that Cuts Through Illusion or Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra (in Sanskrit) (Link)

Chapter 1 "The Art of Transforming Suffering" from No Mud, No Lotus by Thich Nhat Hanh (Link; PDF Pages 8-15)

"Four Noble Truths" By His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Foundational Beliefs of Buddhists; for Reference) (Link)

Rationality, argumentation and embarrassment: A study of four logical alternatives (catuskoti) in Buddhist logic by V. K. Bharadwaja (Link)