• Explain that Macbeth is walking through the dark castle in the dead of night, on his way to kill King Duncan.  

• Discuss with students whether they think Macbeth still has any doubts about whether he should kill Duncan. 

• Tell students they will now see what Macbeth is thinking. This is another soliloquy - when the audience see or hear a character speaking aloud their inner thoughts.  

• Play Macbeth ‘Is this a dagger…’ video from the gallery. In this video we see an edited version of Macbeth’s ‘Is this a dagger…’ soliloquy in BSL. 

• Display the text from the film (slide 11) and discuss the following questions. You might want to watch the film again.

What does Macbeth see that seems to be leading him to Duncan? (A dagger that points the way).

A bell is ringing in the castle – what does Macbeth say it is doing? (It is inviting him to kill King Duncan. Lady Macbeth is ringing the bell to let Macbeth know her part of the plan is ready.)

Why doesn’t Macbeth want Duncan to hear the bell? (It might wake him)

What is a knell? (A funeral bell - a metaphor: Macbeth compares the normal bell to a funeral bell)

Where does he think Duncan will go when he dies? (He doesn’t know – but either heaven or hell) Notice that heaven and hell is another antithesis.

How does this soliloquy confirm or change your ideas about whether Macbeth has any doubts about killing Duncan? You might want to discuss how the imagined dagger Macbeth sees is a metaphor for how he feels at this moment. 

• Invite students to stand up and show a freeze frame of how Macbeth feels at the end of this soliloquy. Perhaps determined, perhaps still unsure... 

• Display the lines: 'The bell invites me’ and ‘Hear it not, Duncan’ (slide) and ask students to practise these phrases in BSL/SSE or speech.  
• Once they are familiar with one or both of the phrases set up a version of the well-known game of ‘grandma’s footsteps’. One student stands at one end of the space as the ‘wolf’ facing the wall, while all the other students stand at the other end of the space as ‘grandma’. The grandma students try to creep up on the wolf and if they reach the wolf they win. They can only move when the wolf is not looking because if the wolf sees them they have to go back to the beginning. The wolf can turn round to try and spot students moving whenever they like. 
• Set up a new version of this game where the wolf is King Duncan and the grandmas are Macbeth. Give the student playing King Duncan a crown to wear. 
• Tell the ‘Macbeths’ they will creep up on Duncan to stab him and take the crown. If Duncan turns and sees them moving, they can save themselves by saying or signing one of the phrases: ‘The bell invites me’ or ‘Hear it not, Duncan’. If they hesitate, they go back to the beginning.  
• Play a few times to give students a sense of the tension as Macbeth goes to kill Duncan.

• Display or print out the ‘Murder’ narrative from the pdf resource list.  
• Organise students to stand in a semi-circle and tell them that together you are going to create the story of what happens when Macbeth kills Duncan.  
• Explain that you will read aloud / sign a narrative and invite students into the circle to become the characters described. The student simply has to mime what is being described. For example, at the beginning, a student playing Duncan comes into the circle and mimes being asleep. Then two further students mime standing as guards outside his room. 
• As you read the narrative, you can ask students to repeat any lines a character says. You may want to change the language as appropriate for your group. 

• Explain that outside the castle, a storm has been raging and you are going to create this storm together. If you did Exercise 2 in Act 1 Scene 1 you can remind them of this.   
• Model a mime of the storm and encourage them to join in. Show rain falling from the sky with your fingers, then tap your shoulders, body and thighs as the rain gets harder. Sway to show the wind blowing, and add more rain. Add signs and mimes for thunder and lightning. 
• Display Lennox's lines (slide) and explain these are things that Lennox says about his journey to the castle:

‘The night has been unruly’ 

‘Our chimneys were blown down’ 

‘Strange screams of death’ 

‘The earth was feverous and did shake’ 

• Clarify meaning with students, including ‘unruly’ (wild/chaotic) and ‘feverous’ (having a fever). 
• Divide the students into small groups and give each group one line (more than one group can have the same line). 
• Ask the students to rehearse speaking and/or signing their line together. Encourage them to be playful: perhaps they all speak/sign at the same time; perhaps one person speaks while others sign; perhaps they all speak/sign the line but one after the other; perhaps they repeat some of the words/signs. Encourage them to create a performance of their line that suggests it is part of the storm. 
• Organise students in a semicircle and explain you will create a whole class performance by beginning with the storm mime as you did at the start of the exercise. You will then point to a group who must be ready with their performance of their line. As the storm mime continues with everyone, you point to the next group and so on. 
• Try this a few times so students can improve and enjoy their performance. 
• Discuss the following questions with students:

Why do you think the weather is like this? 

Why do you think that Shakespeare puts in this description? 

• Build on the students’ responses and bring in some social and historical context, for example, that many people in Shakespeare’s time believed that storms could be created with magical powers by witches and spirits. Also, that strange weather was often believed to be a sign of something significant about to happen, such as the birth or death of an important person. 
• You might like to explain that descriptions of weather in stories are often used metaphorically to reflect an important event or a particular mood. It is as if the weather has human emotions – here the earth is shaking as if it has a fever. 

• Ask: What happened to King Duncan? (He was killed).  
• Play the Dramatis Personae video for Duncan. Invite one student to be Duncan and give them the Scottish crown. Ask the student playing Duncan to lie down as dead on one side of the playing space: ‘the King’s chamber’ 
• Ask: Was anyone else with Duncan (his two guards). What happened to them? (They were drugged by Lady Macbeth and she left the bloody daggers with them). Invite two more students to be the two guards and ask them to lie down next to Duncan as though they are asleep.  
• Ask: Who else was sleeping in the Macbeths' castle on the night of the murder? 
• Play the Dramatis Personae videos for Malcolm, Donalbain, Banquo, Ross, Lennox and Macduff from the gallery as each character is named and invite students into the other side of the playing space, ‘the great hall’, to become that character. Ensure there are students playing each character below and give each a sash to identify them.

Malcolm

Donalbain

Banquo

Ross

Lady Macbeth

Macbeth

• Ask: Who arrived at the castle and knocked on the door very early in the morning?
• Play the Dramatis Personae videos for Lennox and Macduff from the gallery, as each character is named and invite two more students into the playing space to become Lennox and Macduff.  Give them a sash to identify them.
• Ask: Who knows that Duncan is dead? (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth)
• Ask: Does Macduff know the king is dead?  (No)
• Explain that Macduff has arrived to meet the king to continue his journey that morning.
• Ask the student playing Macduff to go and wake the king.
• Ask: What does Macduff discover? (that the king is dead)
• Invite the student playing Macduff to shout/sign ‘O horror, horror, horror, the king is dead’.
• Ask the students playing Macbeth and Lennox to go to the king’s chamber to see for themselves.
• Ask the students playing the guards to start to wake up.
• Invite the student playing Macbeth to say/ sign to Lennox ‘They killed the King. I will kill them’ and then to mime stabbing the guards.
• Ask the student playing Macbeth to go to ‘the great hall’ and say to the other characters ‘The king is dead’.
• Invite each of the characters to respond to this news in a freeze frame.
• Focus on each character in turn and ask the group to give you one word to describe how that character is feeling based on what we see in their freeze frame.  Each time, ask the following questions: 

How does the character look? 

Is this how the character really feels? 

If yes, what else are they feeling? 

If no, what are they really feeling? 

Then ask each character in turn: What do you want to do now?

• Discuss with students whether they think everyone believes the story that the two guards killed Duncan.  
• Ask students what they remember about Ross. (We first met him in Act 1 Scene 1 when he is supporting Macbeth and Banquo to defeat the Norwegian army. We meet him again after the battle when he brings the message that King Duncan has rewarded Macbeth the title of Thane of Cawdor. We meet him again because he is staying at the castle the night the king is murdered.) You might want to play Ross Dramatis Personae Video to remind students of Ross and his sign name. 
• Explain that we are going to meet Ross again and hear his conversation with Macduff. Remind them that Macduff is the Thane of Fife who arrived to meet Duncan the morning after the murder. You might want to play Macduff Dramatis Personae Video to remind students of Macduff and his sign name. 
• Play Ross and Macduff videos (BSL/ SSE)   

• Display the text from this film (slide) and ask the following questions: 

Who do people think killed Duncan? (Malcolm and Donalbain) 

Why? (Because they have run away) Discuss how no-one seems to believe it was really the guards but it seems like the Macbeths have got away with murder anyway. 

Ross says the ‘the sovereignty’ will fall on Macbeth – what does this mean?  (Macbeth will be the new king). So the Macbeths have got what they wanted! 

Macduff says that Macbeth has gone to Scone (a place in Scotland) to ‘be invested’ – what does this mean?  (To be crowned king). Suggest that this would be an important event that all the Scottish thanes would be expected to attend. 

Where is Macduff going?  (To Fife - Macduff’s castle is in Fife – he is the Thane of Fife) 

Suggest to students that it seems odd that Macduff will not go to Scone to see the new king crowned and ask why Macduff might decide to go to Fife instead of Scone. Perhaps he simply misses his family or perhaps he doesn’t think Macbeth should be king? Perhaps he suspects that Macbeth is responsible for the murder of Duncan? 

Discuss why Macduff does not say exactly what he thinks to Ross. Why do people not always say exactly what they think? 

• Show students the map from the gallery with Scone and Fife marked (slide). Explain that Ross and Macduff are currently in Inverness.