Act Four, Scene One

            My group chose Act Four, Scene One to be the scene for our project. My understanding of the scene so far is this. Three witches open the scene standing over a cauldron, a thunder-filled, stormy night is the setting. They are making a potion while describing the many ingredients. Hecate, the Queen of the Witches, enters, praises the other three witches for their work, and leaves again. Macbeth enters and demands they answer his questions about his future/destiny. The Weird Sisters then call upon their 'masters' and they each say something different to Macbeth. Macbeth didn't even need to answer the questions, for they knew what he was thinking. In all, three apparitions occur: an armed head that warns Macbeth to beware Macduff, a bloody child that says none of woman born shall harm macbeth, and a crowned child holding a tree saying that Macbeth will never be killed, not until Birnham Wood comes to Dunsinane. From these prophecies, Macbeth believes himself virtually immortal, and he plans for the killing of Macduff's family. 
            My group chose these two EQs: What does it mean to be human? and How does power corrupt? We chose these because we thought they really exemplified some of the main themes in the play. Guilt and regret are prominent emotions in the play, and we thought we would integrate those into the first EQ. Those emotions come with being human and we were going to further explore that idea. Macbeth's downfall is really the biggest part of the play, and it is largely caused by his corruption due to power. We were going to explore that aspect, and we are planning to tie both EQs together. We believe power corrupting is largely connected to being human.