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 BEGC-133
British Literature
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Answer all the questions in this assignment.

SECTION A
I Explain the following passages with reference to the context.
1. “Out, out brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
Ans. Reference: These lines are taken from Macbeth composed by William Shakespeare.
Explanation: These words are uttered by Macbeth after he hears of Lady Macbeth’s death, in Act 5, scene 5,
lines 16-27. Given the great love between them, his response is oddly muted, but it segues quickly into a speech of
such pessimism and despair-one of the most famous speeches in all of Shakespeare—that the audience realizes how
completely his wife’s passing and the ruin of his power have undone Macbeth. His speech insists that there is no
meaning or purpose in life. Rather, life “is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/signifying nothing.” One
can easily understand how, with his wife dead and armies marching against him, Macbeth succumbs to such pessimism.
Yet, there is also a defensive and self-justifying quality to his words. If everything is meaningless, then Macbeth’s
awful crimes are somehow made less awful, because, like everything else, they too “signify nothing.”
2. “Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not
sweeten this little hand. Oh! oh! oh!”
Ans. Reference: These lines are taken from Macbeth composed by William Shakespeare.
Explanation: Lady Macbeth’s hyperbolic statement makes it clear how deep her regret lies. She has clearly
accepted that there is no repentance for her part in the vicious and bloody slaying of the king. It is for this reason
that she imagines seeing Duncan’s blood on her hands. She believes that she can actually smell it and that it has
become so immersed into her skin that nothing will be able to disguise or remove its smell. It is ironic that Lady
Macbeth should be the one so overwhelmed by regret at this point in the play. Prior to Duncan’s assassination, she

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accused her husband of cowardice and feeble-mindedness when he told her that they should cease their plot. She
encouraged him to continue and threatened not to love him if he relented. It is obvious, then, that Lady Macbeth’s
character has undergone a drastic transformation. She has changed from the courageous, hard-hearted, vicious,
relentless, and scheming assassin that she had been at the beginning to a gibbering and confused woman who is so
overwhelmed by shame and remorse that she eventually commits suicide.
3. “He did it like an operatic tenor–a regular handsome fellow, with flashing
eyes and lovely moustache, shouting a war-cry and charging like Don Quixote
at the windmills. We nearly burst with laughter at him; but when the sergeant
ran up as white as a sheet, and told us they’d sent us the wrong cartridges, and
that we couldn’t fire a shot for the next ten minutes, we laughed at the other
side of our mouths. I never felt so sick in my life, though I’ve been in one or
two very tight places. And I hadn’t even a revolver cartridge–nothing but
chocolate.”
Ans. Reference: These lines are taken from Arms and the Man by George Bernard Shaw.
Explanation: Raina insists that the leader was certainly not a coward and she is eager to get a more detailed
description of his action. She is breathless with anticipation. Bluntschli describes him vividly. “ He did it like an
operatic tenor. A regular handsome fellow, with flashing eyes and lovely moustache, shouting his war-cry and
charging like Don Quixote at the windmills. We did laugh .” Bluntschli’s comments show that he is a man of some
sophistication to be able to compare Sergius to an operatic tenor as well as Don Quixote. It is also noteworthy that
while he describes the foolishness of the Bulgarian soldiers, he is realistic about his own side. It’s the height of
irresponsibility that the Serbians did not have proper ammunition to retaliate. The Bulgarians have won a victory
out of sheer luck or else their strategy was suicidal. In his opinion Sergius ought to be court marshaled for being so
unprofessional. It is important to notice that Bluntschli feels embarrassed when he recognizes Sergius in the
photograph and learns that he is Raina’s lover.
4. “If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day.
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?”
Ans. Reference: These lines are taken from Morte d’Arthur by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Explanation: ‘Morte d’Arthur’ describes the death of the great British king, Arthur, and Bedivere’s depositing
of Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, in the lake from which Arthur first acquired it. Bedivere tends to the dying king, who
hands his knight the sword and tells him to go and throw it in the lake. Bedivere goes to the lake but finds he cannot
bear to throw away such a mighty sword, so he hides it and returns to his king. Arthur can tell Bedivere has
disobeyed him, so off Bedivere goes again, but once again he cannot bring himself to fling Excalibur into the water.
When he returns to Arthur again, the king can tell that Bedivere has disobeyed him and commands him to go back.
Bedivere succeeds on the third attempt, and once he has thrown the sword into the lake, a hand, clothed in white
samite, rises from the water and grabs the sword, brandishing it three times before disappearing with it under the

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water. When Bedivere returns to the dying king, Arthur can tell from Bedivere’s shock that the knight has thrown
the sword back, and Arthur prepares to die. A barge arrives to carry him off to his final resting-place, and Arthur is
placed on board, where he is tended by three queens. The barge sails off to the isle of Avilion (Avalon).
Tennyson is trying to summon the magic and myth of the Arthurian story, but it is revealing that he chose to
focus on the death of Arthur at the beginning of his own poetic career. Did he do this because of the death of his
Arthur, Hallam? Tennyson appears to have felt, at this time in the mid-1830s immediately following Hallam’s
death, that life had lost its meaning and purpose and that, to coin a phrase, the world, and Tennyson, would ‘never
see his like again’. Here it’s worth noting that Arthur’s first words to Bedivere in the poem express his certainty and
his doubt: his certainty that the age of the Round Table, a golden age, has passed, and his doubt that he will ever live
again.
Section B
II. Write short notes on the following:
(a) The allegorical significance of Tennyson’s poem “Morte d’Arthur.”
Ans. Allegorical Significance: Tennyson intends to kindle the national pride in English people and showcase
the ideals that Victorians identified themselves with. He prefers the Arthurian legend as his theme because King
Arthur embodied those ideals far back in his days before the Norman conquest of 1066. King Arthur was celebrated
as an exemplary ruler. Tennyson rearranges a past glory onto the present to make the ideal Arthurian monarchy
illustrative of Queen Victoria’s rule. Arthur is said to be “Ideal manhood closed in real man” and the “stainless
gentleman.” His idea of the Round Table is an example of his democratic concept of the King as the first among
equal knights.
Through the presentation of King Arthur, Tennyson also sought to project Queen Victoria as an ideal monarch.
Queen Victoria, the matriarch of the British Empire, epitomised the values of the era and carved out a new role for
the monarchy. During her 63-year reign, Victoria presided over the social and industrial transformation of Britain
and expansion of the empire.
Q. 5. The role of nature in Far from the Madding Crowd.
Ans. Nature : Its role in the Novel: Imaginary Wessex comes alive in the novel with its rich pastoral setting,
the simple rustic, jolly characters and old traditions. Hardy goes back to early English history to understand the
rural myths and beliefs, their traditions of farming and transposes them on to 19th century England under the reign
of Queen Victoria. Hardy seeks a continuity of the past and the present. Hardy captures the age-old serenity and
peace through his Wessex where society and Nature are in harmony. In this novel, Wessex is yet to come under the
impact of the industrial revolution and Nature and man still live in close proximity to each other.
Hardy also employs the Nature in the characters. For example, Gabriel Oak has the nature’s animated presence
and its pristine purity its abundant generosity and its energy. Bathsheba also has the same, rooted in the rural soil,
self-confident, vivacious and beautiful but an impulsive act makes her restless, agitated and thus needs the calming
influence that Gabriel Oak offers.
In the early part of the novel, Boldwood also represents the best of Nature in his disciplined and confident way
of living far from the madding emotions of love and passion, jealousy and vengeful rage but Bathsheba’s playful
and thoughtless note expressing her interest in changes him and in the later part he surrenders to passionate jealousy
and kills Troy for coming in the way of his marriage to Bathsheba. He goes against his natural traits and gets out of
tune with Nature.

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 Oak remains calm and seeks nothing after Bathsheba rejects his proposal. He works for her selflessly, looks
after her personal interest and her farm. On the other hand, Boldwood gets jolted out of his calm and gentle nature
when he starts loving Bathsheba mistaking her impetuous request to marry her as genuine and turns violent which
is against the Nature. He shoots Troy when he returns, perhaps thinking that he will hinder his proposed marriage to
Bathsheba. Tray is the anti-thesis of nature showing the city-country clash as he represents the city’s superficiality
and shallowness in contrast to the country’s naturalness and wholesomeness. His agitation, his restlessness and
flirtatious behaviour are a contrast to the quietness, tranquility and serenity of the Nature.
The title of the novel, “Far from the Madding Crowd”, has been taken from Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in
a Country Churchyard.” ‘Madding’ means frenzied and the tile implies that the countryside presented in the novel
is far from the hurly burly of the city. Hardy shows the peace in the countryside, which gets breached by the man
from the town who intrudes into the lives of Bathsheba, Boldwood and Fanny. All the characters get wrecked by
Troy. Nature’s tranquility represented by Gabriel Oak later restores peace at the end making the novel complete.
Gabriel remains the same despite ups and downs. He faces disasters like the loss of his entire flock of sheep,
rejection of his marriage proposal by Bathsheba and his instinctive anxiety about her relationship with Troy. Despite
all these, he continues to work and remains loyal to Bathsheba and feels responsible for her wellbeing.
The calm pastoral landscape is set against the turmoil and conflict among men. Hardy shows how the one who
is able to navigate through vicissitudes of natural disaster triumphs at the end. It was a sudden disaster for Gabriel
Oak when he loses all his sheep and he is forced out of his home to go in search of a job. He gets a job when he puts
out a fire in Bathsheba’s farm and later he saves a group of lambs from being poisoned by clover. He is depicted a
man of the soil and is skilled to navigate around natural disasters.
Troy is a contrast as he cannot face Nature’s storm that washes away the flowers he had planted over Fanny’s
grave. He is dissatisfied after his marriage to Bathsheba. He is surprised at Bathsheba’ willingness to marry him and
marries her not out of genuine feelings of love, but to show off to the poor, innocent villagers his prize catch and that
too won by outsmarting Boldwood. After the wedding, he celebrates by getting drunk along with the wonderstruck
workers in Bathsheba’s farm. Troy’s behaviour leads to a tragic disaster.
When the storm breaks out when Troy and the farm labourers are in a drunken stupor, Bathsheba joins Gabriel
to race against time and safeguard all their farm produce. Hardy uses nature as a premonition, as a clue to understand
the future of some relationships between different characters. For example, most of the time, Fanny appears alone.
When she meets Gabriel for the first time, she is alone at night, she is fleeing Bathsheba’s house to ask Troy to
marry her. She can be described as ‘darkness visible.’ She is no doubt betrayed by Troy but she is a victim of her fate
as she misses out the church where she is supposed to marry him.
Q. 6. The influence of Ibsen on the dramatic work of Bernard Shaw.
Ans. Shaw and Ibsen: Shaw was influenced by Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. In A Short History of
English Literature, Andrew Sanders notes how the spirit of Ibsen is evident in Shaw’s plays. At the end of the 19th
century, finding British theatre lifeless and uninspiring, Shaw had voiced his impatience with the artificiality of the
London theatre and pleaded for the performance of plays dealing with contemporary social and moral problems.
Sternlicht also labels Shaw an Ibsenite. He says Shaw took Ibsen’s concept of the thesis play, in which a problem of
society is presented for consideration by the society itself, represented by the middle-class audience. He used the
concept in social comedies that sparkled with wit, clever situations and wonderful dialogue.
The thesis play or the problem play first appeared in France in the works of Emile Augier and Alexandre
Dumas, who made the theatre a platform for moral and social reform in reaction to the empty romantic theatre of the

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nineteenth century. The problem play reached its artistic perfection in Ibsen’s plays which included The Pillars of
Society, Ghosts, A Doll’s House and An Enemy of the People. Shaw was greatly influenced by Ibsen’s method of
attacking “Outmoded social conventions, championing individual morality over the accepted traditions of marriage,
politics and business”.
A form of drama called the ‘well-made play’, based on a typical structure and artificial conventions, dominated
European drama in nineteenth century. In his prose work, The Quintessence of Ibsenism, Shaw summarises the
main aspects of Ibsen’s innovative drama and shows how it changed the European theatre of his time. Shaw points
out how because of the influence of Ibsen a “new technical factor” appeared in popular English drama.
Shaw stated the technical factor in the play was the discussion. He said earlier a well-made play had an exposition
in the first act, a situation in the second, an unravelling in the third. The new plays had exposition, situation and
discussion; and the discussion is the test of the playwright. Shaw stated that the shift happened with plays like
Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, where Nora, the heroine stops her emotional acting and says: “We must sit down and
discuss all this that has been happening between us.”
On the technical novelties of the Ibsen and post-Ibsen plays, Shaw wrote: first, the introduction of the discussion
and its development, making play and discussion practically identical. Second, the disuse of the old stage tricks by
which audiences had to be induced to take an interest in unreal people and improbable circumstances as a result of
making the spectators themselves the persons of the drama and the incidents of their own lives its incidents.
Hence, according to Shaw, the technical innovations brought about by Ibsen are: (i) making discussion the
central feature of a play and (ii) making ordinary people the characters and their life situations, the incidents of
drama, thus getting rid of the unreal characters and unreal situations of the well-made play.
Shaw criticized the ‘well-made play’ and attacked its practitioners like the French dramatist Scribe “for focusing
on the mechanics of playmaking at the expense of honest characterisations and serious content.” He felt those plays
were based on “unreal people and improbable circumstances,” while bsen’s problem plays shifted the focus to
“serious content” and the problems we face in society.
According to Christopher Innes, Shaw noted Ibsen’s major innovation was that he changed the typical structure
of the well-made play, which had: exposition, complication, crisis and denoument. Ibsen replaced the denoument
with discussion.
Critics say Shaw’s study of Ibsen was a turning point in the history of English drama and it introduced a new
kind of drama into English theatre. According to Christopher Innes, Shaw’s The Quintessence of Ibsenism marks
the beginning of modern British drama. The year 1890 marks the beginning of modern drama in England, as the
date of Bernard Shaw’s lecture on ‘The Quintessence of Ibsenism’.
III. Write a brief critical appreciation of Hardy’s novel Far from the Madding Crowd.
Ans. HARDY’S PHILOSOPHY: Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd raises questions on society, religion
and morals, but ends on a positive note that virtue garners rewards as evidenced in Gabriel Oak’s happy union with
Bathsheba as a reward for leading a life of loyalty, humility, goodness and selfless love.
The 19th century saw the following transitions:
(i) Change from agrarian rural life to industrial urban life.
(ii) Change from fundamental beliefs in God as the Creator of the world and as regulator of human affairs to
acceptance of scientific laws based on Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species about the creation of the universe as
an evolutionary process.

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 (iii) Change from a predominantly rural society with strong belief in tradition and customs to an urban society,
with its new outlook on life and morals, along with a focus on material well-being and a new social order that
brought a sharp clevage between the educated elite and the uneducated or semi-educated poor.
(iv) Change from an acceptance of life’s ups and downs as the working of a beneficent, omnipotent, and omniscient
deity to questioning the function of that deity in the face of omnipresent evil and unreasonable happenings leading
to unhappiness.
It becomes increasingly difficult to reconcile the prevalence of unhappiness in life with the operation of a
benevolent deity. As Brennecke says, “He (Hardy) cannot reconcile the idea of an omnipotent and merciful deity
with human sufferings.”
Hardy, who can be described as a philosophical novelist, reflects on Victorian society, its morals, ethics and
worldview as it was caught between the old world that was slowly disappearing and the new world that was ushering
in by the Industrial revolution. Hardy, a Christian by birth and upbringing, lost his faith in God after coming under
the influence of the 19th century scientific thinkers and writers like Charles Darwin.
Darwin traces the origin of man as a natural evolution from a primordial form to his present state and thus
questions the prevailing concept of the creation of man by God. Hence, all the older Christian values appeared to
the Victorians including Hardy as redundant. Darwin’s work undermines the prevailing concept of the divine creation
of man. Hardy learnt from Darwin that the natural order is indifferent to man’s desires and aspirations. Thus, he
broke with Victorian optimism and self-complacency and developed pessimism and discontent.
Hardy, an extensive reader, had read the ancient Greek tragedies, Shakespeare’s works, contemporary thinkers
like Thomas Huxley and the French radical reformers and philosophers including Charles Fourier, Hippolyte Taine
and Auguste Comte. His view of human life was also shaped by his extensive critical reading of the Bible. Thus, his
novels have Biblical allusions and Far From the Madding Crowd is rich in them.
Ernest Brennecke, who wrote one of the earliest appraisals of Hardy’s philosophy of life, says Hardy developed
“A consistent world-view through the notions of Chance and Time, Circumstances, Fate, Nature, Providence, Nemesis
and Will tinged with metaphysical idealism”. In his novels, Hardy suggests that the old Christian values do not help
man to face misery and unhappiness. Thus, on the one hand he castigates religion as it has very little to offer to the
modern man and on the other he is acutely aware of the place of religion in tradition and customs that give some
degree of solidity to the culture of the people.
Lennart A. Björk notes, “Hardy’s castigation of traditional religion is an integral part of his social criticism,” as
religion cannot offer comfort and consolation during moments of crisis. His writings deal with the loss of an earlier
simpler Christian faith and its total abandonment to the will of God, and a longing for a new order to replace that
loss of the older faith in God by making the church an important social institution. He told Edmund Blunden, “If
there is no church in a country village, there is nothing.”
Hardy’s view of life is also deeply rooted in his Hellenic and pagan sympathies of the rural countryside which
held more charm for Hardy than did Christianity. In his Wessex novels and stories, Hardy’s vision of an old, rustic
England is essentially pagan. He shares fellow Victorian, Matthew Arnold’s ideal of Hellenic paganism, with its
focus on the development of a complete man with the harmonious body and soul. He prefers Auguste Comte’s
religion of humanity as a substitute for Christianity.
Determinism, the philosophical doctrine that all events, including human choices and decisions, are necessarily
determined by external forces acting on the will, is an aspect of Hardy’s philosophy. Man’s life is controlled by
what we call Fate or Destiny. His major fiction shows that human existence is intrinsically tragic because people are

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trapped by the laws of Nature and the laws of civilization. Novels like Tess, Jude the Obscure and The Mayor of
Casterbridge end in tragedy where Fate or Chance plays a causal role in human affairs. Chance or Fate can change
man’s destiny. For Hardy, chance is everything over which man has no control. Fate is not always sinister, but Man
cannot overcome his fate. Hardy’s men and women become tragic victims of Fate. Hardy presents the universe as a
rigid mechanism that is indifferent and apathetic to human suffering and contrary to the Christian belief in God’s
justice and compassion for humanity.
Far from the Madding Crowd is an exception because it ends on a happy note of bringing Gabriel Oak and
Bathsheba together. Troy’s return at the very moment Boldwood is getting ready to marry Bathsheba is an instance
of the operation of forces outside man’s plans and actions. Gabriel shows how despite all odds against human life,
man can overcome it by taking responsibility for fellow men.
For Hardy, a hope for mankind is evolutionary meliorism, which means the world can be improved by human
effort.
Hardy said:
I believe that a good deal of the robustious, swaggering optimism of recent literature is at bottom cowardly and
insincere. My pessimism, if pessimism it be, does not involve the assumption that the world is going to the dogs. On
the contrary, my practical philosophy is distinctly meliorist. Whatever may be the inherent good or evil of life, it is
certain that men make it much worse than it need be. When we have got rid of a thousand remediable ills, it will be
time enough to determine whether the ill that is irremediable outweighs the good Hardy, like many writers before
and after him, is concerned with existential questions, such as the human condition, personal freedom and determinism,
the attitude to God and religion, the role of destiny, failed human relationships and the alienation of human beings
in the modern world. He presents life’s happenings as events that are unalterable and believed that man cannot take
any preventive measures to change or stop them. Worse is the certainty of suffering. Hardy’s world is dictated by
Chance and therefore his people live in an uncaring, unfeeling and unfriendly universe, made worse by their painful
awareness of their existence.
Destiny comes between man’s desire and its fruition. Hence his philosophical outlook is certainly deterministic,
pessimistic and tragic, yet it offers a possibility of positive morality. Hardy insists that there is a limited personal
freedom in the midst of his state of being un-free. It is in his strength to transcend his natural bondage, he may
achieve personal freedom, which means that he is free to make his own choices – but he will have to pay dearly for
them. It is easy to resign oneself to fatalism which acknowledges that all action is controlled by Fate which is a
great, impersonal, primitive force. But it takes a lot of man’s spiritual energy to take action even when action will
prove a failure.
Thus, in his novels, man is pitted against chance or Fate. Fanny’s life ends on a tragic note because of the fateful
mistake of waiting outside a wrong church. Similarly, fate interferes at the moment Boldwood and Bathsheba get
ready for their marriage. The man who for seven years had not turned up and was therefore assumed to be drowned,
turns up at that very moment thereby nullifying Bathsheba’s widowhood. But those who are contented, calm and
balanced and not protesting against life’s hard dispensations overcome chance and succeed at the end as is the case
with Gabriel Oak.
In his novels, Hardy shows power of Chance or Fate winning over the power of man. He makes a plea that
social laws and conventions that are man-made must be changed so that man is not helplessly and hopelessly
doomed.

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 Section C
IV Write an essay explaining why Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man is considered to be an “anti-
romantic comedy”.
Ans. ARMS AND THE MAN AS AN ANTI-ROMANTIC COMEDY: Arms and the Man is an anti- romantic
comedy. Raina lives in an artificial world of romance and considers herself to be in love with Sergius. Her notions
of love come from reading Byron and Pushkin, and from operas she has seen in Bucharest. Sergius has led a
triumphant charge against the Serbs in a recent battle at Slivnitza, and is ‘the hero of the hour, the idol of the
regiment’.
The play shows how Raina in a romantic fashion picks up a picture of Sergius and gazes at it proudly. She
adores the picture of Sergius with ‘feelings that are beyond expression’. She does not kiss it but looks upon it as if
it were something holy. Her unexpected meeting with Bluntschli obstructs her romantic dreams. Bluntschli, who is
free from romantic illusions about war, and does not view it as the means to win glory, strikes at the root of Raina’s
lofty ideals, aristocratic manner and pride in her family’s social status. Gradually she realizes the folly of her
romantic illusions. In Act II, Raina adores Sergius for his heroic action in the war and calls him ‘my hero, my king’,
while Sergius calls her ‘my queen’. He tells her that all his deeds have been inspired by her and he has gone through
the war like a knight in a tournament with his lady looking down at him and encouraging him. They also agree that
they have found ‘the higher love’. Almost immediately, Sergius confesses to Louka that the higher love is ‘very
fatiguing’ to keep up for long. Louka ridicules and shatters their noble sentiments and poses. The play thus shows
‘higher love’ as a sham. Shaw proves that romantic ideas of love and war are nothing but delusions. Thus, Arms and
the Man can be called an anti-romantic comedy.
In Arms and the Man, the initiative of falling in love comes from Raina instead of Bluntschli, and this can be
observed in most cases of relationships between men and women in Shaw’s plays. Women are inclined to move
towards men and initiate emotional relationship with them. Raina puts her portrait in her father’s coat which Bluntschli
borrows, with ‘A souvenir to my chocolate cream solider’, without verbal declaration of her love. Louka, the first
person to discover the love affair, alludes to this by saying to Sergius ‘I know the difference between the sort of
manner you and she put on before one another and the real manner’, which implies that Louka cannot predict what
will happen in the future regarding the relationship between the two. Nonetheless, she cleverly has observed and
realized the relationship between Sergius and Raina and Bluntschli and Raina. She uncovers this and tells Sergius
that ‘Miss Raina will marry him, whether he likes it or not’.
Louka’s confirmed piece of information clearly implies that Raina is intent on persuading Bluntschli to marry
her after being convinced that he is more suitable for her as a husband than Sergius. He has helped open her eyes to
new worlds concerning life and love. Raina makes Bluntschli believe that he has chosen her, but actually she is the
one who has chosen him and persuaded him to choose her for wife. The same can be said about Sergius and Louka’s
relationship. Louka plans to marry Sergius through her gossip about the man who comes into Raina’s bedroom. She
considers herself a rival to Raina, making Bluntschli rival to Sergius. This rivalry that Louka has created is solely
for the aim of winning over Sergius as husband, after distancing him from Raina. She employs her cunning and
cleverness to succeed in her attempt. Shaw strikingly reverses the traditional role of men and women in the matter
of marriage. Both Bluntschli and Sergius think that they have chosen their brides, but indeed they have been chosen
by Raina and Louka. In this way, Shaw has managed to introduce the new woman as represented by Louka, and he
has demonstrated how she can succeed in achieving her goal through her strong character and determination.

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 OR
Write a critical analysis of the sleepwalking scene in Macbeth.
Ans. The Sleepwalking Scene: Act V starts with a discussion of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking. The waiting-
gentlewoman informs the doctor of Lady Macbeth’s strange behaviour of walking in her sleep. The doctor calls this
a “great perturbation in nature” and asks if she speaks anything in this “slumbery agitation”. The Gentlewoman
refuses to reveal the details. At this point, Lady Macbeth walks in with a candle in hand. They both watch her
rubbing her hands in her sleep. What Lady Macbeth says in this scene reveals her disturbed mind. It seems as if the
deeds of blood and gore are condensed into the spots on her hands as she says “”Here’s the smell of the blood still.
All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” The sight of blood remains ingrained in her mind as a
symbol of the deed performed by Macbeth and her. The murders have been committed by Macbeth or executed on
his orders, but she sees herself as one with Macbeth and the impact of these killings is transposed onto her. Lady
Macbeth’s final call is “What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.” The Doctor realises the enormity of
what was being said and is quick to point out that such a disease is beyond his experience. He realises that Lady
Macbeth’s mind is seized with horror at the deeds as they are “unnatural”. He says she needs the divine more than
the physician.
At the beginning of the Act V, Lady Macbeth who has apparently dropped out of the story is brought back upon
the stage that we may see how she too pays the penalty of her crimes. The strong will that enabled her to defy her
woman’s nature has broken down utterly; left alone in her castle while Macbeth is in the field she broods by day
over past crimes and future punishment, and at night wanders in uneasy sleep through the halls, betraying to all who
hear her the deadly secrets of the past.
Lady Macbeth has none of the usual phenomena of sleep, but she does show with a startling degree of accuracy
all the symptoms of hysterical somnambulism. The sleep-walking scene is a logical outcome of the previous mental
state. From the very mechanism of this mental state, such a development was inevitable. She is not the victim of a
blind fate or destiny or punished by a moral law, but affected by a mental disease.
It is evident from the first words uttered by the Doctor in the sleep-walking scene, that Lady Macbeth had
several previous somnambulistic attacks. That we are dealing with a genuine somnambulism is shown by the
description of the eyes being open and not shut. Now several complexes or groups of suppressed ideas of an
emotional nature enter into this scene and are responsible for it. The acting out of these complexes themselves are
based upon reminiscences of her past repressed experiences.
The first complex relates to the murder of Duncan as demonstrated in the continual washing of the hands, an act
not seen earlier and here clearly brought out in the sleep-walking scene. This automatic act is a reminiscence of her
earlier remark after the murder of Duncan, “A little water clears us of this deed.”
The second complex refers to the murder of Banquo, clearly shown in the words, “I tell you yet again, Banquo’s
buried; he cannot come out of his grave,” thus demonstrating that she is no longer ignorant of this particular crime
of her husband.
The third complex entering into the sleep-walking scene distinctly refers to the murder of Macduff’s wife and
children – “The Thane of Fife had a wife, where is she now?” Various other fragmentary reminiscences enter into
this scene, such as Macbeth’s terror at the banquet in the words, “You mar all with this starting,” the striking of the
clock before the murder of King Duncan, and the reading of the first letter from Macbeth announcing the witches’
prophecy.

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 It seems as if the deeds of blood and gore are condensed into the spots on her hands as she says “”Here’s the
smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.” The sight of blood remains
ingrained in her mind as a symbol of the deed performed by Macbeth and her. The murders have been committed by
Macbeth or executed on his orders, but she sees herself as one with Macbeth and the impact of these killings is
transposed onto her. Lady Macbeth’s final call is “What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.” The
Doctor realises the enormity of what was being said and is quick to point out that such a disease is beyond his
experience. He realises that Lady Macbeth’s mind is seized with horror at the deeds as they are “unnatural”. He says
she needs the divine more than the physician.
In spite of the doctor’s statement, we feel that she is doomed, and we are prepared not only for the news of her
death in Scene V., but also for the report in the last scene that she died by her own hands. The most tragic part of her
punishment is that she, who had sinned so deeply for her husband’s sake, drifts away from him and dies in lonely
isolation.

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