 Hello and welcome back. Now when it comes to studying Macbeth, a lot of students didn't actually realize that King Duncan is one of the main characters, is one of the major characters because remember firstly he is the king who sets off this tragic chain of events, right? Macbeth ultimately betrays him and then because of this betrayal this is where we now see the downfall of Macbeth. So first you remember that King Duncan, his death and his murder, sets off the entire play but equally even if he appears in just act one out of all the five acts what he is doing is he illustrates what the rightful king should be. He illustrates the noble qualities of a good king, he also illustrates what happens when divine right of kings is respected, how a country can be very stable, prosperous and even win wars like Scotland. So when revising for Macbeth you do need to be aware of King Duncan and quotations relating to his characters. What I want to show you are five quotations which you can memorize today especially if you have a mock exam or actual exams based on King Duncan's character or even the theme of kingship. What I want to show you is with these quotations how you can do some analysis relating to either language or structure but of course how you can tie it to themes and context. So let's start with the first quotation and this quotation illustrates just how King Duncan is very quick to recognize the good deeds of his men. He's quick to recognize how amazing Macbeth is and he is also very quick to reward it. When he hears the captain's reports of Macbeth's work on the battlefield King Duncan is impressed. He says oh valiant cousin worthy gentleman and in terms of techniques what you want to talk about when you're selecting this quotation writing about it is firstly the use of the adjective valiant and worthy. Here we can see that King Duncan is praising Macbeth's qualities. He's very quick to recognize this and the other quote or rather the other structural technique you want to pick out is exclamatory sentences. This is taken from act one scene two. What this illustrates is King Duncan has these amazing noble qualities. He is also very quick to recognize great deeds of his men okay. He illustrates what a rightful king should do. He illustrates what the perfect quintessential king should be. The quotation or rather the theme that this relates to is the theme of loyalty and guilt because we can see here that King Duncan rather than just only thinking about how he can keep all the power to himself he's incredibly loyal and he's incredibly generous towards his men including Macbeth okay. So the opposite of loyalty is of course guilt where for example later on and what you can just suppose is how Macbeth as a king is very greedy. He keeps all the power to himself and he's very very paranoid okay. He's beset with a lot of guilt relation to all of his terrible actions in the past and of course this makes him even more paranoid and he engages in this killing campaign of all these different people. King Duncan, Banquo, Macduff's family. So here we can see that King Duncan in contrast to Macbeth who proves to be a really terrible king he illustrates the theme of loyalty and guilt. He's very loyal to his men and he's also a very good king to his men. Now in terms of context you want to tie this into the great chain of being. He is used to this is King Duncan's character is used to illustrate what happens to a country when the rightful king who has been selected by God through divine right of kings is in power. Scotland wins its wars, Scotland is prosperous and it does really really well okay. When the rightful king when the great chain of being is respected and everybody plays the position you have a good king like King Duncan who successfully leads his country into war and wins its wars. The second quotation which you want to relate when it comes to King Duncan's character is and this is closely tied to the first when he describes Macbeth as my worthy quarter. This is when he is promoting him okay. Now this is taken from Act 1 Scene 3 and in terms of techniques you want to talk about the use of pronoun here so of course this personal pronoun shows how proud King Duncan is of Macbeth and of course this is also an exclamation sentence once more we can see that he's so excited at what Macbeth has managed to achieve and he's not stingy with his promotions okay he doesn't just want to be on top and then everybody is subservient to him. He promotes his themes okay he's able to recognize the hard work that someone like Macbeth has put in and this makes him a really good king. Now what you want to tie this into in terms of themes is the theme of kingship the theme of the rightful king and once more when you're writing about King Duncan's character you want to always juxtapose him with Macbeth. Macbeth being the wrongful king everything starts going chaotic chaos takes over Scotland whilst King Duncan who is the rightful king selected by God he demonstrates the theme of kingship he demonstrates what happens when the rightful king who is of noble values and qualities is in power. Scotland wins wars. Now contextually well this is remember that Shakespeare lived through two monarchs okay so he wrote Macbeth and the play was first performed under King James the first of England and the sixth of Scotland however don't forget that he had also lived through a previous monarch which was Queen Elizabeth the first right she didn't have any heirs and she ended up once she died the crown was passed over to a nearest relative and this happened to be King James. Both of these monarchs from Shakespeare's perspective were noble monarchs okay they deserve the title of kings and queens okay so they illustrate the theme of kingship as well when you're thinking about it contextually because they show what happens to England when the rightful monarch is in place okay so Queen Elizabeth had a fairly successful reign as a queen and of course Shakespeare kind of had to suck up to King James and he also had to show that he was actually a very good king okay so this is what you need to tie it into in terms of the noble values that King James or rather King Duncan illustrates this can be tied to the noble values of King James and Queen Elizabeth. The third quotation which you want to illustrate and to memorize when it comes to King Duncan's character is when he sees Lady Macbeth okay he is happy to see her she puts on a really nice face to him she puts on a great performance and he says see our honoured hostess and here he speaks using alliteration when he sees her when he goes over to the Macbeth castle to stay for the evening what this illustrates is King Duncan's fatal flaw his fatal flaw is he is very gullible and he believes appearances of things he believes surface appearance and he takes everything at face value this is his fatal flaw because he's not too distrusting and therefore there's always treachery that happens to him in this case especially shown through alliteration King Duncan is easily misled by Lady Macbeth Lady Macbeth pretends to be really nice to his face and he accepts it he's even super happy to see her and this ties into the theme of reality and appearances because remember in Macbeth all the characters that survived were the ones that did not always trust appearances the ones that questioned appearances the ones that may be believed in some form of treachery they're the ones that ended up surviving however characters like King Duncan who trusted appearances too much and didn't necessarily question the reality that was underneath these appearances they didn't question whether maybe this person might be treacherous they ended up dying okay and this quotation obviously when you're writing about King Duncan it illustrates just how gullible he is and this is his fatal flaw now what you want to talk about is contextually King James's character is a direct contrast to King Duncan because King James contextually was known as being incredibly paranoid so he was very very paranoid he always was scared of being usurped being killed and of course also the gun powder plot didn't help right so the gun powder plot where there was treachery against him this made him all the more paranoid he was also paranoid of witches he was paranoid of women who maybe have supernatural powers having the ability to influence people to overthrow him he is a direct contrast as a character and as a king to King James into King Duncan himself the next quotation that you want to memorize when it comes to King Duncan is again once more showing that he trusts appearances too much he tells his son Malcolm once he realizes the previous thing of called or you know was a terrible person he says there's no art to find the mind's construction in the face and this is taken from act one scene four now this metaphor finding the mind's construction in the face is really really powerful what this illustrates is King Duncan finds it really hard to discern and to know what somebody is thinking just by looking at their face he says you know the previous scene of called or he was really nice to me I can't believe he betrayed me because you know I just find it really hard to tell from how people act on the faces when I look at the faces if they're smiling at me I'm going to believe that they really like me if they're frowning okay maybe they don't like me but of course this left him very open to being betrayed and ultimately killed by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth he smiled in his face and plotted behind his back what again this illustrates is the theme of reality and appearances once more King Duncan trusted appearances far too much and this led him to be betrayed context you what you want to type this to is of course the gunpowder plot where treachery was involved against King James however because he was such a paranoid man and of course also there was an anonymous tip off this plot was foiled okay what this illustrates especially contextually is just how there were constant challenges to the king's reign okay and therefore a healthy dose of pessimism and distrust was always necessary for a king or queen the final quotation you want to talk about if you are to discuss King Duncan's character I would suggest memorizing when King Duncan tells Macbeth a worthiest cousin the sin of my ingratitude in other words he apologizes to Macbeth he says I'm so sorry for the sin of my ingratitude I wish I'd promoted you earlier you know I'd totally promoted the wrong thing of cordial and I'm so so sorry he apologizes we can see King Duncan is not stingy with his promotions he's a really good king he loves promoting good people and this is illustrated of course through the use of structure here exclamatory sentence and also this abstract noun ingratitude what this illustrates is King Duncan is incredibly humble he's a humble king he's a really good leader and as I keep on mentioning he gives promotions he doesn't selfishly keep all the power to himself now what theme this relates to is of course the theme of kingship what happens when the perfect leader is in power a country is run and with people who are good enough because the king then promotes these people but equally what this illustrates is the perfect leader who deserves a title of king is somebody who's really humble now what you want to tie this to contextually is of course Shakespeare arguably wished to show this noble quality reflected in the two monarchs that he lived through so this is King James and Queen Elizabeth so that's really it when it comes to the five quotations as well as the word level analysis you can do in addition to the context and theme points you can make when writing about these quotations so if you're writing about King Duncan's character definitely you want to think about juxtaposing his character with Macbeth's character how's King Duncan as a king as opposed to how is Macbeth as a king okay then you can use these quotations when juxtaposing what he does as king as opposed to what Macbeth does as king thanks so much for listening