Getting Inside Lady Macbeth’s Head
Folger Education Professional Development for Teachers
Booking and details
Reserve Your SpotDates Wed, Feb 11, 2026, 8pm ET
Venue Virtual - Zoom
Tickets Free; registration required
Duration 1 hour
How do we help students move beyond seeing Lady Macbeth as simply a villain or manipulative and instead engage seriously with her thinking?
This free interactive virtual session uses Folger Method Essential Practices to guide students into understanding Lady Macbeth’s figurative language, inviting them to explore how her imagery reveals power, ambition, and vulnerability.
Rather than explaining her motivations up front, participants will experience strategies that allow students to experiment with Shakespeare’s language as a way of developing and revising ideas.
What We’ll Explore
- Experiment with language using Tone & Stress
Participants will test how shifting emphasis and pacing in Lady Macbeth’s imagery changes meaning, emotional stakes, and perceived power. - Build shared meaning through Choral Reading
Using collective, low-stakes reading, we’ll layer voices to surface patterns of imagery and rhythm, helping students hear how Lady Macbeth’s language accumulates urgency and pressure. - Interpret through Promptbooking (Act 2, Scene 2)
Participants will create a promptbook for Lady Macbeth immediately after Duncan’s murder, annotating moments where confidence gives way to anxiety, imagination, and fear in the style of a theater company preparing a production.
Teachers will leave with adaptable strategies for helping students enter Macbeth through Lady Macbeth’s language, while building confidence, agency, and interpretive independence.