Present fears are less

Fittingly, the rain was drifting down today in a slight, chilling mist as the bell rang to end recess; I shrugged and shook myself and and attempted to will my blood to move again, then crossed the quadrangle to the doorway where my year elevens were standing about, miserably, like dead trees leaning at all angles, and chattering like harpies. We greeted each other and smiled and I enquired of T-- why he was carrying an oversized wooden set-square, knocking it against his leg: he was too cold to speak, and I thought that was a good deal so I left it at that.

Inside, we progressed with the first act of Macbeth. Reading through the initial scenes we took our parts and I acted as go-between where needed. It had been about half an hour of good work when we started to get fidgety and decided that enough was enough. So I threw it over to them: Macbeth's first moments of temptation and uncertainty. 

MACBETH 
(Aside) Two truths are told
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme. (To Ross and Angus) I thank you, gentlemen.
(Aside) This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor.
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings.
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.

"Your task," said I, "is this. Easy: working in pairs, look at the legend on the right-hand side, and figure it out. You've got five minutes. Write down what he is saying in your own words and hand it up to me. Best answer gets a prize." 

I hoped to move on from this point to a discussion of Macbeth's character and the nature of ambition. But, aptly enough, I was brought back to the present by a very fair question:

"Well, what's the prize?"

I thought. (Not very hard.)

"You're doing it for the glory, N."

So they did it.

And the best (though not the most accurate) answer was:

Macbeth is thinking that he wants to be king. He has new power. Because he's perfect. And he wants to get in with the ladies. So he wants to cut Duncan. And throw his body in the Yarra river.