Macbeth MacbethMacbeth raises questions about the meaning of human life: what manhood means (and is it different from womanhood or personhood?), the value of power and ethical action, and the extent of our responsibility for our own actions.
Macbeth is an exciting play to analyze in order to see Shakespeare at his best in plotting and the use of imagery. All our attention is on one story-line: the rise of Macbeth and the effects on him and his world. That is, it is similar in simplicity to the plotting of Richard III, but much simpler than the double story of Katherine and Bianca in Taming of the Shrew, the multiple strands of Midsummer Night's Dream, and the main theme and parallel Gloucester story in King Lear. Yet we always have a double perspective, whether we are
In Act 1 we see Macbeth tempted to murder in order to get the kingship of Scotland. The Weird Sisters seem to promise success. And Lady Macbeth urges on her husband's ambition.
Summary of Part One
The Appearances interpretation of this line shows us:
Appearances can be deceptive. What is truly good can look bad; what is truly bad can look good. Watch out. Although wickedness is sometimes out to get you, you bring about your own downfall if you are taken in by appearances.The Process interpretation of "fair is foul" shows us:
People have free will and can make good grow out of evil--or evil grow out of good.I think that Macbeth is about the process of becoming good or evil. We see this no more clearly than in the first three scenes.
A. The Weird Sisters set the scene
1. The ensuing battle will be "lost and won"--they
don't take sides. NOTE: In the play itself, the three creatures are called
"weird sisters" with "weird" probably connecting them somehow to the notion
of fate. The Hecate scenes may have been additions to the play,
perhaps not by Shakespeare.
2. In 1.3, the Weird Sisters tell predictions to Macbeth and Banquo, but their early talk shows us that a force above them keeps them from enacting (at least some) evil. Speaking of the sailor, the first creature says, "Though his bark [ship] cannot be lost/ Yet it shall be tempest-tossed" (25-6). We never have proof that they actually bring anything about by their actions. We need to decide whether the sisters are agents of fate or of evil: that is, do they foretell or seduce. In my interpretation, it is important to show that although they cast spells, Macbeth still has a choice of actions.
B. The report of the battle in 1.2 not only gives exposition and describes a wild battle scene just as the play opens , but also shows the pattern of good growing out of evil and evil growing out of good.
Macdonwald has rebelled and the battle is in doubt until Macbeth, "disdaining Fortune," faces Macdonwald and "unseam'd him from the nave to the chops." Out of evil rebellion grows the loyal victory of Macbeth.
Discomfort sprang from what seemed to be comfort: With fresh troops, Sweno, king of Norway, is aided by the traitorous Scottish Thane of Cawdor in attacking the exhausted troops of Duncan. But Macbeth defeats this force, too. That is, victory gives occasion for a "foul" attack, but that brings about a "fair" loyal victory.
Note that when Duncan hears this news in 1.2, before
the witches appear in 1.3, he condemns Cawdor to death and determines to
give his title to Macbeth as a reward for his loyalty and valor.
Return to Summary of Part One
2. Banquo asks for a prediction: "Speak, then, to me, who neither beg nor fear/ Your favors nor your hate"(63-4). They tell Banquo, "Thou shalt get [beget] kings, though thou be none"(1.3.70)
B. Macbeth's initial reaction is clear only from the lines of Banquo. After the creatures greet Macbeth as a future king, Banquo says, "why do you start and seem to fear/ Things that do sound so fair?" (54-5).
1. Macbeth immediately thinks or has been thinking about getting the throne in a non-honorable way. This is the only interpretation I can give to this reaction.
2. Banquo is surprised at his reaction, so he can imagine Macbeth getting the throne in honorable ways. (For example, election was a possibility at this time in Scotland, though Duncan seems to determine his heir in 1.4. Or perhaps Macbeth would come to the throne in some other natural way.)
C. Ross and Angus greet Macbeth with his new title, "Thane of Cawdor."
Do you not hope your children shall be kingsWhen Macbeth gets another thaneship, this means honor and power and wealth as he gains lordship over more land, its people and products. Duncan (not the Weird Sisters) has given the thaneship to Macbeth, and the king has done so as a reward for Macbeth's actions. Will this fair gift bring forth a fair or a foul response?
When those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me
Promised no less to them?(1.3.129-31; emphasis added)
That [prediction], trusted home,Will Macbeth heed Banquo's warning here? Will Banquo?
Might yet enkindle you unto the crown,
Besides the Thane of Cawdor. But 'tis strange
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence.
1. In 1.3, Macbeth continues thinking to himself, attracted and repelled by the prediction and the thought of murder, until he finally resolves to do no evil:
[Aside] This supernatural solicitingMacbeth argues with himself that the prediction of the supernatural beings cannot be ill (evil). Nor is it necessarily good. He spells out his doubts. If the prediction comes from forces of evil, why did they give a down payment ("earnest") of success with the title of Cawdor? If they are agents of good, why do his thoughts turn to the horrid image of murder (we know it is murder only in line 152) that makes his hair stand on end and his heart beat wildly? Terrible situations that one can meet face-to-face in reality (like Macdonwald and Sweno) are less scary than horrible imaginings. His thought about a fantasized murder shakes him up so that his ability to act is wrapped up ("smothered") in surmise and what he imagines is more present to his mind than his actual reality.
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 smother'd in surmise,
And nothing is but what is not.
2. In a final aside, Macbeth significantly concludes that he will take no action: "If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,/ Without my stir" (157-59). At this point, Macbeth resists ambitious thoughts of murdering for power, but his view that the weird sisters "give" him the thaneship of Cawdor puts him in danger for the future.
B. Macbeth commits himself to murder when Duncan designates his son Malcolm as next in line for the throne in 1.4.
1. Especially with the weird sisters' prediction, Macbeth might reasonably have had hopes for the crown from Duncan's words and attitude.
Note: In this scene we get the first insistent use of the planting imagery so important in Macbeth (for further discussion, see Plot2.). Duncan, like a good king, makes his thanes grow and thrive by his regard:
Duncan: [to Macbeth] I have begun to plant thee, and will labourNote: Especially important words and lines are put in boldface.
To make thee full of growing. --[turns to Banquo] Noble Banquo,
That hast no less deserved, nor must be known
No less to have done so, let me infold thee
And hold thee to my heart.Banquo: There if I grow ,
The harvest is your own.
C. Dissociated sensibility:
As Macbeth experiences a conflict between his ambition and his values (sometimes called "cognitive dissonance"), he begins to talk in a peculiar way. He talks only indirectly about murder, as though he is loathe to mention the word. He says he hopes that his mind (and soul) will not be able to see what his hand is doing. Cognitive dissonance is resolved when
or
Stars, hide your fires!
Let not light see my black and deep desires:
[Let] The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see .
A. Lady Macbeth confirms that Macbeth is subject to "cognitive dissonance" and she vows to help hubby achieve his desires:
Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt beLady Macbeth repeats the prediction: Macbeth is already Thane of Glamis and of Cawdor, and Lady M. will help her husband become king. (Notice that she doesn't spell out what that goal is (the crown) until she gets to the end of the speech--"the golden round." Lady M. too has a touch of dissociated sensibility.) Rather than honoring her husband's moral scruples, she sees them as faults--she fears his nature that is too humane to "catch the nearest way."
What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way; thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it; what thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win; thou'dst have, great Glamis,
That which cries 'Thus thou must do, if thou have it';
And that which rather thou dost fear to do
Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round
She is talking about murder, but she sounds like an efficiency expert here. Rather than seeing Macbeth as a man whose ambition is limited by morality, she sees him as insufficiently hard-nosed ("the illness should attend it"), wanting advancement morally (" holily"). But she also realizes that he, unlike Banquo?, cannot be content within the limits of morality. He still wants the goodies: doesn't wish to play false and yet wishes to wrongly win. He wishes to have the morally forbidden goal, and refrains out of fear. However, if he woke up and found the forbidden act done somehow, he would not wish it undone.
B. She prays to be "unsexed" so that she can give up the softness associated with womanhood in order to "stand by her man." Notice that Lady Macbeth has a clear sense of gender roles--men are supposed to be blood-thirsty, women are supposed to be nurturing. She rejects the "androgynous" ideal that people should combine both toughness and nurturance, whether they are men or women. She criticizes Macbeth as "too full of the milk of human kindness" and therefore she must deny that side of herself in order to help him:
Come, you spiritsIn the last lines she too shows reluctance to really see what she is doing: she doesn't want the knife to see the wound it makes; she hopes that darkness will prevent heavenly forces from seeing and trying to prevent the act.
That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top full
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry `Hold, hold!'
C. Lady Macbeth challenges her husband's manhood to win commitment
1. In 1.7, we see Macbeth's mind in motion as he resolves not to kill Duncan. Notice the fuzzy way he talks at the beginning, with "it" changing meaning constantly, but with Macbeth unwilling to speak what he is thinking:
1) If it were done when 't [the murder] is done, then 'twere wellMacbeth's first concern is strategic--will assassination work effectively? He specifically says he's willing to take his chances with eternal damnation if he could only be sure of success. Unfortunately, his strategy of assassinating Duncan establishes an example that may then lead to his own life being in danger.
It [the murder] were done quickly; if th' assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all the end-all here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We'd jump the life to come [risk damnation]. But in these cases
We still have judgement here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor; this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips.
2) He's here in double trust:
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself.
3) Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.
4) I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other--
Next, he considers his moral duty to protect Duncan--as a kinsman, a subject and as a host.
Third, Duncan has been such a good king that his virtues will plead like angels, and pity will blow the deed in every one's eyes (and presumably make them cry). This third argument seems to be another strategic argument, but notice that all the imagery is heavenly--as though Macbeth cannot separate the strategic and moral arguments as neatly as he says he can in the first argument.
He finally concludes that if his intent is like a horse, then he has no spur to it except ambition--but ambition is like a rider who means to vault himself into the saddle but actually misses the saddle and lands on the other side.
2. Macbeth concludes to Lady Macbeth, "We will proceed no further in this business"(1.7.34). He doesn't want to spoil the reputation (imaged as new clothes) he has recently won.
3. Lady Macbeth appeals to him in macho-man terms of manhood, daring him to act: "Art thou afeard/ To be the same in thine own act and valor / As thou art in desire?"(1.7.43-5)
4. Macbeth replies, defining manhood in the Great Chain of Being in terms of moral limits: "I dare do all that may become a man./ Who dares do more is none"(1.7.51-2).
5. Lady Macbeth reaffirms her ambition-based definition and taunts him by saying she could make a better man than he, repeating the nursing-milk idea of femininity she started in 1.5:
When you durst do it then you were a man;6. Macbeth is still worried about failure, but Lady Macbeth is confident of success. And her plan convinces him, especially when he realizes that they can blame the murder on the guards.
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
How tender 't is to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.
E. Continued resolve
1. Macbeth runs into Banquo and plans, unsuccessfully, to get his support (2.1)
3. When we next see Macbeth in 2.2, he has murdered Duncan.
Continue to Macbeth Lecture Part Two