Agency in Macbeth

 “By the pricking of my thumbs / Something wicked this way comes” (4.1.44-5)

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair”

 1.1. Witches in open space

“When shall we three meet again…”?

“when the hurlyburly’s done,

When the battle’s lost and won.”

“That will be ere the set of sun.”

“Where the place?”

“Upon the heath.”

“There to meet with Macbeth.”

Bleeding Sergeant’s Report

 1.2.

 Sergeant saved Malcolm

 Learn of Macbeth’s valour (killing Macdonwald)

“Like valour’s minion,

Carved out his passage till he faced the slave;

Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,

Till he unseam’d him from the nave to th’chops,

And fixt his head upon our battlements.”

Macbeth and Banquo:

“I must report they were

As cannons overcharged with double cracks;

Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe:

Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,

Or memorize another Golgotha…”

“No more that thane of Cawdor shall deceive

Our bosom interest: - go pronounce his present death,

And with his former title greet Macbeth.”

1.3 – Audience meets Macbeth

 “So foul and fair a day I have not seen.”

BANQUO What are these

So wither’d, and so wild in their attire,

That look not like th’inhabitants o’th’earth,

And yet are on it? – Live you? Or are you aught

That man may question? You seem to understand me,

By each at once her choppy finger laying

Upon her skinny lips: - you should be women,

And yet your beards forbid me to interpret

That you are so.

 1st Prophecy

 All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Glamis!

 All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, thane of Cawdor!

 All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter!

 (I.iii.48-50)
Good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear

Things that do sound so fair? – I’th’name of truth

Are ye fantastical, or that indeed

Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner

Your greet with present grace, and great prediction

Of noble having and of royal hope,

That he seems rapt withal: - to me you speak not:

If you can look into the seeds of time,

And say which grain will grow, and which will not,

Speak, then, to me, who neither beg nor fear

Your favours nor your hate.

2nd Prophecy

 Third Witch: Hail!

First Witch: Lesser than Macbeth, and greater.

Second Witch: Not so happy, yet much happier.

Third Witch: Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none:

So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo! (I.iii.64-68)

 Thane of Cawdor – immediately fulfilled

 Banquo: “What, can the devil speak true?”

But t’is 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.”
Macbeth’s Reaction

Two truths are told,

As happy prologues to the swelling act

Of the imperial theme …

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 smother’d in surmise; and nothing is

But what is not.”

 His decision:

If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,

Without my stir.

 Appointing Malcolm Prince of Cumberland & successor

“The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step

On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap,

For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;

Let light not see my black and deep desires:

Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.” (1.4.)

 The witches announce Macbeth's titles - they equivocate;

 Oracles always equivocate; not allowed to announce the truth

 Witches are not taken seriously until the prophecies have become fulfilled

Lady Macbeth

 Opens scene 5, reading Macbeth’s letter

 Implications of literacy

 Some claim her to be latent witch

yet do I fear thy nature,

It is too full o’th’ 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.

 Decides Duncan must die:

The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

Under my battlements.

 Lady Macbeth wants to be a man;

 “unsex” - cause is important

 something unnatural about her

 changing sexes - a variation of witchcraft

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here

And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull

Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,

Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between

Th’effect and it. Come to my woman’s breasts

And take my milk for gall, you murd’ring 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.’

Scene 6

 Duncan & Banquo

 Riding towards Inverness

 Dramatic irony:

 Audience knows Macbeths’ plans

 Raven v. martlet

 Banquo does not reveal knowledge of prophecies

 Why not?

Scene 7
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well

It were done quickly.

 Then said Jesus unto him [i.e. to Satan, after "Satan entered into" Judas], That

thou doest, do quickly." (John 13:18,24-27 KJV)

If the assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch,

With his surcease, success; that but this blow

Might be the be-all and the end-all here,(5)

But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,

We'd jump the life to come. 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(10)

Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice

To our own lips.

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,(15)

Not bear the knife myself.

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,(20)

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.

I have no spur(25)

To prick the sides of my intent, but only

Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself

And falls on the other—

 Macbeth has vividly imaged forth a universal tempest of divine wrath that will be

unleashed against him should he commit the enormity of murder, especially the

murder of the Lord's anointed, who is also his guest and relative.

 This is the case…

Art thou afeard

To be the same in thine own act and valour,

As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that

Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life,

And live a coward in thine own esteem,

Letting I dare not wait upon I would,

Like the poor cat i’th’adage?

MACBETH Prithee, peace.

I dare do all that may become a man;

Who dares do more is none.

LADY MACBETH What beast was’t then

When you durst do it, then you were a man.

And to be more than what you were, you would

Be so much more the man.

I have given suck and know

How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums

And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn

As you have done to this.

Character Arcs

 Macbeth

 Initally against murder

 Taunted into it

 Haunted by the magnitude of what he’s done

 Last murder he commits

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green one red.

Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more!

…
Still it cried ‘Sleep no more!’ to all the house:

‘Glamis hath murder’d sleep, and therefore Cawdor

Shall sleep no more, - Macbeth shall sleep no more!’

 Deeply regrets the murder

 Is aware of the consequences for his soul

 Effects: auditory hallucinations, no sleep

 Nature: goes wild in response to murder of king

Lady Macbeth

 Develops in other direction

 Initally strong;

Infirm of purpose!

Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead

Are but as pictures: ‘tis the eye of childhood

That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,

I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal;

For it must seem their guilt.

My hands are of your colour; but I shame

To wear a heart so white. (1.2.)

 These “pictures” become her undoing:

 Guilty conscience

 Sleepwalking

 Rubbing hands

Out damned spot! Out, I say! – One, two; why,

lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear

who knows it, when none can call our power to

account? – Yet who would have thought the old man

to have had so much blood in him?

The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now? –

What, will these hands ne’er be clean? – No more

O’that my lord, no more o’that; you mar all with this starting

Here’s the smell of blood still; all the per-

fumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

 Guilt drives her to suicide

Macbeth develops in opposite direction:

 Banquo’s ghost

 “Fail not our feast!”

 Ghost only visible to Macbeth & audience

 Hallucination like dagger?

 Objective? To force repentance?

I am in blood

Stept so far, that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o’er:

My strange and self-abuse

We are yet but young in deed.

Banquo as Macbeth’s foil

 Reactions to prophecies:

 Macbeth acts upon them

 Would he have done the same had he not heard the prophecy?

 Do the Weird Sisters know what he is going to do?

 Or do they give the idea, Macbeth acts of own accord?

 Banquo does not

 Cursed thoughts come to him in sleep

 Prays for “merciful powers” to restrain these thoughts

 Declares himself on the side of God.

 Cf. Macbeths – pray for darkness to hide their deeds from others and

from selves

3rd Prophecy

Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn

The power of man, for none of woman born

Shall harm Macbeth. Descends.(IV.1.88-90)

...

Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until

Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill

Shall come against him." (IV.1.92-94)

Seek to know no more…

Come like shadows, so depart!

3rd prophecy: gives sense of false security

 Equivocation: “lies like truth”

 Wood cannot move

 All men are of women born

 The Show of Kings

 Kills all of Macbeth’s humanity

 Stresses the futility of what he has done

 Embarks on killing spree:

“The very firstlings of my heart shall be

The firstlings of my hand. And even now,

To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought

And done;

 Realises this at the end:

Blow, wind! Come, wrack!

At least we’ll die with harness on our back!

 Futility of Life

She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

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.

Double, double…

 Malcolm

 Testing of Macduff

 Support from English king

 Regains throne

 Macduff motivated by:

 Love of Scotland

 Revenge

 The Ending

 “this dead butcher, and his fiend-like queen”

 Malcolm is king, but denied on-stage coronation, like Macbeth

 Unanswered questions:

 Where is Fleance?

 When will Banquo’s line assume the throne?

 How will Banquo’s line assume it?

 “It will be so”