Sorry, like Seth, I had to delete my original post. Except this time, I accidentally logged on to my old Blog-Name, which has been inactive since my DJ'ing days in my early twenties. If you are that curious, google me or ask me for a mix-tape. Batman has been de-masked. *********************************** Hey class,
First off, I am really psyched to be leading a discussion with Neil on this great work. I am excited to see how far we can unpack it relative to the discussion, the readings, and the overarching themes of the class. To start, I would like to focus on two themes: Darkness and Treason. Neil will be providing some prompts for analysis relating to Witchcraft. Of course, we welcome all ideas outside of our rubric. If you have an alternative area of focus, do not hesitate; fire at will!
Darkness:
This is arguably the darkest play by Shakespeare and, against John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, arguably one of the darkest of the Jacobean Tragedies. In Act 1.3.124, Banquio identifies the Weird Sisters as “instruments of darkness,” and I believe this is germane to our course’s examination of the processes of succumbing to evil. The connotations of the word darkness are various, so I will begin this post with the admission that it is up for (re) interpretation. I would like to direct you all to Act 3.1. lines: 47-71, or Act 5.5. lines: 24-8. Notice the many allusions, references, and emblems that reference either night, shadows, or the absence of light. Is the darkness of Macbeth a mere tonal device? In other Shakespearean Betrayal-Tragedies (Hamlet, Julius Caesar and to a lesser degree, Othello) darkness functions quite differently, if at all. What do you all think?
Frank Kermode, in his introduction to the play in the Riverside Edition, argues that Macbeth transforms from an “everyman” into someone (something?), whose “torments of conscience no longer come between desire and act. He loses his distinctive humanity” (1357). Wondering exactly how this comes about compels me to revisit Lady Macbeth’s “Instructions” to her husband in Act1.4. lines: 1-40, 37-54, 60-74. Is an Edenic interpretation of this play too simplistic? How does it coincide with our past discussions of original sin, predetermination, free will, and the possibilities of human beings achieving divine grace? Furthermore, where does the impulse to pursue darkness/evil manifest itself within the characters of this play? What can we say about the individual impulse towards evil in Macbeth?
Moreover, “Murther” (echoing Dr. Lemon in her last lecture) seems to breed independently in this play and in geometric fashion. Are Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and perhaps everybody in this play, except Duncan, mere Machiavellians? How does darkness work on individual, textual, political, familial, and symbolic levels?
I am trying to frame these questions simply, so as not to dominate the conversation and to get the channels of discussion flowing with your great ideas. Therefore, what of darkness in this play? What of its tone, and what of the Scottish the English landscapes in this play? What of the individual and collective yield to it? I am going to let the flood-gates open there, and I look forward to hearing from you all on this.
Betrayal/Treason:
As Dr. Lemon argues, the scaffold speech historically, and as in Macbeth, failed to maintain its didactic intent. That is, “the secular confession” does not prevent treason through admonishment, but subverts the agency of that state that attempts to use it as a symbol of omnipotence. Keeping the article in mind, I would also like to hear some of your thoughts on the scaffold speech of Cawdor in the play’s opening. Dr. Lemon argues that treason functions on both individual and state levels. I also think it functions on the familial unit as we can see, of Act 4.2. lines: 25-63, in the dialogue between Lady MacDuff and her child after the father’s abandonment. If treason manifolds Cerberus-like on the levels of the individual, the political, and the familial, what ideas does one have about the “foul is fair” dictum that shrouds this play?
I resist a Machiavellian interpretation in Macbeth because I think “power” is an illusion, or, at least, it is rather vaporous and diminishes too easily in the play. To varying degrees, I extracted this from Dr. Lemon’s article (i.e. her references to the vulnerable Duncan, the unrighteousness of Malcolm, the Faust-like self-condemnation of Macbeth’s final words, and the subversive potential of the scaffold speech). Furthermore, in this play, we have but one “official” scaffold speech of Cawdor and the “last words”, of Macbeth, Banquio, and the Macduff family, sans father. The latter three, if presented theatrically, could each be interpreted as a kind of scaffold speech, for the gallows always seem open for business in this play. The rest of the deaths occur off-stage.
Finally, I am very interested in Dr. Lemon’s coupling of Sydney’s and Puttenham’s definitions of tragedy with the scaffold speech. Both of which, echoing our Professor, on one hand, serve as a “warning within a warning”, and on the other hand “exposes the guilty viewers” (26). However, I am curious to hear any of your ruminations on this. Can we say the scaffold speech exhibits tragedy within tragedy? This seems very important, and I am excited to hear what everyone thinks. Looking forward to Friday. Oh, Sound, Oh Fury, Oh Idiot, telling the tale….
I will end this post with an excerpt from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, page 245:
The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, said the black.
The judge smiled, his face shining with grease. What right man would have it any other way? he said.
The good book does indeed count war an evil, said Irving. Yet there's many a bloody tale of war inside it.
It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.
Like Cody, I am looking forward to what we hope will be a very rich and exciting discussion of Macbeth. For my part, I would like to look at the role of witchcraft in Macbeth, both in terms of its function within the action of the play, as well as the way in which its presence reflects and comments on the existing social and religious phenomenon of the witch hunt and the changing definitions of what constituted a “witch.”
Witches and the Practice of Witchcraft
To some degree this discussion builds off of last week's, and so you may wish to review your notes on both the James and the Scot texts I found Scot's discussion of the definition of a “witch” in Book V, Chapter IX particularly helpful in addressing the complexity and range of the prevailing and often inconsistent definitions. Given that Macbeth was written during a period where there was a shift from the old popular view of witchcraft as maleficent magic (causing harm through ill-wishing or cursing) to a new view of witchcraft as a Christian heresy – devil worship – where maleficium was a secondary effect, how does this affect our perception of witches and witchcraft in the play?
Consider what signs and behaviors were considered proof of a witch: ill-will, familiars, spells, curses, visions and apparitions, ability to interrupt or incapacitate the minds or tongues of others, witch's mark, evil eye, killing of babies and animals, etc. How are the Weird Sisters constructed as witches? Do other characters appear witch-like at times? Is Lady Macbeth sometimes portrayed as a witch? Is Macbeth? Are there others? If so, how is this suggested? Is the older definition privileged or the newer?
Here's a few scenes to look at, feel free to introduce others that seem pertinent.
Appearances of the Three Witches: Act 1.1; Act 1.3 (first half); Act 3.5; Act 4.1 Macbeth's aside: Act 1.4.48-58 Lady Macbeth awaiting Macbeth: Act 1.5.14-29, 37-53 Lady Macbeth sleepwalking: Act 5.1
The Presence of the Devil and the Theological World of Macbeth
Unlike Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, Shakespeare's Macbeth does not feature an embodied Devil as a dominant presence throughout Macbeth. However Hell and allusions to Devil occur in various places (for example the Porter's speech and Macduff's comments in the last scene). At times it is hard to tell if the world is Catholic or Protestant in outlook. For a firm Protestant of the time, the appearance of Banquo's ghost could only be the work of an evil spirit or the Devil impersonating Banquo to push Macbeth into further evil. Or is the appearance of Banquo's Ghost a heavenly intervention – or even an unfriendly warning from a betrayed friend -- to call Macbeth to repentence and confession of his sins? How does the idea of demonic or devilish possession oppose the idea of witchcraft in Macbeth?
Ghosts, Visions, and Portents
Apparitions, visions, and unnatural portents abound in Macbeth. Macbeth faces the vision of the floating dagger before he commits the murderous act. Voices are heard which declare that Macbeth has murdered sleep. Banquo's Ghost returns and leads to the disturbance at the banquet. Lady Macbeth sleepwalks, obsessed with the vision of spots which cannot be washed away. At the end of the play, horses attack and consume each other. In what ways can these be read as the work of external forces? In what ways are they the products of internal and individual actions and thoughts?
Ok, that's a sense of some of the directions we can go with witchcraft. Of course, we are open to any other insights and happy to adapt. It would also be helpful think as well about the ways the themes of "witchcraft" and "treason" overlap and inform each other.
I'm excited about our discussion tomorrow - both Cody and Neil bring up lots of interesting ideas for us to explore at greater length.
As I did with last week's readings and my post about them, I found myself again really captivated by the idea of inescapable titles and labels. Following up with Neil's question about how the Weird sisters are constructed as witches in the play, I can't help but feel that reading the play (wherein the first stage directions say "Enter three Witches") robs us of the chance to read and interpret the signs that mark these women as witches. After all, they are immediately named as witches for us, whereas a contemporary viewer of the play would have to interpret their dress, words, and actions as "witch-like." I notice (and this could definitely be a singular reaction on my part) that my desire, or maybe my ability, to interpret the women's actions is closed off by the fact that I am supplied with the ready-made label "witch" from page one of the play. But I hope we'll be able to follow up with Neil's desire to look beyond the label to the construction of the "witchiness" of the Weird sisters, Lady Macbeth, and possibly other characters in our class discussion tomorrow.
There are other interesting ways that labels come into play in Macbeth. Obviously, the label "traitor" is a huge one, and one that Professor Lemon nicely worries and problematizes in her article (applying it, for instance, rather counter-intuitively but rewardingly to Malcolm because of his actions toward the anointed King, Macbeth). I find the idea that treacherousness follows the title of Thane of Cawdor like a curse (which Professor Lemon also implies, with her statement that the next Cawdor will quite likely prove as much a traitor as the two before him) particularly haunting. And this idea, that being the Thane of Cawdor in and of itself somehow affects one's free will, brings me to my final idea about labels in Macbeth: the idea that the labels the witches apply to Macbeth in their first meeting are the cause of his subsequent downfall. While I'm not entirely advocating this reading, I do find it intriguing. Like an old woman titled "witch" who finds herself "defiled with all maner of faults and infamies universallie, though she were not condemned; but (as I said) defamed with the name of a witch" (Scot 14), the titles the witches bestow upon Macbeth seem to have a corrupting affect upon both his morality and his agency/subjectivity.
I'll be interested to hear others' thoughts on this. See you all tomorrow! -Trisha
Like Neil, I had been thinking of how we could view Lady Macbeth as a witch, because in my reading of the play, there seemed to be two propelling forces: the witches, who lure Macbeth into action with promises of a great future, and Lady Macbeth, the inverse, who propels him forward by attacking his manhood.
Does this make her a "terrestrial" witch? I think so, because -- yes, let's go to the OED -- what is "bewitching?"
"To influence in a way similar to witchcraft; to fascinate, charm, enchant. Formerly often in a bad sense;"
A period example: From Tyndale's Bible, 1524: "O folisshe Galathyans: who hath bewitched you?"
Macbeth's manhood is established in the description of his bravery fighting the Norwegians. But as soon as he wavers from the plan to kill the king, Lady Macbeth suggests he is a coward for refusing to match his actions with his desires. Macbeth begs for peace, and implies restraint is an essential part of manhood by saying, "I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none" (Act 1, Scene 7, lines 47-46).
Later in this scene, after LM describes how they'll kill the king, Macbeth -- in an apparent fit of enthusiasm and support -- responds by saying, "Bring forth men-children only! For thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males" (73-75).
When the king is discovered dead, Lady Macbeth faints and is "helped out" from the scene, while a resolute Macbeth announces to the others "Let's briefly put on manly readiness" before going to view the body (Act 2, Scene 3, line 126).
Even so, it is an act, and when Banquo's Ghost appears, Lady Macbeth does her best to suggest Macbeth's is suffering from a benign "fit," before then demanding of her husband in an aside, "Are you a man?" (Act 3, Scene 4, lines 57-58).
Is some forms of manhood, such as the type urged by Lady Macbeth, "sick," unhealthy, enough to rob a person of his humanity, as seems to be the case with Macbeth in the aforementioned scene?
Is there a difference between noble "manhood," as is described in Macbeth's heroics defending his homeland from invasion, and other acts of "manhood?" This thoughtless violence, acts driven only to satisfy personal desires ("We are men, my liege," the first hired murderer says) is associated as manly, but what else? I think Shakespeare might be suggesting that "manhood" has its limits and must be steered by reason, for when Lady Macbeth reads Macbeth's letter, informing her of the witches' predictions, she calls out, "Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, UNSEX ME HERE and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of DIREST CRUELTY!" (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 36-39).
If she needs to be unsexed to be filled with "direst cruelty," to be able to have the courage to kill the king, is violence/murder situated in the male gender? Or is it sexless, something given over to the spirit world? Invisible, devilish?
I know it is dangerous to mention Harold Bloom-- he being so rightly contemptible-- but I'm going to do it anyway.
Bloom, in his afterward to the Annotated Shakespeare edition of Macbeth, calls the play a "tragedy of the imagination" (170). By which he argues that Macbeth indulges his imagination to such an extent that it proves to be without moral limit. He says that this tragedy implicates the audience as well as Macbeth because, in identifying with Macbeth, we must confront our own transgressive imaginations. "Macbeth terrifies us partly because that aspect of our own imagination is so frightening: it seems to make us murderers, thieves, usurpers, and rapists" (170). I'm struggling to decide with how much of this I agree.
But agree or disagree, a case can be made that imagination supersedes desire and robs Macbeth of free will. After the Weird Sisters prophesy his ascent to the throne, Macbeth exclaims, "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" (Act 1, Scene 3, Lines 137-142). Macbeth imagines the murder done before he chooses to do it and so "function is smothered in surmise."
We see this again when Macbeth says" "I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other" (Act 1, Scene 7, Lines 25-28).
Or, conversely, is imagination an assertion of the will? Does Macbeth have control over his own imaginings? Do the Weird Sisters inspire Macbeth's imaginative "o'erleaps"?
Or are they somehow extensions of his own imagination. I'm not arguing that they are not real like the good angel/bad angel in Faustus. But are they Macbeth's servants or his masters. In Act 4, Scene 1, Lines 62-64 they say, "Speak. Demand. We'll answer."
Is Shakespeare implying that imagination, itself, a kind of demonic spirit? Certainly England was suffering a plague of imagination during the time in which the play was written (the Gunpowder Plot, the execution of witches, the rise of the theater). Is imagination too broad a word? Is there a difference between what Shakespeare and the Divine Poets imagine into being?
Neil and Bryan, in responding to your questions regarding external vs. internal forces, I think the play is quite ambiguous on the causality of treason. The question of causality or instrumentality was addressed in the last class, but unlike _Dr. Faustus_ which depicts a private drama between a man and the devil, _Macbeth’s_ world is political and expansive—a mirror for Jacobean England. Is Macbeth the agent of his own destruction or is he acted upon? Is he the ultimate warlock (in the sense that he’s the ultimate dissembler and manipulator of truth), or is he bewitched and thus a tragic victim? The first meeting between Macbeth and the three witches blurs the attempt to describe action and phenomena within the binary framework of external v. interior forces.
In the play’s beginning, the witches present a riddle to Macbeth: “All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis … Thane of Cawdor … that shalt be king hereafter!” (1.3.48-50). Riddles demand explication and interpretation. But, as Professor Lemon points out, the encounter with mystery and the subsequent act of interpretation of it can lead people to treasonous thoughts. Inversely, dangerous situations like those depicted in the play and the real life Gunpowder plot, demand interpretation: both King James and Malcolm interpret their way out of danger. So the attempt to answer whether it’s the witches who lead Macbeth astray or whether Macbeth already possesses the potential for treason becomes almost impossible to articulate.
The dagger speech further distorts the attempt to ascribe blame: “Are thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight? or art thou but / A dagger of the mind, a false creation / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?” (2.2.47-40). In staging the scene, the director would have to make an interpretive decision to make the dagger manifest or not. If I were a director, my preference would be to make the materialism of the dagger as ambiguous as possible thereby maintaining the relational indeterminacy, established in the initial witches scene, between external force and interior volition.
My comments follows Cody’s interest in darkness, Neil’s in the historical reconstitution of definitions of witches, and Trisha’s in discovering ways of surmounting the “ready-made labels” of the witches in Macbeth. In particular, I am looking forward to tomorrow’s discussion of tracing through the play the change in perception and role of witchcraft (“witchcraft as a Christian heresy – devil worship”). Furthermore, at Neil’s suggestion that we look at “signs and behaviors” and “How…the Weird Sisters [are] constructed as witches”, I would like to suggest that some attention be paid to the prosodic form of the witches’ speech as an indicator because the lyrical construction of their perfomative speech seems a seminal starting point to analysis of their “construction” in the text.
First, their lines are written in predominantly regular trochaic tetrameter, as opposed to the more stately and common-speech iambic pentameter. Hence, the witches’ lines move quickly and evenly, but with an (dangerous) incantatory effect. Of note, too, is the inversion of the metrical unit in that the non-witch characters speak predominantly in iambs, and the “witches” speak in trochees. In other words, their speech could be argued as prosodically “unnatural” in relation to the normalized iambics of the play. Likewise, while performing their prophecy of a darkness (that, as Cody notes, is perhaps unmatched by Shakespeare’s other plays, though Iago all by himself portrays one insidious, haunting manifestation of darkness for me, too…), the rhymes come in conspicuously mirthful, full-rhymed couplets. This is sheer perfomative language, where what is on display is power (a very dark power). Interestingly, too, the feminine rhymes in the most famous passages of IV.I are that much more pronounced in their metaphorical “bubbling over” (into the plot, the future, the audience, etc) because of the extra syllable, which metrically erupt with prominence much like their content’s sinister foreboding.
Also, I’d quickly like to point out, too, that the list poems of the witches are ominous in that, like the diabolical incantations summoning Mephistophilis and Lucifer in Marlowe’s Faustus, the lists articulate and arrange what are seemingly constituent ingredients of witchcraft. And while the items might at times appear benign in isolation (e.g. “frog”, “fork”, “moon”), their combination by the “witches”—whose power and authority reside in their ability to identify and utilize these secret ingredients in “bewitching” (nod to Stephan) concoctions—is unsettling to the audience-member and reader uninitiated into the dark arts. Furthermore, these sing-song tetrameter lines exemplify prosodic play of Shakespeare, where he uses metrical variation (e.g. the spondaic emphasis on “charmed pot” in IV.I.8, or “gruel thick” in IV.I.32), as well as the consonance (e.g. “Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips”, or “”Ditch-deliver’d by a drab”) for the harshness of seemingly playful activity of these highly potent characters, who prove themselves propulsive of the entire narrative. And, of course, as we note in the text, the perfomativity is enhanced by the supplemental “Music and song, ‘Black spirits’, etc” in IV.I.43, and with this totality of darkness in a state of crescendo across the narrative arc of the poem, the reader is bound to feel, if not recognize and analytically evaluate, how Macbeth by Act V can thunder (even in a whisper) execrations of resonance, such as “The devil damn thee black” (V.III.11), or the hauntingly ghoulish (and, for our class, theologically pertinent):
my way of life Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf; And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but in their stead, Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not. Seyton!— (V.III.21-8)
And, finally, too, I’ll quickly point out that here we see verbal overlapping with all of our antecedent discussions of “obedience” and “Seyton”….
Macbeth doesn’t seem to be a very religious play. God is rarely mentioned, and the church appears nonexistent. And yet, when I step back from the play, it seems to be a passionate call to religious faith.
For one thing, the play is shot through with Lutheranism. Macbeth, the character, is a model of Luther’s fallen man who lacks effective free will. In fact, I keep thinking that Macbeth could be read as a re-writing of Oedipus. Both Macbeth and Oedipus try to outwit destinies they haven’t chosen. Like Oedipus, Macbeth seems borne along by forces totally outside his control. Macbeth’s downfall is the perfect object lesson for Jacobean Christians. Although Macbeth is the villain, he’s also the play’s main character. It’s hard to imagine the audience identifying as deeply with any of the other characters. For English Christians circa 1600, Macbeth must have been a terrifying play; it probably stoked all of their fears of their own fallibility and waywardness. So the very absence of Christ-faith from the horrible proceedings is what makes the play such a strong encouragement to faith. This is what happens, the play seems to suggest, absent the presence of God’s grace.
Did anyone else catch the curious exchange between Macduff and Malcolm in Act IV, scene 3? Malcolm declares it good that he himself isn’t king, going so far as to call Macbeth a “lamb” in contrast to his own “confineless harms.” He cites his own lust and greed as evidence of his bad nature. But then, suddenly, he becomes possessed by grace, invoking God to “Deal between thee and me, for even now / I put myself to thy direction and / Unspeak mine own detraction, here abjure / The taints and blames I laid upon myself / For strangers to my nature.” Malcolm seems, by God’s possession, to be relieved of his fallen-ness. This, evidently, is the grace unavailable to Macbeth. It seems to me that this grace is the horizon toward which the play is pushing its audience toward. Shakespeare a Lutheran? I think so.
I found myself most interested in the ways in which the witches, from the very beginning of the play through the end, are associated with weather and meteorological phenomena. This association seems to address itself to the limits of what contemporary science had to offer in terms of the physical, and even metaphysical, limits of the universe and the literal exposition of these boundaries. Vapor, in particular, as both a vehicle of transmutation and sublimation, seems especially significant as an emblem of that which arrives unknown and unaccounted for fully within the limits of human perception and thereby foreshadows the meta-literal import of the oracle. The danger, with the witches and with their prophesies alike, seems to be in the ability of the supernatural to exist in some strange nether-level of existence which operates according to natural laws fixed only intermittantly in physics and equally as frequently according to laws whose text have as yet to be written or understood. Time, for instance, appears again and again as both a comfort and a torment, as that which exists at the limit of the experience of tragedy. Furthermore, the reference to the Witches as the Weird Sisters (given the etymological significance of the word “weird”) only lends credence to my feeling that at stake in the play is the most profound grappling with the entire gamut of psychological experience framed within the mise-en-abyme of the natural cum supernatural.
11 comments:
Sorry, like Seth, I had to delete my original post. Except this time, I accidentally logged on to my old Blog-Name, which has been inactive since my DJ'ing days in my early twenties. If you are that curious, google me or ask me for a mix-tape. Batman has been de-masked.
***********************************
Hey class,
First off, I am really psyched to be leading a discussion with Neil on this great work. I am excited to see how far we can unpack it relative to the discussion, the readings, and the overarching themes of the class. To start, I would like to focus on two themes: Darkness and Treason. Neil will be providing some prompts for analysis relating to Witchcraft. Of course, we welcome all ideas outside of our rubric. If you have an alternative area of focus, do not hesitate; fire at will!
Darkness:
This is arguably the darkest play by Shakespeare and, against John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, arguably one of the darkest of the Jacobean Tragedies. In Act 1.3.124, Banquio identifies the Weird Sisters as “instruments of darkness,” and I believe this is germane to our course’s examination of the processes of succumbing to evil. The connotations of the word darkness are various, so I will begin this post with the admission that it is up for (re) interpretation. I would like to direct you all to Act 3.1. lines: 47-71, or Act 5.5. lines: 24-8. Notice the many allusions, references, and emblems that reference either night, shadows, or the absence of light. Is the darkness of Macbeth a mere tonal device? In other Shakespearean Betrayal-Tragedies (Hamlet, Julius Caesar and to a lesser degree, Othello) darkness functions quite differently, if at all. What do you all think?
Frank Kermode, in his introduction to the play in the Riverside Edition, argues that Macbeth transforms from an “everyman” into someone (something?), whose “torments of conscience no longer come between desire and act. He loses his distinctive humanity” (1357). Wondering exactly how this comes about compels me to revisit Lady Macbeth’s “Instructions” to her husband in Act1.4. lines: 1-40, 37-54, 60-74. Is an Edenic interpretation of this play too simplistic? How does it coincide with our past discussions of original sin, predetermination, free will, and the possibilities of human beings achieving divine grace? Furthermore, where does the impulse to pursue darkness/evil manifest itself within the characters of this play? What can we say about the individual impulse towards evil in Macbeth?
Moreover, “Murther” (echoing Dr. Lemon in her last lecture) seems to breed independently in this play and in geometric fashion. Are Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and perhaps everybody in this play, except Duncan, mere Machiavellians? How does darkness work on individual, textual, political, familial, and symbolic levels?
I am trying to frame these questions simply, so as not to dominate the conversation and to get the channels of discussion flowing with your great ideas. Therefore, what of darkness in this play? What of its tone, and what of the Scottish the English landscapes in this play? What of the individual and collective yield to it? I am going to let the flood-gates open there, and I look forward to hearing from you all on this.
Betrayal/Treason:
As Dr. Lemon argues, the scaffold speech historically, and as in Macbeth, failed to maintain its didactic intent. That is, “the secular confession” does not prevent treason through admonishment, but subverts the agency of that state that attempts to use it as a symbol of omnipotence. Keeping the article in mind, I would also like to hear some of your thoughts on the scaffold speech of Cawdor in the play’s opening. Dr. Lemon argues that treason functions on both individual and state levels. I also think it functions on the familial unit as we can see, of Act 4.2. lines: 25-63, in the dialogue between Lady MacDuff and her child after the father’s abandonment. If treason manifolds Cerberus-like on the levels of the individual, the political, and the familial, what ideas does one have about the “foul is fair” dictum that shrouds this play?
I resist a Machiavellian interpretation in Macbeth because I think “power” is an illusion, or, at least, it is rather vaporous and diminishes too easily in the play. To varying degrees, I extracted this from Dr. Lemon’s article (i.e. her references to the vulnerable Duncan, the unrighteousness of Malcolm, the Faust-like self-condemnation of Macbeth’s final words, and the subversive potential of the scaffold speech). Furthermore, in this play, we have but one “official” scaffold speech of Cawdor and the “last words”, of Macbeth, Banquio, and the Macduff family, sans father. The latter three, if presented theatrically, could each be interpreted as a kind of scaffold speech, for the gallows always seem open for business in this play. The rest of the deaths occur off-stage.
Finally, I am very interested in Dr. Lemon’s coupling of Sydney’s and Puttenham’s definitions of tragedy with the scaffold speech. Both of which, echoing our Professor, on one hand, serve as a “warning within a warning”, and on the other hand “exposes the guilty viewers” (26). However, I am curious to hear any of your ruminations on this. Can we say the scaffold speech exhibits tragedy within tragedy? This seems very important, and I am excited to hear what everyone thinks. Looking forward to Friday. Oh, Sound, Oh Fury, Oh Idiot, telling the tale….
I will end this post with an excerpt from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, page 245:
The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, said the black.
The judge smiled, his face shining with grease. What right man would have it any other way? he said.
The good book does indeed count war an evil, said Irving. Yet there's many a bloody tale of war inside it.
It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.
-Cody Todd
October 10, 2007 11:34 PM
Like Cody, I am looking forward to what we hope will be a very rich and exciting discussion of Macbeth. For my part, I would like to look at the role of witchcraft in Macbeth, both in terms of its function within the action of the play, as well as the way in which its presence reflects and comments on the existing social and religious phenomenon of the witch hunt and the changing definitions of what constituted a “witch.”
Witches and the Practice of Witchcraft
To some degree this discussion builds off of last week's, and so you may wish to review your notes on both the James and the Scot texts I found Scot's discussion of the definition of a “witch” in Book V, Chapter IX particularly helpful in addressing the complexity and range of the prevailing and often inconsistent definitions. Given that Macbeth was written during a period where there was a shift from the old popular view of witchcraft as maleficent magic (causing harm through ill-wishing or cursing) to a new view of witchcraft as a Christian heresy – devil worship – where maleficium was a secondary effect, how does this affect our perception of witches and witchcraft in the play?
Consider what signs and behaviors were considered proof of a witch: ill-will, familiars, spells, curses, visions and apparitions, ability to interrupt or incapacitate the minds or tongues of others, witch's mark, evil eye, killing of babies and animals, etc. How are the Weird Sisters constructed as witches? Do other characters appear witch-like at times? Is Lady Macbeth sometimes portrayed as a witch? Is Macbeth? Are there others? If so, how is this suggested? Is the older definition privileged or the newer?
Here's a few scenes to look at, feel free to introduce others that seem pertinent.
Appearances of the Three Witches: Act 1.1; Act 1.3 (first half); Act 3.5; Act 4.1
Macbeth's aside: Act 1.4.48-58
Lady Macbeth awaiting Macbeth: Act 1.5.14-29, 37-53
Lady Macbeth sleepwalking: Act 5.1
The Presence of the Devil and the Theological World of Macbeth
Unlike Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, Shakespeare's Macbeth does not feature an embodied Devil as a dominant presence throughout Macbeth. However Hell and allusions to Devil occur in various places (for example the Porter's speech and Macduff's comments in the last scene). At times it is hard to tell if the world is Catholic or Protestant in outlook. For a firm Protestant of the time, the appearance of Banquo's ghost could only be the work of an evil spirit or the Devil impersonating Banquo to push Macbeth into further evil. Or is the appearance of Banquo's Ghost a heavenly intervention – or even an unfriendly warning from a betrayed friend -- to call Macbeth to repentence and confession of his sins? How does the idea of demonic or devilish possession oppose the idea of witchcraft in Macbeth?
Ghosts, Visions, and Portents
Apparitions, visions, and unnatural portents abound in Macbeth. Macbeth faces the vision of the floating dagger before he commits the murderous act. Voices are heard which declare that Macbeth has murdered sleep. Banquo's Ghost returns and leads to the disturbance at the banquet. Lady Macbeth sleepwalks, obsessed with the vision of spots which cannot be washed away. At the end of the play, horses attack and consume each other. In what ways can these be read as the work of external forces? In what ways are they the products of internal and individual actions and thoughts?
Ok, that's a sense of some of the directions we can go with witchcraft. Of course, we are open to any other insights and happy to adapt. It would also be helpful think as well about the ways the themes of "witchcraft" and "treason" overlap and inform each other.
I'm excited about our discussion tomorrow - both Cody and Neil bring up lots of interesting ideas for us to explore at greater length.
As I did with last week's readings and my post about them, I found myself again really captivated by the idea of inescapable titles and labels. Following up with Neil's question about how the Weird sisters are constructed as witches in the play, I can't help but feel that reading the play (wherein the first stage directions say "Enter three Witches") robs us of the chance to read and interpret the signs that mark these women as witches. After all, they are immediately named as witches for us, whereas a contemporary viewer of the play would have to interpret their dress, words, and actions as "witch-like." I notice (and this could definitely be a singular reaction on my part) that my desire, or maybe my ability, to interpret the women's actions is closed off by the fact that I am supplied with the ready-made label "witch" from page one of the play. But I hope we'll be able to follow up with Neil's desire to look beyond the label to the construction of the "witchiness" of the Weird sisters, Lady Macbeth, and possibly other characters in our class discussion tomorrow.
There are other interesting ways that labels come into play in Macbeth. Obviously, the label "traitor" is a huge one, and one that Professor Lemon nicely worries and problematizes in her article (applying it, for instance, rather counter-intuitively but rewardingly to Malcolm because of his actions toward the anointed King, Macbeth). I find the idea that treacherousness follows the title of Thane of Cawdor like a curse (which Professor Lemon also implies, with her statement that the next Cawdor will quite likely prove as much a traitor as the two before him) particularly haunting. And this idea, that being the Thane of Cawdor in and of itself somehow affects one's free will, brings me to my final idea about labels in Macbeth: the idea that the labels the witches apply to Macbeth in their first meeting are the cause of his subsequent downfall. While I'm not entirely advocating this reading, I do find it intriguing. Like an old woman titled "witch" who finds herself "defiled with all maner of faults and infamies universallie, though she were not condemned; but (as I said) defamed with the name of a witch" (Scot 14), the titles the witches bestow upon Macbeth seem to have a corrupting affect upon both his morality and his agency/subjectivity.
I'll be interested to hear others' thoughts on this. See you all tomorrow!
-Trisha
Like Neil, I had been thinking of how we could view Lady Macbeth as a witch, because in my reading of the play, there seemed to be two propelling forces: the witches, who lure Macbeth into action with promises of a great future, and Lady Macbeth, the inverse, who propels him forward by attacking his manhood.
Does this make her a "terrestrial" witch? I think so, because -- yes, let's go to the OED -- what is "bewitching?"
"To influence in a way similar to witchcraft; to fascinate, charm, enchant. Formerly often in a bad sense;"
A period example: From Tyndale's Bible, 1524: "O folisshe Galathyans: who hath bewitched you?"
Macbeth's manhood is established in the description of his bravery fighting the Norwegians. But as soon as he wavers from the plan to kill the king, Lady Macbeth suggests he is a coward for refusing to match his actions with his desires. Macbeth begs for peace, and implies restraint is an essential part of manhood by saying, "I dare do all that may become a man; who dares do more is none" (Act 1, Scene 7, lines 47-46).
Later in this scene, after LM describes how they'll kill the king, Macbeth -- in an apparent fit of enthusiasm and support -- responds by saying, "Bring forth men-children only! For thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males" (73-75).
When the king is discovered dead, Lady Macbeth faints and is "helped out" from the scene, while a resolute Macbeth announces to the others "Let's briefly put on manly readiness" before going to view the body (Act 2, Scene 3, line 126).
Even so, it is an act, and when Banquo's Ghost appears, Lady Macbeth does her best to suggest Macbeth's is suffering from a benign "fit," before then demanding of her husband in an aside, "Are you a man?" (Act 3, Scene 4, lines 57-58).
Is some forms of manhood, such as the type urged by Lady Macbeth, "sick," unhealthy, enough to rob a person of his humanity, as seems to be the case with Macbeth in the aforementioned scene?
Is there a difference between noble "manhood," as is described in Macbeth's heroics defending his homeland from invasion, and other acts of "manhood?" This thoughtless violence, acts driven only to satisfy personal desires ("We are men, my liege," the first hired murderer says) is associated as manly, but what else? I think Shakespeare might be suggesting that "manhood" has its limits and must be steered by reason, for when Lady Macbeth reads Macbeth's letter, informing her of the witches' predictions, she calls out, "Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, UNSEX ME HERE and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of DIREST CRUELTY!" (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 36-39).
If she needs to be unsexed to be filled with "direst cruelty," to be able to have the courage to kill the king, is violence/murder situated in the male gender? Or is it sexless, something given over to the spirit world? Invisible, devilish?
I know it is dangerous to mention Harold Bloom-- he being so rightly contemptible-- but I'm going to do it anyway.
Bloom, in his afterward to the Annotated Shakespeare edition of Macbeth, calls the play a "tragedy of the imagination" (170). By which he argues that Macbeth indulges his imagination to such an extent that it proves to be without moral limit. He says that this tragedy implicates the audience as well as Macbeth because, in identifying with Macbeth, we must confront our own transgressive imaginations. "Macbeth terrifies us partly because that aspect of our own imagination is so frightening: it seems to make us murderers, thieves, usurpers, and rapists" (170). I'm struggling to decide with how much of this I agree.
But agree or disagree, a case can be made that imagination supersedes desire and robs Macbeth of free will. After the Weird Sisters prophesy his ascent to the throne, Macbeth exclaims, "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" (Act 1, Scene 3, Lines 137-142). Macbeth imagines the murder done before he chooses to do it and so "function is smothered in surmise."
We see this again when Macbeth says" "I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other" (Act 1, Scene 7, Lines 25-28).
Or, conversely, is imagination an assertion of the will? Does Macbeth have control over his own imaginings? Do the Weird Sisters inspire Macbeth's imaginative "o'erleaps"?
Or are they somehow extensions of his own imagination. I'm not arguing that they are not real like the good angel/bad angel in Faustus. But are they Macbeth's servants or his masters. In Act 4, Scene 1, Lines 62-64 they say, "Speak. Demand. We'll answer."
Is Shakespeare implying that imagination, itself, a kind of demonic spirit? Certainly England was suffering a plague of imagination during the time in which the play was written (the Gunpowder Plot, the execution of witches, the rise of the theater). Is imagination too broad a word? Is there a difference between what Shakespeare and the Divine Poets imagine into being?
Neil and Bryan, in responding to your questions regarding external vs. internal forces, I think the play is quite ambiguous on the causality of treason. The question of causality or instrumentality was addressed in the last class, but unlike _Dr. Faustus_ which depicts a private drama between a man and the devil, _Macbeth’s_ world is political and expansive—a mirror for Jacobean England. Is Macbeth the agent of his own destruction or is he acted upon? Is he the ultimate warlock (in the sense that he’s the ultimate dissembler and manipulator of truth), or is he bewitched and thus a tragic victim? The first meeting between Macbeth and the three witches blurs the attempt to describe action and phenomena within the binary framework of external v. interior forces.
In the play’s beginning, the witches present a riddle to Macbeth: “All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis … Thane of Cawdor … that shalt be king hereafter!” (1.3.48-50). Riddles demand explication and interpretation. But, as Professor Lemon points out, the encounter with mystery and the subsequent act of interpretation of it can lead people to treasonous thoughts. Inversely, dangerous situations like those depicted in the play and the real life Gunpowder plot, demand interpretation: both King James and Malcolm interpret their way out of danger. So the attempt to answer whether it’s the witches who lead Macbeth astray or whether Macbeth already possesses the potential for treason becomes almost impossible to articulate.
The dagger speech further distorts the attempt to ascribe blame: “Are thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight? or art thou but / A dagger of the mind, a false creation / Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?” (2.2.47-40). In staging the scene, the director would have to make an interpretive decision to make the dagger manifest or not. If I were a director, my preference would be to make the materialism of the dagger as ambiguous as possible thereby maintaining the relational indeterminacy, established in the initial witches scene, between external force and interior volition.
Hi, All.
My comments follows Cody’s interest in darkness, Neil’s in the historical reconstitution of definitions of witches, and Trisha’s in discovering ways of surmounting the “ready-made labels” of the witches in Macbeth. In particular, I am looking forward to tomorrow’s discussion of tracing through the play the change in perception and role of witchcraft (“witchcraft as a Christian heresy – devil worship”). Furthermore, at Neil’s suggestion that we look at “signs and behaviors” and “How…the Weird Sisters [are] constructed as witches”, I would like to suggest that some attention be paid to the prosodic form of the witches’ speech as an indicator because the lyrical construction of their perfomative speech seems a seminal starting point to analysis of their “construction” in the text.
First, their lines are written in predominantly regular trochaic tetrameter, as opposed to the more stately and common-speech iambic pentameter. Hence, the witches’ lines move quickly and evenly, but with an (dangerous) incantatory effect. Of note, too, is the inversion of the metrical unit in that the non-witch characters speak predominantly in iambs, and the “witches” speak in trochees. In other words, their speech could be argued as prosodically “unnatural” in relation to the normalized iambics of the play. Likewise, while performing their prophecy of a darkness (that, as Cody notes, is perhaps unmatched by Shakespeare’s other plays, though Iago all by himself portrays one insidious, haunting manifestation of darkness for me, too…), the rhymes come in conspicuously mirthful, full-rhymed couplets. This is sheer perfomative language, where what is on display is power (a very dark power). Interestingly, too, the feminine rhymes in the most famous passages of IV.I are that much more pronounced in their metaphorical “bubbling over” (into the plot, the future, the audience, etc) because of the extra syllable, which metrically erupt with prominence much like their content’s sinister foreboding.
Also, I’d quickly like to point out, too, that the list poems of the witches are ominous in that, like the diabolical incantations summoning Mephistophilis and Lucifer in Marlowe’s Faustus, the lists articulate and arrange what are seemingly constituent ingredients of witchcraft. And while the items might at times appear benign in isolation (e.g. “frog”, “fork”, “moon”), their combination by the “witches”—whose power and authority reside in their ability to identify and utilize these secret ingredients in “bewitching” (nod to Stephan) concoctions—is unsettling to the audience-member and reader uninitiated into the dark arts. Furthermore, these sing-song tetrameter lines exemplify prosodic play of Shakespeare, where he uses metrical variation (e.g. the spondaic emphasis on “charmed pot” in IV.I.8, or “gruel thick” in IV.I.32), as well as the consonance (e.g. “Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips”, or “”Ditch-deliver’d by a drab”) for the harshness of seemingly playful activity of these highly potent characters, who prove themselves propulsive of the entire narrative. And, of course, as we note in the text, the perfomativity is enhanced by the supplemental “Music and song, ‘Black spirits’, etc” in IV.I.43, and with this totality of darkness in a state of crescendo across the narrative arc of the poem, the reader is bound to feel, if not recognize and analytically evaluate, how Macbeth by Act V can thunder (even in a whisper) execrations of resonance, such as “The devil damn thee black” (V.III.11), or the hauntingly ghoulish (and, for our class, theologically pertinent):
my way of life
Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but in their stead,
Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
Seyton!—
(V.III.21-8)
And, finally, too, I’ll quickly point out that here we see verbal overlapping with all of our antecedent discussions of “obedience” and “Seyton”….
See you tomorrow.
Seth
Macbeth doesn’t seem to be a very religious play. God is rarely mentioned, and the church appears nonexistent. And yet, when I step back from the play, it seems to be a passionate call to religious faith.
For one thing, the play is shot through with Lutheranism. Macbeth, the character, is a model of Luther’s fallen man who lacks effective free will. In fact, I keep thinking that Macbeth could be read as a re-writing of Oedipus. Both Macbeth and Oedipus try to outwit destinies they haven’t chosen. Like Oedipus, Macbeth seems borne along by forces totally outside his control. Macbeth’s downfall is the perfect object lesson for Jacobean Christians. Although Macbeth is the villain, he’s also the play’s main character. It’s hard to imagine the audience identifying as deeply with any of the other characters. For English Christians circa 1600, Macbeth must have been a terrifying play; it probably stoked all of their fears of their own fallibility and waywardness. So the very absence of Christ-faith from the horrible proceedings is what makes the play such a strong encouragement to faith. This is what happens, the play seems to suggest, absent the presence of God’s grace.
Did anyone else catch the curious exchange between Macduff and Malcolm in Act IV, scene 3? Malcolm declares it good that he himself isn’t king, going so far as to call Macbeth a “lamb” in contrast to his own “confineless harms.” He cites his own lust and greed as evidence of his bad nature. But then, suddenly, he becomes possessed by grace, invoking God to “Deal between thee and me, for even now / I put myself to thy direction and / Unspeak mine own detraction, here abjure / The taints and blames I laid upon myself / For strangers to my nature.” Malcolm seems, by God’s possession, to be relieved of his fallen-ness. This, evidently, is the grace unavailable to Macbeth. It seems to me that this grace is the horizon toward which the play is pushing its audience toward. Shakespeare a Lutheran? I think so.
I found myself most interested in the ways in which the witches, from the very beginning of the play through the end, are associated with weather and meteorological phenomena. This association seems to address itself to the limits of what contemporary science had to offer in terms of the physical, and even metaphysical, limits of the universe and the literal exposition of these boundaries. Vapor, in particular, as both a vehicle of transmutation and sublimation, seems especially significant as an emblem of that which arrives unknown and unaccounted for fully within the limits of human perception and thereby foreshadows the meta-literal import of the oracle. The danger, with the witches and with their prophesies alike, seems to be in the ability of the supernatural to exist in some strange nether-level of existence which operates according to natural laws fixed only intermittantly in physics and equally as frequently according to laws whose text have as yet to be written or understood. Time, for instance, appears again and again as both a comfort and a torment, as that which exists at the limit of the experience of tragedy. Furthermore, the reference to the Witches as the Weird Sisters (given the etymological significance of the word “weird”) only lends credence to my feeling that at stake in the play is the most profound grappling with the entire gamut of psychological experience framed within the mise-en-abyme of the natural cum supernatural.
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