Macbeth:
A Strange Exhilaration
Feraco
Search for Human Potential
13 November 2014
Macbeth’s first act ends on a note of
moral darkness.
Its second act begins in literal
darkness, as Fleance (Banquo’s son)
and his father briefly note that the stars
and moon seem to have gone out.
Fleance’s perfunctory appearances –
he shows up here, then during the
attack in Act III – seem irrelevant, but
they gain meaning through their brevity.
We barely know him.
We don’t understand what he wants
or needs.
But neither does Macbeth.
The Weïrd Sisters’ words to
Banquo only establish Fleance as a
threat, and because Macbeth
doesn’t know when his
counterpart will take power, how
he will take it, or why he will take it,
that threat is amplified by its
ambiguity.
By keeping Fleance on the play’s
margins, Shakespeare not only
ensures that he’ll be just as
enigmatic to us, but that we’ll
understand Macbeth’s decisions
regarding him, even if we don’t
agree with them.
If Fleance is, by design, not the first
scene’s focus, Banquo surely is.
It is his curse to be the Govinda of this
play, not in function but in relation:
every decision he makes and every word
he speaks carries with it an extra
dimension of meaning, for we cannot
help seeing him as he relates to
Macbeth.
But while Govinda was content to be
the shadow of greater men, Banquo’s
relationship with Macbeth –“Lesser
than Macbeth and greater; not so happy,
yet much happier; thou shalt get kings,
though thou be none” – is much more
complicated.
First, it must be noted that Banquo
constantly reminds us of the man
Macbeth was before he heard the
witches’ words.
Before they meet the Sisters, the men
are much the same – two nobles of
roughly equivalent stature, two close
friends and brothers in arms who
defend the same cause, etc.
When the Sisters speak, both men
demand that they say more than their
original greeting to Macbeth.
The Sisters oblige their requests –
after attempting to refuse – by giving
Banquo three sentences of his own
(equal to Macbeth’s “prophecy”).
But the two diverge once they
process what the Sisters said.
For while Macbeth loses himself
in ambitious fantasy, Banquo
actively resists the words’ effects
on his psyche.
He, like Macbeth, is ambitious –
he agrees to speak with Macbeth
about the prophecies later here,
just as he does at the end of Act I’s
third scene – but he’s so troubled
by the places ambitious thoughts
lead him that he refuses to follow
them.
When we meet him in Act II’s first
scene, Banquo is refusing to sleep –
shades of the curse Macbeth will soon
bring upon himself.
Where sleep represents salvation and
serenity for Macbeth, for Banquo it only
means a dark place where he cannot
control his urges.
Banquo’s dreams, in short, frighten
him.
So he refuses to dream, just as his
friend will once he’s killed his way to the
throne, and prays for “merciful powers”
to take away those evil impulses just as
Lady Macbeth prayed for the ability to
unleash hers.
Even this early in the play,
Shakespeare has provided his audience
with nuanced, literarily rich characters.
They have layers.
Lady Macbeth is a character in her
own right, but she’s so much more as
well: the representation and voice of
every dark impulse her husband
possesses, as well as a sly vehicle for
commentary on women’s roles and
conventional morality.
Through her, Shakespeare can ask
difficult questions about whether one’s
personal loyalties should outweigh one
another, or whether said loyalties
should outweigh one’s larger duties and
responsibilities.
If Lady Macbeth would argue in favor
of personal loyalties and personal
desires, Banquo would argue that one’s
pre-established duties matter more, and
that the greater good should always
outweigh one’s own wishes.
As Macbeth’s best friend, he
represents Macbeth’s connection to
humanity (as his connection to Lady
Macbeth is something else entirely).
But he also comes to embody
everything about Macbeth that we
would have once respected; their
willingness to sacrifice personal gain
for the greater good, for example, saves
Scotland from the Norwegians at the
play’s beginning.
When Macbeth meets him in
darkness – identifying himself as
a friend – it’s really the last
chance the former has to see his
better nature and break away
from his plan.
But he doesn’t: he schemes in
plain sight of his best friend, and
Banquo – his better nature – is so
troubled by the witches’ words
that he doesn’t recognize how far
Macbeth’s willing to go until it’s
too late.
Just as he did during the Sisters’
appearance, Banquo sounds a
note of caution: he pledges here
that he’ll serve Macbeth loyally,
but that he won’t betray his king.
These two pledges are, of
course, incompatible.
And when Macbeth murders
him after taking the throne,
Banquo’s ghost haunts the hall;
the king is haunted by nothing
less than the virtues he’s
forsaken, embodied by the
connection to humanity he’s
figuratively and literally severed.
One quickly senses while reading
Macbeth that a great deal of staging
and blocking (the pre-arranged
positions, poses, and movements for the
actors) never made it into print.
The play derives a great deal of
meaning through body language and
tone of voice, but what’s obvious on
stage doesn’t always come across well
in print, especially if one struggles to
understand Shakespeare’s dialogue.
As the play progresses, these things
become more important, and a careful
consideration of stage direction is
necessary in order to “get” some of the
play’s biggest moments.
The opening conversation
between Macbeth and Banquo is
much nervier than the words
imply; Banquo’s so jumpy that,
upon hearing Macbeth approach,
he grabs his sword back from
Fleance and holds it at the ready.
Contemporary readers may
think this a perfectly normal
response to the approach of an
unknown figure under cover of
total darkness.
Remember, however, that this takes
place in Macbeth’s castle.
It’s supposed to be safe there (per
the “birds’ nests” conversation in Act
I’s sixth scene); why is Banquo so
terrified?
It’s not due to the traumatic aftereffects of the battles he fought earlier
in the play; over a day has passed
since.
No, Banquo’s wound himself up, and
too much so.
Paradoxically, fear dulls his “wise”
instincts while heightening the others;
he doesn’t see “the serpent under the
flower” until it’s too late, because the
flower’s the only place he doesn’t
consider checking.
We’ve studied distorted
perceptions such as these in our
earlier work with Siddhartha.
In that book, we played with
concepts of bent reality
(maya/satyam) and time,
questioning whether our senses
could be trusted to truly explain a
complicated universe.
Since we know Macbeth’s about
to descend into hallucinationfueled paranoia, we know they’ll be
important here too.
But it’s important to note that nobody
sees Macbeth “as he truly is” – not Duncan,
not Banquo, not even Lady Macbeth.
We certainly aren’t able to, for we can’t
get a handle on his true goals, desires, or
intentions.
To his credit, Macduff (whom we’ll meet
shortly) quickly sheds his preconceptions
regarding the soon-to-be king, but even he
comes to see Macbeth as nothing but a
simple villain – a depraved monster, a
creature of pure evil.
Macbeth is seen differently by everyone
who sees him, and the only times we really
get a sense of his true self are when
Shakespeare allows him to lapse into
soliloquy; otherwise, he’s a part of the maya
that catches everyone in its hold here.
One of his most famous soliloquies
happens immediately after that tense,
charged conversation with Banquo (in
plain view of his son) comes to a close.
Our conflicted protagonist – an odd
but accurate term to ascribe to
Macbeth – sees a dagger, weeping
blood, floating towards him in the
otherwise empty air.
There’s a lot of business about
masculinity as it relates to strength,
and the phallic undertones of the
dagger grow more overt as Macbeth
contemplates both the vision-weapon
and his own.
Does Macbeth take control, as his
wife insists a man must, and wield the
blade?
What, indeed, defines a man?
At first blush, this shouldn’t be as difficult a
conversation to have as the one where we try to
define love.
Yet if there’s anything that people are worse
at competently discussing and defining than
emotion, it seems to be gender and identity
issues.
This is, perhaps, a consequence of living in
a society where too much art – not to mention
advertisements – actively denigrates women.
But those same ads and art denigrate males
as well; I can’t remember the last time a beer
commercial didn’t make me ashamed of men
in general.
One of the reasons I appreciate Lady
Macbeth’s presence in this play is the specific
way she challenges our expectations, both
moral and otherwise.
But I digress: Macbeth says he won’t
do more than a man should, for one
whose ambitions outweigh what’s
expected of him as a man relinquishes
all claims of being one.
But is this a situation where those
ambitions are the only means he has of
“being a man”?
Does he even have a choice?
Can he choose not to kill when the
witches tell him he will be king, when
his wife demands that he must be king,
when even the air sprouts blades and
drips blood before his very eyes while
he’s alone?
What’s the alternative?
Where can he escape?
Macbeth’s alone in the room, yet
Shakespeare’s staging and dialogue
pace gives the audience an
overwhelming impression of a
trapped man, hemmed in on all
sides but one, and with only one
path to take.
Macbeth frantically tries to
summon his resolve as the bell tolls
outside (the sign for him to commit
the crime), and he leaves the stage.
The bell tolls even as the scene
ends; Macbeth says that it’s to
herald Duncan’s departure, either
his ascent to heaven or descent to
hell, but we know it really signals
Macbeth’s descent.
Dante may be able to venture
into the depths of hell and come
out on the other side stronger
for it; divine love sent him, and
divine love guides him.
Macbeth’s acting according
to the words of witches and the
demands of his wife, who
nobody would mistake for
representing divinity; he, too,
will stare into the abyss, but
unlike Dante, he’s never coming
back.
Act II’s second scene is a masterpiece of
staging.
It takes place in the Macbeths’ bedroom,
normally a place of intimacy and love.
Where better to set a furious argument
over murder and betrayal, complete with
both principals covered in their victim’s
blood?
Lady Macbeth tells the audience that
she’s done her job – drugging the guards,
unlocking Duncan’s doors for her husband,
lovingly arranging the daggers for him to
use, and ringing the bell to tell him that the
coast is clear.
With particular relish, she says she would
have simply stabbed the king herself if he
hadn’t reminded her so strongly of her
father.
Chilling as that sentiment may be, this
isn’t meant to simply make us shiver, or to
underscore Lady Macbeth’s vileness.
In an instant, Macbeth appears in panic
mode, covered with blood, clutching both
daggers, the very picture of obvious guilt – a
complete contrast to the cool, collected
plotting of his wife.
For someone who’s just murdered his king
and guest in his sleep, Macbeth somehow
seems blameless; we watch him rant and
rave, clearly not reveling in his triumph, and
extend our sympathy.
He’ll lose that sympathy quickly enough,
but here, for the last time in the entire play,
Macbeth strikes us as a human being, fragile
and frightened and filled with regret for his
crime.
Without that initial impression of
Lady Macbeth to provide us with a direct
contrast, an audience won’t react that
way.
But Shakespeare shows us a figure
who speaks pure evil, lets us reject her,
and then compares his tragic
protagonist with her in an amazingly
deft bit of narrative manipulation.
Conventional definitions of evil fall
apart here; if asked whether Lady
Macbeth or Macbeth is more “evil,”
which do you choose?
Are we defined by who we are, or what
we do?
Lady Macbeth’s willingness to take
control of the situation by taking the
daggers, stabbing Duncan again (she
needs more blood), smearing the blood
on the guards, and planting the daggers
on their sleeping forms only reinforces
the contrast with her husband.
Macbeth bemoans that all the waters
of the world could not clean his hands
of their crimes – that if he were to dip
them in the ocean, the ocean would turn
red, and his hands would remain
unclean.
This image will prove important in
Act V; Lady Macbeth may scorn
Macbeth’s “white heart” at this point,
but her line about a little water
“clearing [them] of this deed” is more
fateful than she can imagine.
Shakespeare continues playing with the
control concept later in the scene, during a
small speech by Macbeth about sleep (which
we know will take on greater importance in
retrospect).
By “murdering sleep,” Macbeth has denied
himself the “balm of hurt minds,” leaving
himself without the “chief nourisher in life’s
feast.”
He is doomed to walk without rest, work
without peace, live without any sense of
security.
This is, of course, the logical consequence
of his actions.
Yet it’s one he doesn’t see coming; he pays
no attention to what will happen beyond the
immediate result of his choice because there’s
no thought behind what he does.
By essentially submitting to the
demands of others – making a
puppet of himself – Macbeth puts
himself in a position where he
must constantly react to surprising
circumstances.
He’ll try to take back control, to
get out in front of fate, later, but
those attempts will prove
disastrous.
Essentially, Macbeth’s damned if
he does, and damned if he doesn’t;
once you relinquish control, it’s
pretty hard to get it back.
Control and its loss stay on our
minds when we begin Scene III,
where we meet a figure who’s out
of control for a different reason.
Much like Hesse, Shakespeare
uses inebriation for effect here.
We’re introduced to the Porter, a
doorkeeper of sorts, who’s had far
too much to drink and behaves in a
deeply inappropriate fashion
towards Macbeth’s guests.
At first, this seems to be a
“pacing sequence” – something to
break up the unrelenting doom
and gloom of the tragedy, and one
could be excused for seeing it as
such considering its specific place
in the play’s structure.
But the Porter isn’t just there for
comedy’s sake, and Macduff’s
introduction here isn’t randomly
placed.
Instead, we should notice two
things about the exchange.
Firstly, we have the “fair is foul”
motif once more, when the Porter
talks about what excessive drink
brings and what it removes.
The overriding message is that
drink brings fleeting joy – that the
removal of control allows us to
fantasize more wildly and take
more chances – but that the
drinker ultimately suffers.
It’s impossible to hear the
Porter talk about drink and not
think about how Macbeth’s
behavior has changed following
his encounter with the Weïrd
Sisters.
By getting drunk on fate and
relinquishing control, Macbeth
has allowed himself to be “given
the lie” by his dreams – which
inevitably “leave him.”
At the scene’s outset, the Porter
pretends to be the gatekeeper for Hell
itself.
Obviously, he’s closer to correct than
even he suspects.
In a truly chilling line, he says that he
intended to let in those “who [went] the
primrose way to th’ everlasting bonfire”
– those whose choices take them to Hell –
just before he lets in Macduff.
Considering what happens as a result
of Macduff’s choices later in the play, it
would seem that the Porter has done
what he set out to do.
But Macduff, unlike the Sisters,
has no sense of what his future
holds.
He has a brief, friendly
conversation with Macbeth (the
friendliness is one-sided; Macbeth
is still agitated following the
murder) and goes into the castle,
where he’ll discover the king’s
corpse almost immediately
We only have enough time to
learn that earthquakes have hit
Scotland and that the night has
been filled with endless screaming
before he storms back out.
The next sequence is just about the
only time where Macbeth reacts
effectively and immediately to shifting
circumstances.
As soon as Macduff returns, Macbeth
grabs the former’s servant (he needs a
witness) and charges off.
Lady Macbeth appears, hears the
news, and (buying her husband time)
swoons dramatically.
While the men are distracted by the
damsel in distress, Macbeth pretends to
be overcome with rage (for Lennox’s
benefit) and kills the guards as they’re
waking up.
When Macbeth comes back, he’s the
one to inform Malcolm and Donalbain
that their father’s been murdered; to
everyone but Macduff, he looks
genuinely aggrieved.
Macduff is suspicious of his guardslaughter – even the Thane of Cawdor,
caught in the act of his crime, had to
perfunctorily testify before his
execution.
Why kill the guards before they can
explain why “they” did what they’d
done?
But those suspicions are nebulous,
based more on gut feel than on
convincing analysis, and Macduff is
intelligent enough not to voice them
while he’s in Macbeth’s stronghold.
Thus the crime is perfectly set up, carried
out, and sealed off: no witnesses but the
criminals themselves, and (thanks to the
previously-discussed departures of Malcolm
and Donalbain, fleeing the “daggers in men’s
smiles”) no one left to keep Macbeth from
the throne.
When Act II closes on a short scene of
disorder – men talking of owls killing falcons,
horses eating each other, and the choking,
endless night, shortly before Macduff returns
home to Fife, the scene of the Norwegian
invasion – it appears that Macbeth has
followed Fate’s dictates and won a treasure
outstripping his wildest dreams.
But three acts remain, and it never gets
better for Macbeth than it does here…