…Goodness Knows the
Wicked Die Alone
Feraco
Search for Human Potential
7 December 2011
The Big Roar
 If Act Four seemed like a slow build
(it’s as long as the first act, but with
half the scenes), Act Five is a
breakneck sprint to the finish – seven
scenes jammed into fifteen pages of
script (virtually the same length as
the three-scene second act), jumping
between several different locations
and casts of characters.
 That sense that things are roaring
towards a conclusion as they’re
spiraling out of control is a heady one,
but it’s also false: things may be
spiraling out of control for Macbeth,
but they’re actually proceeding in
very orderly – one might say
prophesized – fashion.
I Don’t Want to See You Like This
 Shakespeare takes a similarly ordered approach
to his material.
 Since he has to tie up his loose threads during
the act – theme-wise, character-wise, and plotwise – we get re-introduced to some of the
material that’s been temporarily sidelined.
 Lady Macbeth, for example, is absent during the
entire fourth act.
 She’s back for her curtain call, in her most
famous scene (the “sleepwalking” scene).
 The Macbeths’ sleep throughout the play has
been uneasy, filled with visions of fear and guilt,
and their waking lives have grown increasingly
nightmarish.
 Now Lady Macbeth is locked into a nightmare,
tearing at her hands as she tries to wash them.
 She believed that a little water would clean her
(and her husband) of murder; clearly, one can
wash the blood from one’s hands, but one can
never remove the stains on one’s conscience.
The Magnifying Glass
 It strikes many readers as somewhat odd that
Lady Macbeth, not Macbeth, would have a final
attack of remorse.
 She’s supposed to be the evil one – the plotter,
the planner, the pusher, the puppeteer.
 Macbeth may be the engine of death, but she – at
least at first – provides the fuel.
 But it’s not actually that surprising, and it has
nothing to do with the Lady’s femininity finally
asserting itself in a play that largely obsessed
with the meaning of manhood.
 Consider, if you will, that Lady Macbeth gained
nothing through Duncan’s murder; the control
she believed she’d have was ripped away as soon
as her husband proved too unstable to rule.
 And if you also consider that Macbeth has never
been the same following Duncan’s death, she’s
lost her only tie to humanity as well.
 Macbeth is really all she has, and now she’s
bound to a crazed shadow of a man she loved.
The Infinite Sadness
 Moreover, if children give meaning to men’s
lives – this being the source of Macbeth’s
obsession with his “barren scepter” – what
would they do for women?
 If Macbeth fails to be a man by not having a
baby, does Lady Macbeth fail, on some level,
to be a woman by not birthing and rearing a
child?
 Macbeth already tells her that she’s only fit
to have sons, for her spirit’s far too bold and
vicious to pass down to daughters.
 He means it as a compliment, but in a work
where all lines and distinctions blur – “Fair is
foul” – doesn’t that just underscore how
trapped she is?
 If she’s not allowed to act as men do, and
she’s clearly not comfortable in the woman’s
role, where can she find peace?
All the Small Things
 We’ve alluded to “Macbeth’s missing child”
before, and I told you I’d talk about it here.
 There are several schools of thought regarding
the possibility that Macbeth does – or did –
have one.
 Evidence includes little offhanded lines, such
as Lady Macbeth’s declaration (to an
unsurprised husband) that she’s nursed an
infant before.
 Since we can’t assume she’s lying (the tone of
the conversation presumes that her husband
wouldn’t be surprised by the disclosure),
several possibilities remain.
 She could have served as a nurse for another
woman’s child; the practice wasn’t all that
uncommon, and it pops up in other
Shakespeare plays (Juliet, for example, nursed
from the Nurse).
 But that typically signifies that she’d had a
child of her own.
Macbeth
 She and Macbeth could currently have a
child, just one that never appears onstage.
 Supporters of this theory assert that his
presence accounts for Macbeth’s weirdly
dispassionate pursuit of power (he’s doing
it for his son and wife, not for himself), as
well as his complete and utter panic over
the idea of Fleance becoming king
(couldn’t that just happen as a result of
Macbeth dying of old age, since Fleance is,
after all, much younger than him?).
 But to be honest, I don’t buy this one; I
have a very hard time reconciling the
“fruitless crown/barren scepter” speech
with a child who’s even more thoroughly
hidden than Fleance.
The Kids Aren’t All Right
 That leaves two other possibilities.
 One is that Lady Macbeth has married before,
had a child with her husband, was left a widow,
and married Macbeth.
 Somewhere either during or after that sequence,
her child was killed somehow.
 History shows that the real Macbeth’s wife did, in
fact, have a child from a previous marriage.
 But considering how thoroughly and
intentionally Shakespeare changed the Lady
Macbeth character from her historical
antecedent, and considering that there aren’t
any other allusions to a prior marriage anywhere
in the play, this, too, seems to be an empty
explanation.
 Shakespeare’s precisely handled virtually every
other aspect of the script; it would be odd for
that moment to sit there in isolation, like a lost
fragment of a deleted scene that accidentally
found its way into a film’s final cut.
Failure
 The other possibility – and the most painful one – is
that, indeed, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth did have a
child…but that he (we will assume it’s a son, thanks to
Macbeth’s obsession with them as well as his “menchildren only” line) died at an early age due to
unspecified causes – a family line killed off in one fell
swoop.
 This not only explains Lady Macbeth’s “nursing” line,
but amplifies its power in that scene; by alluding to
their dead child, Lady Macbeth strikes the rawest
nerve for both of them that she can.
 When she says she would kill her child had she
promised to do so, there’s nothing Macbeth can say in
response to that: it’s an unimpeachable affirmation of
her resolve to keep her word.
 And you’ll notice when re-reading that scene that,
indeed, Macbeth says nothing. He pauses, then
changes the subject – If we should fail–
 And Lady Macbeth cuts him off: We fail?
 She lets that line hang in the air for a moment, as if to
say: Don’t you and I already understand failure?
Nothing is Ever What It Seems
 That sequence has been read in many, many
different ways, depending on whether the
director and actress agree with this
interpretation.
 If it holds, the explanation doesn’t excuse
what Lady Macbeth and especially Macbeth do
over the course of the play: their crimes are
terrible.
 Yet I think back to my older sister, working
with dying children, and think also of their
terrified, powerless parents.
 If you’re to outlive your child, one thinks, the
universe must flip upside down, the natural
order of things reverses and falls apart…fair
becomes foul.
 And I think of Macbeth, who seems unnaturally
hungry for certainty, craving knowledge of
how things should happen, and I wonder if, in
those parents’ shoes, all I would want is for
things to make sense too.
The Witch Riding Your Back
 What I’m trying to say, and what I know I’ve said
before, is that the Macbeths’ hungers and desires
are probably more complicated than they
initially appear – that they, themselves, are
complex figures, not cartoonish villains.
 And when one remembers how Lady Macbeth
thought Duncan looked exactly like her father,
and how that sight alone stayed her hand – that
she didn’t kill him because he looked like
someone she loved – one re-reads the second
scene of Act II differently as well.
 For here no longer stands the craven, plotting
witch in woman’s form, seizing the daggers from
her weak-willed husband, marching down to
viciously stab the dead king before spreading his
blood over his guards’ drugged faces.
 Here instead stands a woman who, seeing that
her husband has botched a terrible but
necessary task, must protect herself and her
loved one – the only one she has left – from
getting caught.
Terrible Love
 The stereotype of maternal ferocity holds
that a mother will grimly do what’s
necessary to protect her young loved ones,
no matter how unpleasant.
 Lady Macduff says as much when she talks
about the wren defending her doomed nest,
and we’ve talked at length about the woman
from 1984 bracing her arm against the
hailstorm of bullets.
 In that sense, then, there’s a sort of grim
maternity on display here from Lady
Macbeth: If my husband puts himself at risk
by acting like a frightened child, I will
protect him – us – no matter what.
 So she goes back downstairs, confronts what
must look like the corpse of her father (torn
to ribbons), and does what she has to do.
 They are, as Macbeth later says, so deep in
blood that it feels impossible to turn back.
The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie
 When she comes up, she tells Macbeth that
she’s grateful she’s not a coward like him – that
her hands are red, but her heart’s not white.
 But white’s the color of virtue as well as
cowardice, and Lady Macbeth will never be
pure, even though she’s the one who lives up to
her word (and Macbeth the one who keeps
messing up or altering plans).
 Remember, she doesn’t kill anyone; this is
probably the first time she’s ever inflicted
physical harm on a human being, even though
it’s a corpse (and dismissing her stated
willingness to hurt her baby for the moment.)
 Her bravado, which stands in marked contrast
to Macbeth’s tortured regret, reveals itself as
simply that – bravado masking anger and
bitterness over her husband’s actions forcing
her to do what she’s done, empty posturing
hiding a deeper hurt.
I’d Kill to Fall Asleep
 And it’s that hurt that comes to the
forefront now, as water cannot wash
away her crimes, cannot wash away the
psychological trauma Lady Macbeth’s
inflicted upon herself.
 Even here, she does not cut a
sympathetic figure. But she does cut a
tragic one.
 Who could have guessed, back when we
met her in the first act’s fifth scene,
that the amoral Lady Macbeth’s fatal
weakness would be her conscience?
Up All Night/Heart’s All Gone
 The Doctor and gentlewoman listen to her talk in
her sleep – What’s done cannot be undone – and
decide that there’s nothing that can be done for
her.
 The doctor says she needs the divine’s help more
than a physician.
 They’re right.
 This is the last time we’ll see Lady Macbeth alive;
she kills herself.
 And you’ll notice that Shakespeare has spent the
entire play slowly removing Macbeth from
everything – not just from people, but from what
once made up his life.
 When his wife dies, she does so offstage, and he
merely acknowledges the loss when it’s reported.
 The shift in priorities – from her needs to his
own, from providing for another to singleminded destruction – is complete. Macbeth is
irredeemable.
Whirring
 Most of the next few scenes whip by in a
quick blur of details; very little of what we
read here has significance beyond its present
meaning.
 We learn that:
 Macbeth has fortified his castle at Dunsinane in
anticipation of Malcolm’s, Macduff’s, and Siward’s
(an English lord and Malcolm’s uncle) attack
 Most of his men now openly acknowledge his
corruption, and that many have deserted him
 Donalbain is nowhere to be found
 Macbeth plans to make his last stand here, no
matter the cost
 Malcolm, as he approaches Birnam Wood, gives
orders to every soldier to strip the trees of
branches and carry them in order to make enemy
scouts inflate their numbers.
 This, of course, gives the impression of trees
marching from Birnam Wood on
Dunsinane…exactly as the prophecy warned.
Lump Sum
 When Lady Macbeth shuffles off
this mortal coil, Macbeth
launches into a rare monologue
(not a soliloquy).
 In the “sound and fury” speech,
he states that life’s end no longer
saddens him, because every day
we live merely serves as a way to
march closer to death.
 Our lives are just “a tale told by
an idiot, full of sound and fury,
signifying nothing.”
No Secret Why
 One cannot assume Shakespeare
believes this; there’s plenty of
evidence in his other plays to suggest
that, indeed, he found human
existence to be profoundly
fascinating.
 But from Macbeth’s perspective, this
speech makes perfect sense.
 As the play draws close to its
conclusion, he can look back at what
happened over the course of it and
marvel at how arbitrary the things
that felt so serious seem now.
A Heavy Abacus
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What was it all for?
Power? He’s lost (or losing) it.
His wife? She’s dead now.
Fate? Fate’s abandoned him.
Fear? He really killed a king he liked and friend
he loved because he was afraid?
What could possibly frighten him more than the
thought of doing what he’s done – of, as
Kierkegaard put it, losing himself?
No, he’s not doing what he’s doing for any reason
now.
He thinks he’s hatching plans, making
independent choices, and generally executing a
strategy.
But it’s a delusion.
Like a wind-up toy wound up too far and left
alone in an empty room, Macbeth is simply going
through the motions now, defending a castle he
can’t truly want to occupy against enemies who
only hate him because he made them hate him.
The Joy Formidable
 So “Birnam Wood” draws near, and Macbeth,
declaring that “there is no flying hence or
harrying here,” leaves to join the battlefield
himself.
 Siward and his son (the imaginatively named
Young Siward) lead the first charge against him.
 It’s not successful.
 In fact, Young Siward makes it far enough to face
Macbeth directly, but the mad king simply guts
him and moves on, laughing that someone of
woman born would be stupid enough to stand and
face him rather than flee.
 Just another family line destroyed, another
father or son eliminated.
 For those of you keeping score, that’s four
“pairs” (Duncan/Malcolm, Macduff/Son,
Banquo/Fleance, and Siward/Young Siward) of
fathers and sons in the play, and Macbeth kills a
member of each one (two fathers, two sons)
 …quite the body count, no?
Words Destroyed My Planet
 But no sooner does he kill yet another
son than Macduff arrives, challenging
Macbeth to turn and face him.
 Macbeth tells him to leave, that he’s
been avoiding him – “my soul is too
much charged with blood of thine
already.”
 Macduff isn’t going anywhere, and he
says that, since Macbeth’s crimes are
too terrible to describe with words (a
deed without a name), his sword will
speak for him.
 Act I’s Lady Macbeth would be so proud of
him.
I Have Been Right All Along
 As they fight, Macbeth gloats; he knows
(“knows”) he can’t lose, for Macduff is of
woman born.
 But, as it so happens, Macduff isn’t – not
literally.
 He never passed through the birth canal.
 Shakespeare writes that “Macduff was
from his mother’s womb untimely ripped.”
 This means to describe a less-modern
version of the Cesarean section – Macduff
wasn’t coming out, so they cut open his
mother and ripped him out.
 No word on whether she survived the procedure.
 The apparitions were right all along.
I’m Broke and So is Everything I Own
 Macbeth – stunned, shaken, and
furious – now knows that he’s doomed.
 But he refuses to surrender when
Macduff tauntingly dares him to do so:
even here, he’s futilely trying to resist
Fate’s dictates, cursing those who
“keep the word of promise to our ear,
and break it to our hope.”
 The wind-up toy spins on.
 The battle moves offstage.
Frame and Canvas
 Siward and Malcolm appear in their wake,
discussing the grim nature of warfare (the
people they care about most will fight for
them, but that makes those cherished ones
more likely to die).
 Ross, who seems to have become the
designated bearer of bad news by this point,
tells Siward that his son died in the battle,
but that they’ve collected his body.
 Siward asks, “Had he his hurts before?” –
meaning, was he facing his killer, or were the
wounds on his back?
 Ross confirms his wounds are “on the front,”
and Siward…well, he doesn’t sigh with relief
as much as he solemnly, grimly nods, saying
that his son therefore earned as noble a
death as a fighter could merit.
I’m Not Crying. You’re Not Crying, Are You?
 It’s the opposite of Macbeth’s almost nihilistic
reaction to Lady Macbeth’s death.
 Unlike the king, Siward sees great value in dying
– and in living – “the right way.”
 Yes, his son died much too young. But at least he
died fighting; at least he died with his eyes open,
battling to uphold a righteous cause.
 As Siward speaks, one can’t help but see how
closely his sentiment mirrors the Fat Man’s from
War.
 Our children fight because they must; if they die
fighting for something good, long before age and
experience take their inevitable toll, what better
fate could we arrange for them?
 But where Pirandello’s character doesn’t truly
believe what he’s saying – his words are his last,
desperate coping mechanism – Siward does.
Drawing a Line in the Sand
 This scene is worth noting not just because
it reflects how different values have
shifted across different eras.
 The play’s chiefly obsessed with, in no
particular order, the relationships between
fathers and sons; the degree of control a
man has over his own fate; the “right” way
to live one’s life, particularly in the face of
contradicting responsibilities; and how one
responds to adversity, loss, and pain.
 In a play such as this one, this tiny section
of dialogue may as well be a line drawn in
the sand: here, the meaning of your life
isn’t determined by how safe you felt, how
many threats you neutralized, or even how
long you led it, but by whether, on the day
Death came for you, you were brave enough
to face it.
Stand and Feel Your Worth
 And that’s what’s so sneaky about the
way Shakespeare sends Macbeth off.
 What looks like futile, doomed
desperation at first blush is Macbeth’s
last stab at some semblance of noble
human dignity and courage.
 After spending the vast majority of
the play alternately paralyzed and
compromised by his fears, Macbeth
stands his ground: I know you’re going
to kill me, but I’m not going easily.
The Hollywood Ending, Part II
 But he does go, in the end. Macduff walks back
onto the stage, carrying a pike with Macbeth’s
head jammed on its spike – the mirror image of
the defeated “rebel leader,” Macdonwald, from
the play’s second scene.
 No telling whether Macduff unseam’d Macbeth
from nave to chops first.
 And here, it seems, we’re going to get our
(previously sarcastically-outlined) Hollywood
ending after all.
 The witch is dead – or at least the one who
listened to the witches is.
 Malcolm’s elevated to the throne, and the play
ends with him discussing the need to get down
to business – reaching out to those who fled the
country, promoting those who just fought by
his side to new roles (Scotland’s first earls!),
and so forth.
 It looks, at first, like a tidy little conclusion.
 It isn’t.
An Absurd & Unrealistic Dream of Peace
 There’s a key distinction between Macbeth and
Shakespeare’s other works.
 Most tragedies give their audiences some relief
at the end of the action; we call this cooling-off
catharsis.
 Macbeth is decidedly, emphatically noncathartic.
 Macbeth may be dead, but the play’s survivors
are broken, beaten, and scarred.
 Scotland has suffered catastrophic damage,
and the leadership vacuum that formed
following Macbeth’s crimes hasn’t been
completely filled.
 For reasons Susan Snyder and I both
mentioned, we don’t particularly like or trust
Malcolm, who assumes the throne at the end of
the play.
 And there’re a hugely problematic loose
thread still dangling, even after Macbeth’s
death, that threatens to unravel everything.
Universe or Worse
 I’ve talked at length about how detailoriented Shakespeare’s scripts are,
and how surprising that quality really
is – since, after all, these weren’t
meant to be widely read the way they
are today.
 Nothing seems to escape his field of
vision.
 So when he leaves a giant, gaping
uncertainty in place – one which
inconveniently hearkens back to a
specific earlier moment in Act Four –
it should grab your attention.
 Did you spot what Shakespeare didn’t
address with his conclusion?
 Where’s Fleance?
Days Go By
 Malcolm’s king now, sure.
 And Donalbain’s out there in Ireland
somewhere; we can assume that he’s
one of the people Malcolm’s alluding
to when he mentions the need to reach
out to the members of the Scottish
diaspora.
 That makes for two members of the
royal family still alive and kicking,
still very young and fertile.
 What in the world happens to the royal
line?
 For the only way – the only way – for
Fleance to become king is for the royal
family to do what Macbeth tried to
make it do: disappear.
Broken Lungs
 In order for the prophecy to come true – and
we know the prophecies are going to come
true, since James is sitting in the audience
fuming about the witch chants – Malcolm has
to die, probably childless (for if he has
children, they need to die to).
 Donalbain also needs to die, with the same
conditions in place regarding his potential
children.
 And since they’re roughly the same age as
Fleance, they’ll need to die young if he’s
going to have enough time to learn how to
rule, then teach his sons how to rule, all
without foreign invaders sensing the
country’s weakness during an extended
period of turmoil.
The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade
 The play ends by pretending that the
problems at its core (the wrongful
destruction of the royal family) have been
solved with Macbeth’s death and the removal
of the tyrant from the throne.
 In actuality, Macbeth was simply a catalyst:
his actions don’t annihilate the royal family,
but they do set the conditions for their
annihilation.
 By getting rid of Duncan, he starts the
cascade that must – must – ultimately claim
Malcolm’s and Donalbain’s lives as well.
 Scotland, in short, seems (at least to people
who aren’t paying close attention at the play
winds down) to be on the cusp of a very good,
very fair day.
 Nothing, it seems, ever comes that easily.