Q1. Discuss the contextual resonances evident in the Porter scene for an early modern playhouse audience.
Q2. Discuss the idea of remorse in the play.
Q3. Write on predeterminism in Macbeth.
Q4. In any film adaptation of the play discuss the staging of the scene with Banquo's Ghost.
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Q3: To what extent is the ending of Macbeth predetermined? Billed as a tragedy, readers and playgoers alike know that Macbeth will inevitably fail: he must die at the end for the tragedy to be complete. Within the play itself, however, prophecy is used to create a sense of pre-determinism. In act one, scene three we are first introduced to prophecy. The three weird sisters foretell a great future for Macbeth, in which he will be Thane of Cawdor and soon after king of Scotland. Macbeth is almost incredulous, until the first of these prophecies comes true. Thereafter, he puts much in store for prophecy. Later in the play, this can be seen again, when he returns to the three weyard sisters to learn more about the future. There he is told to fear Macduff, that his end will come when Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane Hill (the setting of his castle) and that no man who is not born of woman will harm him. Macbeth clearly believes honestly in these prophecies, especially the last too. He is calm and collected in the final act until he hears tell that Birnam Wood is on the move towards his castle, at which point he panics. He shows no fear on the battlefield until confronted with Macduff who tells him that he was born by Caesarian: suddenly, he realises he is doomed to die. In this manner, the action of Macbeth is presented as predetermined.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there is an element of self-fulfilling prophecies at work here too. It is only after hearing the prophecy that he will become king that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth decide to kill Duncan. Thus they themselves, due to their knowledge of the prophecy, fulfil it. Equally, it could be said that Macbeth’s fear upon realising that Macduff was not ‘born of a woman’ means that he is almost paralyzed, and unable to defend himself. Ultimately, however, it is clear that the witches’ word is final: from the very first act they have determined how it will end.
-Caoimhe Ni Dhonaill, Monday, 10am
The Idea of Remorse in Macbeth
ReplyDelete"I have supped full with horrors:
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me."
(V.v.13-5)
Grief and remorse form the natural binary in the wake of a murder; the former is associated with pleasure in the victim's acquaintances (specifically the memory of pleasure), the latter with pain in the perpetrator (specifically the memory of misdeed). Yet in the universe of Macbeth, grief is either absent (Malcolm and Donalbain, for example) or twisted into revenge (Macduff). Conversely, remorse is an emotion conspicuous in the play solely for its absence.
Macbeth's reaction to the killing of Duncan alternates between private and public. In the company of his wife he is overcome not with remorse but with fearful awe:
"I am afraid to think what I have done:
Look on't again I dare not"
(II.ii.60-1)
These sentiments, however, are immediately branded as "infirm of purpose" (62) by Lady Macbeth. Remorse, therefore, is an emotion that is strangled and its roots and directed once more toward action. Macbeth's public reaction to Duncan's death, meanwhile, is defined by his killing of the chambermen. Here, remorse is used ironically to display its absence:
"O, yet I do repent of my fury,
That I did kill them."
(II.iii.109-110)
And yet the speech that follows this irony seems sincere in delivery:
"Who could refrain
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make's love known?"
(II.ii.120-2)
Macbeth is by no means as talented as Iago, for, as Harold Bloom observes, Macbeth is endowed with "something less than ordinary intelligence". The above sincerity is not, therefore, because Macbeth is a great Machiavellian but perhaps because in this speech he translates the genuine roots of remorse into a sincere lament for Duncan. Lady Macbeth identifies this hazardous development and must then intervene by feigning to faint (123).
It is Macbeth's power of fantasy that inhabits the play: the original predictions of the weyard sisters prompt Duncan's murder; his paranoia in the banquet scene (III.iv) harasses his conscience; but his reaction to both is not remorse, but resolve:
"I am in blood
Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er."
(III.iv.157-9)
The second visit to the weyard sisters compounds this unambiguously: when Macbeth feels invincible, he is remorseless and untroubled; when he sees Banquo's line of kings, he despairs, but directs it towards murderous resolve once more:
"From this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand.:
(IV.i.159-61)
The universe of Macbeth is famously bloody and vigorous. It follows Blake's definition of evil in that it is based on "the active, springing from energy". His dying words read: "I will try the last. . . And damned be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!' " Macbeth never feels undiluted remorse because he is never given the chance to; there is always someone else who must be killed.
Q3. When the witches offer their prediction to Macbeth in Act I, the course of the tragedy is clearly laid out. As Macbeth begins to enact the prophecies of the witches, his very human struggles of conscience and loyalty being overcome with the help of Lady Macbeth, the inevitability of his kingship and then death is never doubted by the audience. Macbeth’s own misgivings and hesitations are, it seems, the meaningless thrashings of the individual faced with the divine plan.
ReplyDeleteNotably, it is the murder of Banquo and the attempted murder of Fleance that would have thwarted the witches prediction that cause him to see visions and expose his treachery. While he was shaken by the murder of Duncan, he was still acting within the scope of a prophecy, even if it was self-fulfilled. When he attempts to take action against fate, his mental stability is threatened, suggesting that the final outcome predicted by the witches is predetermined. His attempts to change the outcome is counterbalanced by Macbeth’s own destabilization.
Reinforced by his inability to negate the witches’ prophecy by murdering Fleance, the sense of determined fate lends an irony reminiscent of Greek theatre to the ending of Macbeth. The audience knows what will happen, while Macbeth increasingly rages against it. His loss of personality and moral conviction following Lady Macbeth’s suicide leaves him a puppet of fate. The audience experiences his downfall emotionally in a way he never does. The final suggestion is that his fate was pre-determined, and that even in knowing and struggling against fate he can only find rest in his determined death.
-Clancy Flynn, Monday 10 am
Q4: I would like to discuss the scene with Banquo's ghost in relation to the film version of Macbeth starring Ian McKellan and Judi Dench. In this adaptation, Banquo's ghost is not a physical presence. Neither the audience nor the other characters in the play can see him; he is solely a figment of Macbeth's imagination. I found this decision on the director's part had a great impact on the audience's reading of the play. Macbeth seems more mentally unstable in this version of the play than he does in the bare text of the play. This scene also undermines his credentials as a rather macho soldier-- he becomes physically ill and looks exceedingly weak.
ReplyDeleteThe scene does not only point out Macbeth's weaknesses, but also serves to highlight the strength underlying Lady Macbeth's character. She is the one who has to talk him out of his hallucination and make him remember that he has an office to perform. She is also the one who talks to the rest of the characters at the feast and makes them believe that Macbeth's illness is something normal that is merely to be ignored. It shows that she is real engine behind Macbeth's conspiracy and that without her, Macbeth's plotting would not have come to fruition.
Lily Ringler, Thursday 9:00