Harvard ENGL E-129 - Lecture 6: Macbeth

good oh there's a couple of announcements to begin with as I may have mentioned and I think maybe Mel will have sent out the announcement about this this America this actor Shakespeare project a production all-female production of Macbeth that is happening over at Boston University I saw the production last week and they asked me to moderate a panel discussion about it next Tuesday evening there was a review and very very positive review of this production in yesterday's Globe it's an interesting concept it's a very good production I it's well worth your time I think it's great that we were able to see a production of a play that we're studying during and especially one that has a pretty high concept to show you something about how interpretation functions so you're by no means you know required or assigned to go do this but should you like to go see the production just look at American Shakespeare sorry actor Shakespeare's project on your web browser and you'll find out when the play is playing for these this discussion on Tuesday night there is a charge doesn't go to me but and the format is that there will be several people on the panel there'll be three I'll say some some introductory things there'll be three scenes from the production that will be performed and then the panel and I will discuss them the title of the evening again not my coinage but when I'm happy to support is witches wives and would-be presidents women and power in Macbeth and I had a very interesting email correspondence with the director about this phrase would be presidents since somewhat to my surprise she was thinking of the sons of the King as the would-be presidents and I said I thought this was all about women and that we were supposed to be looking at sort of Lady Macbeth like women and Lady Macbeth herself as a so so I it's it's interesting see how one's one's interpretations cross here had a very good correspondence with her I should say in the interest of full disclosure on this matter that although it says on the website that one of the panelists will be a witch the witch scratched and it's not because the next night is Halloween and she was already booked but rather because she was out of town and was unable to see the production and I made it a condition of participation for the panelists that they all have seen the play beforehand since I wanted us to discuss the interplay of the text the production choices and performances and the title about women wives and would-be presidents and I didn't think it would be so useful for us to come into a collective conversation if we didn't have experience of the production so but the people who will be on the panel are terrific and I encourage you to attend if you happen to be free the other thing I can say about this is that Tuesday night is the one night when there is not a World Series game so even if the series goes beyond the four games of that we hope to see on the upside on this part of the world the Tuesday night will be a bit caught off night and all tonight thank you very much once you say the theater is closed the lights are down but you know everybody and all night so okay great the other announcement has to do with the midterm in this course which is scheduled for and will be given on November the 7th which is a couple weeks from now it'll be a one-hour exam and I have we already said some things about this you know so that we just discussing whether or not we're going to have session some of the students had asked that that out that I'll have throats about okay um yeah short short answer I have emailed with some of you about this um what it will be is you'll have a choice of five of you'll have to choose five of seven passages and they'll be pretty you know enough perhaps enough of passages that you have some things to work with there you'll have to give factual identification such as what play is this from who's speaking what's the context and then we'll have two more questions that are usually something that's more interpretation based to allow you to you know have some room to speak to your own interpretations of the passage so five five passages that you choose in five questions per passage and I will be putting up an example of one of our past exams on the website so that you can see exactly what the format will be again this the this is on the seventh which is a week from next week is that right we're on the fourteenth when is it I think it's it's on the seventh it's on the seventh which means it will include an ting Cleopatra but not Coriolanus right that's why it's working okay okay so it will be up to wherever we have been that will be the only event of the evening there won't be a discussion session so those of you who are not taking the course for credit we will see you the following week when we'll pick up with Coriolanus and give you a chance to catch up on your reading okay and questions about this we can certainly entertain questions at any point okay like that is the play and you will know perhaps from from your own experience or from reading my chapter on Macbeth but Macbeth is a play which is often thought of as very unlucky in the theatre that there are superstitions attaching to it that there often have been injuries of people walking off the stage one instance I'm sure I cite is that of an actress who thought that the sleepwalking scene would be more effective if she actually had her eyes closed walked right off the edge of the stage into the pit but things have fallen down people have been stabbed when fires all kinds of things have happened this is it's a superstitious play for actors one doesn't mention the name of main male or female characters went on the stage I was once taking a tour of I think it was the Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford Ontario in Canada and when I was performing up there and one of the actors take your showing people around the theatre was on the stage and happened to mention the name of the play and he looked absolutely ashen and performed one of the purifying rituals that is involved with this involves turning around three times and quoting something from from The Merchant of Venice and so forth it's a it's a play that has become an icon of superstition within the the acting world there are wonderful murder mysteries actually on this topic as well one why the terrific British mystery writer Nile Marsh the said why is this it's hard to say why the superstition begets superstition but it's it's reasonable to talk about the degree to which the play doesn't remain within its own boundaries that it begins with the weird sisters sometimes known as the witches that it involves various kinds of supernatural or superstitious happening as a ghost appears and disappears and so forth and the play itself is to a certain extent engaged with this question of boundaries and of whether you're ever in a safe place with respect to them whether the on stage and the off stage or the on page and the off page can eat really be as readily delimited as that the almost any production takes this into consideration especially because the scenes with though witches or The Weird Sisters seem to surround the play as it is performed anyone ever seen the Roman Polanski film of Macbeth can you at anybody who's raised her or his hand explained to our friends in the room what the historical occasion is that begat this film do you know what it was based on can you say it's based on the murder Sharon Tate the tate-labianca murders happened just before Roman Polanski filmed this and who was Sharon Tate to him his wife his wife his wife England at the time of the murder he was not at home and how much of this do you want people who had been renting the house before the Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate moved in were Terry Melcher and Candice Bergen Terry Melcher was Doris Day's son as you may know and it may have been aimed the murder may have been aimed at them or something they had done they had moved out just shortly before the house was taken over by Polanski and his wife okay and just just to maybe to say something about who the Austin scible who the miscreants were in this regard because we haven't said anything about who actually committed these murders so here at Melfi please yes vote remind you behind you yes Gerber I'm blocking on the name Charles Manson yes so it so that is this is this is Charles Manson and his women squeaky Fromme and and right so so that so this is this is a production of the play that is mounted by Polanski certainly in response to their intertextual moments with respect to the scene in particular of the the murder of Macduff's wife and children is very bloody and the whole thing is very psychedelic it picks up on the entire thematic of the Manson Family and the sense family is a big issue in this play the matically as well but the what reason I'm mentioning it here is because if you've seen the film you may remember that it does not end as the play does here with Malcolm's encouraging words about how things will now become Earls and how England now becomes Scotland and so forth and all will be healed but it ends instead with another scene having to do with the witches in which the second son Donalbain the the the second son of Duncan is seen arriving at the Wichita Hole and knocking on the door and it seems clear that he is about to ask the same kind of question that happened at the beginning of the play what about me what's what lies in store for me so that instead of coming to a conclusion which resolves and purifies the world the Polanski version which is a dark version of the play one can imagine a non dark version of the play but ends with repetitions with an explicit gesture of repetition in which again the rivalry between the two men but in this case between the two sons turns itself into the possibility of another civil war and another the repetition of the same so the play has had many lives and continues to have many lives and this this all-female production is interesting in the way that it reverses the what were presumably the sort of the conditions of the original production in which all the parts were played by men so what does it mean if it means anything for all the parts to be played by women I tell me what you how many ways as you encountered this play a play that I'm sure many of you have seen or heard about before how many ways you you interpreted the witches or The Weird Sisters how do you understand their role in the play they seem to be associated at least with fate with almost a kind of destiny embedded in Macbeth's personality in in that he's heroic at the beginning because he's a relentless warrior in the cause of the king but he is also relentless in his in his ambition finally when he commits relentless in his ambition to get him to pull the throne so you've said two things that I might have thought would be in tension with one another one that they seemed connected with fate and the other that they seemed connected to Macbeth's personality or character how can those both of those things be the case in the sense that we're fated by our personalities aha so this is the classical notion that character for mankind is fate ethos on propo diamond the old notion from from from Sophocles really of how it is and from from your pities of how it is that people create the fates that then seem to be the things that condition their lives this question of whether the witches let's call them that are inside or outside Macbeth or as you'll see in this production anybody seen the production yet the so remember how the prow the production begins what what's happening on the stage at the very first moment which is arriving around and what what what else who else is on stage beside the witches remember no I don't Lady Macbeth is is napping at the bill word is in bed is seen on lying on pillows and having a nightmare at the beginning of this production so it's interesting that in this production which is about women in power but witches seemed somehow to be part of the imaginative world of Lady Macbeth maybe instead of or in addition to the imaginative world of Macbeth but certainly in the play text as we have it there seems to be some uncanny this is the word some uncanny relationship between what Macbeth wants desires dreams of expects fears and what the witches say to him so they are either mirroring what he is thinking or anticipating what he is thinking or else the other way to look at it would be that his own character is being formed in response to them there are three of them what do they like please dismiss please yes physically they have bu they adapt and they beard is that women but the conflict between being male and female right and who is it in the play who notice is that what character in the play points that out to us Banquo Banquo remember what he says you should be women but your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so and this poll question of whether you're forbidden to interpret things or whether interpretation is this is one of the reasons the play is so uncanny and why this whole ethos about accident and unluckiness seems to me to be so powerful is because it's a play about interpretation and about forbidden interpretation and about the relationship between interpretation and between interpretation and dream or wish or desire but but here you should be women that is I would expect you to be women but your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so so they're bearded bearded women what else yes right behind if you give Larry some exercise so I have some people over on this side asking questions too they're all so petty at one point we see one which who because somebody wouldn't give her chestnuts decides to curse the woman's husband at sea and they seem to not always be concerned with large supernatural events but oh so that's right they're there their concerns are local and small you say petty I think it's perfectly reasonable but on the other hand how might that story about the sailor and his wife and the chestnuts be related to the big play that we come to later on is there any analogy between that couple and the couple that we then come to encounter you don't see an analogy between this Macbeth and the Sailor or Lady Macbeth and the sailors wife or yes it's not going to be the answer you want I when I read this passage in the Sailor was going to Aleppo and I thought of a fellow right away right right but not not Macbeth well but Aleppo is interesting because again it's one of those exotic locations outside of the European matrix but what has happened indeed in Venice and in Cyprus turns out that it's in you know safe Europe that all the wildness is actually happening not so much in these in these other exotic locations all right so the witches are the Peggy that is to say they're interested in local things let's talk for a second about witches in this time period any reason that you can think of why do the white white King James would be interested in a play about witches what kind of a book did he write just to file I don't know I wrote a book called demonology or exactly and what's it about or what might a book like that be about he could cure people ah well that's something else that that's that's the that's the the Kings touch the famous idea of the Kings touch that the king was able by his very hand to cure this question which we seek Thema ties in the play about whether the king is holy and cures or diseased and gives disease to the whole society but James is interested in witches he writes a book called demonology there's a the time period is deeply engaged with this question of how whether there are real witches or not how you can tell them how you can distinguish them from ordinary people male or female because not all which is are female and in fact in many productions there's a male which these three women three figures aren't always women the the there's a big debate about whether the the location of witches or witchcraft is in fact a political scam rather than an actual correct finger pointing at them and there's also a difference which maybe would be useful for us to bear in mind between how witches were thought to behave within the boundaries of Britain and how they were thought to behave on the continent that that continental witches were imagined as more powerful as more more actually being able to control life and death and to play tricks on people that the local witches that you know the old woman in the in the village in Britain often thought of as more more to use the word that's music before more petty more local more more bad-tempered than actually having magical powers but at this point of course Scotland is at least as much Europe as it is England that we're it's the question of sort of what is the power of these witches and are they are they actually women are they actually people or are they supernatural and how do they know what they know do they actually make anything happen or do they merely hold up things for Macbeth and Banquo to interpret and do they in fact over interpret or over recognize what is presented to them is in other words is this external agency changing the political world or is it and this is the split with which we began or is it in fact the vaulting ambition of Macbeth or Lady Macbeth that produces this effect which is then wished off on to these witches yes the fact that the fact that Banquo also sees the witch the wages complicates the idea of them being externalizing what's in Macbeth absolutely because it would have to be also externalizing what's also in Banquo that's that's absolutely yes and is there anything in the play that that is more clearly and purely fantaz Matic rather than verifiable heart which you say or someone says probably wasn't written by Shakespeare everybody says it yet Roger yes and it when you read it you can see how different it is right but it but but there's an episode within the play which make that see something that is much more a clear pure fantasy what is it the dag is the daggers it is this a dagger I see before me the handle toward my hand and what happens to the dagger in the course of his looking at it seeing it does it remain the same or does it change it becomes bloody yes if that the on its on its hilt and dagger and gouts of blood which were not was not he says there before so that it becomes bloody in the course of his imagination now again some productions I'd indeed including this production literal eyes it higher or somehow appears or is it but but the the whole concept here I think is that he is seeing something in his mind's eye and that then changes to quite right that Banquo is one of those verification figures that we often find in Shakespeare notice that that many Shakespearean heroes appear with sidekicks whose Hamlet's sidekick Horatio a fellow and so far as he has a sidekick who would it be sorry well y'all go sort of anti sidekick but but Casio also okay in King Lear who is the figure who speaks to us so to speak in terms of verification saying this Kent but there's also Edgar that I I would not take this from report but it is and my heart breaks it and so forth that there's there's there's someone on the stage who encounters things and verifies it that the things that seem impossible are unbearable are nonetheless true when Horatio at the end of Hamlet is asked by Hamlet to to to stay alive and to tell my story this the idea is that again something is going to verify what has taken place something is going to attest to what has taken place and at the beginning of the play Banquo seems to be performing precisely this function that that it's the the one cannot merely say these are witches of the mind and the way that one could say it's a dagger of the mind they if they are of the mind then the mind is bigger than the character of Macbeth and this is also a possibility that the whole play is a kind of a dream or a nightmare and this is one thing that I think is possible in the staging of this this actor Shakespeare project with beginning as a dream beginning with with Lady Macbeth having this dream that the whole thing could be imagined as the Midsummer Night's Dream might be imagined as The Tempest might be imagined as a kind of dream but but indeed the the witches also we encounter them before we encounter him don't wait so we you know they maybe he's their dream there's there's a sense in which their priority has some impression upon us where would you say this the these weird so first of all why are they called weird sisters what is the word weird mean things yes exactly so this old English word weird which becomes our word weird and that they are what else are they called beside weird sisters anything else yes they are called withered hags absolutely secret black and midnight hags what is it that you do anything else okay so they are there potentially figures of fate whatever that means they may be related to the three fates they may be related to the notion of the problem remember the notion of the three fates as those that that spin and weave and cut the story of a man's life but they also may be somehow related to the characters within the play the human characters within the play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth so if Banquo is the partner on stage of Macbeth what what relationship do they have to one another and what why is His function important anybody yes they are the two generals for Duncan would say sort of Co generals protecting Duncan yeah so they they're these these are as usual as usual we've seen this over and over again play begins after the battle there's there's you know you think that the just as a fellow going off over to Cyprus is going to fight the Turks but in fact the war is over by the time he gets there here too the play begins with a battle and then the battle is over and we have the two virtuous generals here Macbeth and Banquo virtuous as contrasted with whom yes and who is the Thane of Cawdor yeah he was a traitor and turned against Duncan and why sent yet that's quite right why is that important to play then Duncan then gives his title and presumably his lands to Macbeth it's the witches head press as the witches had promised it so the first witches hail him all hail Macbeth Thane of gloms Thane of Cawdor who shall be king Hereafter and the Thane of Cawdor lives why do you dress me in borrow'd robes he says and famously this is a play which has been associated by critics with clothing with clothing that fits or doesn't fit and so forth but this this fantasy somehow that this is a mistake that that and then of course it turns out to be true as you say the thing that we know about this thing of corridor is that he's traitor how determinate 'iv is that of something that we might believe about Macbeth what happens when the when Duncan chooses Macbeth as the replacement for the Thane of Cawdor looks like it's like what I said about the end of the play looks like it's going to cure this problem we used to have a traitor as the Thane of Cawdor and now we're in fact going to have a virtuous good captain and instead it actually performs the repetition again traitorous thane of cawdor for another traitorous Thane of Cawdor what what do they what do the The Weird Sisters say to Banquo you will get Kings you will be king but you will get Kings exactly the Banquo wants to thrust himself into this conversation you know the you speak then to me if you can look into the seeds of time and tell which which which one will grow and which will not speak then to me happier and Macbeth Macbeth and less happy by happy what does happy mean and what's the word happy mean in this context fortunate yes it has that strong sense of of lucky or fortunate it's not merely hahaha happy it's not merely glad in them in the short term but it has it has some of that fate characteristic happenstance good HAP good luck connected to it happier than Macbeth and less happy and so forth and immediately then what begins to happen is a kind of split between these two who were good friends this is again you see this not only in Shakespearean tragedy but also in Shakespearean comedy when pairs of sisters or pairs of cousins begin to split when something of mutual interest to them in this in the case of a comedy it might be a love interest comes to split them in this case of course it's not a love interest unless you think of the throne of Scotland as as an object of desire here Macbeth immediately begins to have second thoughts about Banquo and those second thoughts will of course culminate in a in a late and powerful scene but a meantime they are both friends and they're both trying to figure out what's what's happened here and we should say something about the king who is actually receiving the information about the traitorous Thane of colder tell me something about King don't get yes he's just sort of naive I what evidence do we have of his naive J well that he just you know appoints Nick Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor 18 he just goes on waxes enthusiastically he goes to there very quickly do you remember what he says about the Thane of Cawdor and his disillusionment with the Thane of Cawdor that yes and back there please he says he was a gentleman in whom he had absolute trust yes and just before that he says there's no art to find the minds construction in the face he was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust so the that that seeing the surface is that he's an interpreter of the surface so this is to support your point about his optimism or his naivete almost always again to speak structurally about these plays we're going to find that there's something about the king or the ruler or the Duke at the beginning of the play that is naive or under-examined that that that needs to take a second look at things and that that that may allow for things to go wrong because he it's usually he has has failed to appreciate the possibility of of difference or of or the necessity for self interrogation and that's what we have with Duncan at the beginning of the play so that what's what's put in place here is the idea that a successful ruler of Scotland is going to have to cure this fault that this is I mean he this is a beloved king it's precisely his trusting Ness that makes him so appealing in various ways but it what leads to the capacity for treason that he doesn't double read that he doesn't look behind the face to find the minds construction and this theme of course is going to continue throughout the play as Macbeth says things like stars hide your fires let not light night see my dark and deep desires and much much conversation about wearing masks wearing visors concealing your true look from people who might be looking at you and a great deal of a play in fact does take place at night so that the the the the problems are set up at the beginning of the play the play begins with with multiple destabilization it begins with the weird sisters it begins with the uncanny Ness of their knowing the names of Macbeth and Banquo and having these predictions and it begins also with with the news of treason and also the excuse me with a character who shows up very early on to deliver a message to King Duncan who is also a very enigmatic character you remember this character called the bloody captain or the bleeding captain what this this is the kind of character who shows up in these plays to deliver a speech we looked at this a little bit in King Lear when we had the anonymous gentleman toward the end of the play who testified to Cordelia's weeping her smiles and tears were like a better way like sunshine and rain at once her tears like pearls from diamonds dropped and so forth and that gentleman had really no other function performing in the play except to deliver this iconic speech so also with the bleeding captain who comes to report what happened at the battle and how does he let's look at this passage maybe it's a wonderful passage to to look at to begin with its Act one Scene two about line seven or eight captain doubt doubtful it stood as two spent swimmers that do cling together and choke their art the merciless Macdonald worthy to be a rebel for that to the mark multiplying villanies of nature do swarm upon him from the Western Isles of Kern's and gallo glasses is supplied what are they currency there yes the mercenary soldiers they're they're they're peasants who are armed and so forth so these are the these are the names of kinds of troops there types of people and fortune on his damned quarrel smiling showed like a rebels but all's too weak who braved Macbeth well he deserves that name disdaining fortune with his brandished steel which smoked with bloody execution like valorous minion carved out his passage till he faced the slave which ne'er shook hands nor bade farewell to him till he uncie meant him from the nave to the chops and fixed his head upon our battlements the so let's let's look at this speech more more carefully here doubtful it stood what's the it the battle okay what is doubt for me the the outcome could go either way so the doubtfulness is in the battle itself like two spent swimmers as to swim swimmers that do cling together and choke their art now does this image predictive of anything that happens later on in the play you were to try were to say to you know who were the two spent swimmers that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are have often didn't been looked at in this way as figures who pull each other down as exhausted swimmers I mean the spent meaning exhausted from swimming too far too long and seeking to rescue each other in fact lead to their collective downfall two spent swimmers that do cling together and choke their art now what what art what's the art here sorry swimming yes exactly so let's see it's the the battle is like two swimmers who are exhausted and who seeking safety from one another in fact find the opposite this this image of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth if it is one but this image anyway of the two sweats pan swimmers is one that does carry over to the rest of the play when we see the degree to which there inter animation their relationship with one another which is initially conceived as mutually supportive my dearest chalk and so forth leads ultimately to their mutual downfall the and how is how how is Macbeth described in this passage by again we haven't met him yet we get this reading captain who man covered with blood so so the one of the first human images that we see in the play is a man coming onto the stage covered with blood and what is his account of Macbeth sorry yes yes he's he's he's so brave Macbeth well he deserves that name the name is brave not Macbeth here over will we'll see that that name Macbeth does echo disdaining fortune so first we've had the witches now we have Macbeth disdaining fortune with his brand-new steel carved out his passage till he faced the slave who is the slave MacDonald exactly so that we we have the image of a face-to-face battle between these two figures now I should say that are quite well known and good feminist critic John Edelman read this passage about his carving out his passage blood alee till he faced the slave MacDonald as a kind of birth fantasy prefiguring the Macduff is not is not a woman born phenomenon at the end of the play giving birth to himself so to speak carving out his own way here the until he faced the slave and then he unseen him from the nave to the chops and fixed his head upon our battlements where's the knave where are the chops so from the right right unhhhh seemed him again this is a sorry it's the other way right right from the nave to the jobs and cut his head off and fixed his head upon our battlements okay so how is that predictive of HAP was something that happens later in the play ah behold where we're stands the the traitor is a curse it head I'm trying getting the scan chest slightly wrong behold where stands the interprets curse it head that's what is the usurpers cursed head so that so that all of these things the reason I'm pointing this out to you show you what a beautifully crafted play this is that all of these things that seem trivial and local at the beginning of the play that seem either local in the the case of the witch and the story about the sea captain in the chestnuts or a local in terms of the account of the specificity of how Macbeth comes to fight with with McDonald and how what and what happens to that traitors head that all of these things in fact will return later on in the play that this opening scene is completely predictive if we only do it to what happens later on the play of course we don't yes think about I'm sorry the lines um with his brandish steel which smoked with bloody execution I mean you just yes Ian that again and again in the play as he you know uses knives ER right right execution here having it's more benign sense of doing something about executing an act but also of executing killing people and here again that that that blade or that sword is going to reappear unbloody and bloody and the question of what is treason is going to be raised caught in a complicated way throughout the planar because this was a historically topical issue as well for King James for this question of plots against his life the so-called Gunpowder Plot that I talked about a little bit in my chapter and that will recur with this word equal Cashen which shows up in the porter scene the scene which leads to the discovery of the dead body of Duncan in which the porter the one comic figure in this play talks about equivocal and equivocating is a technical term here used it comes comes out of out of supposed Jesuit practice that it's a term that means having a mental reservation or holding something back it's like crossing your fingers behind your back when you say you know yes I will but I'm crossing my fingers behind my back which means I might not I'm not you shouldn't really hold me to this expectation that the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth which is what Macbeth will later say when he has the sense that the the witches prophecies which he has taken straight again he has found the minds construction in the face as he thought he thought he could understand them perfectly well turns out that he didn't interpret properly that the equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth is going to be again highly thematic for the play it is related then to the social or cultural surround of the play this question of of the idea that the Jesuits thought of as some of the enemies of the Protestant state as plotting the overthrow of the Protestant King James are equivalent that this is their their professional practice because of course one thing you had to equivocate about was whether you were Jesuit whether you were a Catholic whether in fact you were not a practitioner of the state religion but equivocal Li vocal having two voices having void doubtful it stood as two spent swimmers the the idea of equivalence and especially in equal voices on both sides becomes thematized throughout the play then it has a local point if not of origin then at least of attachment with this this idea of equivocal that everything is it could go either way as we've said is central to how the play itself functions and is yes please have a couple of questions which are not quite related to what you're talking about it when you said that all of these things will return in other words this this fight that Macbeth has with McDonald wolde I was thinking as you were saying that that it could it be argued that ironically make this also returns with Macbeth fighting or defeating himself that is the same McDonnell wold is the Thane of or which Macbeth Macbeth will become and this this battle in a sense is a prelude to the struggle that will take place within him well now this I'm not sure MacDonald is in fact the Thane of Cawdor no sigh no is the SI NE l is the Thane of Cawdor no but but but I think I think this point is nonetheless the case that that every time Macbeth seems to be fighting an external enemy he is also staging a fight with himself as we see in the famous soliloquy about the supernatural soliciting cannot be ill cannot be good if ill I mean where this is a perfect embodiment of equivalent are they ill are they good they're good for this reason they're bad they're you're ill for this other reason and so forth that that that he went and when he says it shakes so this single state of man that the minute he says the word single meaning unitary or whole we're plunged into a world of double nessam double double toil and trouble of he's here in double trust and so forth and that this split between or this split within is absolutely always repeated in the play so even if it's not the Thane of Cawdor I think your point is well-taken as we were talking about Duncan and how literal he is how he can't see beneath the surface of things and it seems to me also that Macbeth is fairly literal with the witches that is to say he sees them as a neutral source of information right and of course takes them literally especially the business at the end of the play which proves to be you know very paradoxical and what it finally means mmm-hmm seems to me it's ironic that Macbeth also cannot really see beneath the surface of things yes I think that's right that that's an end and who succeeds Macbeth in this play Malcolm and we have that whole scene that that odd little Zac for scene six scene that so many critics have wanted to go away because they think it's it it's it's bath etic it's the scene in which Malcolm pretends to be womanizer and a glutton and I an avaricious man and and poor clueless Macduff bleed lead poor country again notice all the blood that's all over this play it takes him at his word when he says I am guilty of all these sins I'm much worse than Macbeth and it turns out to be a test it turns out to be make Malcolm's test of Macduff's faithfulness to the principles of the Scotland that they both imagined rather than his loyalty to a king were king to be even if the king is a bad King and then he says I'm you know never known woman and I've never did my first false swearing was this upon myself and so forth that that that that this is another staging of this say one thing mean another and this is supposedly the scene which shows that a King of Scotland or a king of anything in this these times must be Wilier must in fact test out in in a way that doesn't seem very successfully Machiavellian but never mind must test out the the the ethics of his or her adherence by by not allowing them to to read the surface so this question of but but this question of reading the surface is I mean that's why I began with the question of the of the unluckiness and the witches and so forth what's the surface it's hard to know what the surface of this play really is it's hard to know how far away to get so that we say oh that's just the surface behind it is these or are these other things but but yes everything repeats in this play and everything is doubled so boat both repeats and is double those are two different activities of duality because the the the doubled Ness involves both both both two and a half so to speak everything's cut in half and everything is done double and every time they say double they they imply split he's here in double trust says as Lady Macbeth the he here is is King Duncan of course and in what sense is he at the castle of Macbeth in double trust yes both as the king and as a guest as a houseguest yes these are both crucial things remember that we talked when we talk about Gloucester about the vital element of hospitality in this time period and the degree to which and will see it in Lady Macbeth when when she pertains to just to be shocked at the idea of the death of Duncan and what does she say as she faints away what in our house I mean this is the ultimate ultimate both misplaced emphasis but also underscoring this business of hospitality that this is the worst possible place and and and so he's here in double trust this is of course of course Macbeth saying we will preferred no we will proceed no further in this business he he has reason to trust us doubly because he is my king and because I am his host and that doubleness will then prove the undoing that to say it twice means to unsay it as it turns out and that that often happens in the course of this play especially with the witch's utterances the the so that the the doubleness here becomes a sign of the loss of that single mindedness that single state of my of men so that this this question of reading the surface becomes again itself doubled on the one hand you want to have a surface that you can read cleanly you want there to be single rather than double on the other hand the minute you realize that there's a story behind the story you yourself fall into that condition of the fallen world in which there's an ideal in which there's also a kind of a fall yes one of the things you said the beginning yes which is is that convinced me interpreters also they were placing the temptation or or sort of arousing his ambition because the ambition just sort of leaps out of nowhere he suddenly Macbeth turns from one her personality and then she even more I mean you know the first time we see or she's already in this conspiracy and it if it happens very quick suddenly were in it yeah absolutely it's hard to know when when when he says two truths are told as as swelling thrilling prologues to this my Imperial theme and so forth it the the the idea that the evidence that the faint of lama same expanded corridor that shall be king Hereafter the the because he's got these two pieces of affirmative evidence must lead to it's hard to know this is where we began by talking about that hard to know whether the witches are echoing or or the place of projection of his own thoughts or whether we are to imagine him as recognizing in them some something that comes from the outside and that that gives him hope that this might be the case but certainly his vaulting ambition he is disposed to read it in this way he almost immediately takes these pieces of evidence to add up to something that we might say is what he had in mind all along or did somebody had in mind all along yes please wondering if in addition to the the bloodbath if the notion of repetition is what makes it so tragic that people don't learn from others mistakes their own well that yes it makes it especially because once there is a repetition how do you get out of the cycle of repetition if the everything of Cawdor is going to be a traitor then the how do you get out of that cycle and and so so precisely it's these repetitions and also the myths readings that there is the repetitions plus the miss ratings because it Macbeth gets to the point where he thinks he can control knowledge or can control understanding is this moment of tremendous relief when the cauldron scene when they produce these apparitions and again they never say here's the QED of these apparitions if you you want to think about a formula like a-- like the the the the renaissance emblems this is something that appears in an emblem book in which you have three this is a printed thing in which you have three elements you have a picture picture of a tree here you have a motto and you have a poem and the three pieces together sort of make an emblem make uh sort of the three things together give you a visual a aphoristic and a verse form of the same kind of message whether it's fistina lente that make a slowly with a picture of a turtle with a sail on him this be one one famous one so here too we've got the verbal you got the visual you've got the interpretation and he they allow him to interpret by not saying you have gotten it wrong or and so he the the irony is that the the audience either is or is not doubly interpreting these these emblems that we see presented to him but he feels completely secured he's got all knowledge that you know there's no such thing as a man of woman born there's no such thing as a moving Grove the so that the the emblems seem or the apparition seem to prove to him that what he wants is that he's safe and that he he he's unassailable and then it turns out once again that his interpretation hasn't gone beyond the surface we're going to take a break now and then we'll come back and we'll deal with some questions of yours but let's also maybe focus for a little bit on the question of gender in this play so I thought we might start by looking at the a letter reading seen at one scene five the first scene in which we actually see Lady Macbeth and that we might go from this scene to a discussion of Lady Macbeth role and of gender as you see it being performed if it is performed in the play Larry would you do me a favor and read Lady Macbeth cross casting yes yes indeed where should I begin if you do if you read the letter and just go to the end of her speech before I enter messenger yeah they met me in the day of success and I've learned by the perfect snob report they have more in them than mortal knowledge when I burned in desire to question them further they made themselves air into which they vanished well as I stood rapt in the wonder of it came missives from the king who all held me thane of cawdor by which title before these weird sisters saluted me and referred me to the coming out of time with hail king that shalt be this have I thought good to deliver thee my dearest partner of greatness that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee lay it to thy heart and farewell Glamis thou art and Cawdor and shalt be what thou art promised yet do I fear thy nature it is too full the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way that would be great art not without ambition without the illness that should attend that you know that without the illness should attend it what thou wouldst highly that would snow holily wouldst not play false and yet would Skloot would strongly win doubts to have great gloms that which cries thou must this thus thou must do if thou have it and that which rather thou dost fear to do then wishes should be undone highly hither that I may pour my spirits in thine ear and chastise with the valour of my tongue all that impedes thee from the golden round which fate and metaphysical aid does seem to have the crown withal - I'll be the messenger and enter at this point yes good ok so this is the first time we see her um the actually the director of the production that's downtown pointed out to me that this is one of the Lady Macbeth is one of the first few characters that we encounter in Shakespeare who is alone when we first meet her one of the few female characters who is alone we first meet her and she is encountered already in a position of ventriloquism please notice that the first lines that she speaks are not hers at all but yet she is reading a letter from him and it may take a moment unless she waved the paper in front of you for you to realize that she is again throwing her voice so to speak that she is reading this letter no he functionally the playwright has got to get this information to Lady Macbeth in some way or another but this is quite a long letter and it's not paraphrase she doesn't say I got a letter from you and here's what it said how might you interpret or understand or explain the fact that there is this a long letter and that it's read aloud by her it seems to me it tells us more about Macbeth in his state of mind and also gives us some information about what how he sees his relationship with Lady Macbeth when he says learned by perfect-perfect report it seems like he's done some research how much time has passed and so obviously this is preoccupying him but he calls her my dearest partner of greatness and then he says greatness has promised thee i big ignorant of what greatness is promised thee earlier you asked Banquo what do you think about this thing about you know your your sons are supposed to be Kings and it's almost like he's he's leading her the same way you know this is not just about you me it's about you mm-hmm so yes so that's very interesting that the greatness is going to be a shared greatness that she's going to become Queen if he's going to become king absolutely and my dearest partner of greatness also here so that before we hear anything from her we hear something about the partnership something about the relationship the importance that he saw it's not that he's going to arrive and then tell her this he wanted the letter to get there beforehand so as to tell her of course it gives us another go-round of this event it gives us the scene again that we have just seen but it also tells us something or seems to suggest something in her voice describing reading aloud his letter to him to her of how he feels about her and also allows her to have a dialogue with the letter because she reads the letter and then she begins to comment upon it almost immediately what is this what is this do to the Equality of their relationship yes even if in in the beginning she appears alone on the stage they are equally involved in this relation his leather makes her sure that she is involved and they are both in it so that's why I said that they are equally involved well does she trust him to go through with this activity yes and she even encouraged him to go for the row and she says yet do I fear thy nature what does she fear that there are too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way why milk baby yeah did this this idea of if him as a child as being like the baby of a girl or baby girl of the of her being not only his partner but also his mother of that that you know famous moment in which she says I'd given suck and and I if the baby were still at my breast I would - its brains out if I had sworn as you have done to this this all this whole theme attic about nourishing nourishing milk and the idea of Macbeth as the the fed child this again is in this little phrase the milk of human kindness has become such a cliche for us produces and what is kindness mean here it doesn't mean again when we say the milk of human kindness we mean something like how people are kind to one another but in fact what is human kindness mean in this context yeah it means human s right to humankind human kindness human human as opposed to watch then what's what what we have other than human functioning here we have the weird sisters yes indeed the yet do I fear thy nature it is twofold the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way what is nearest why I mean the easiest yes to to go the most direct route again one thing this play suggests is that in fact you don't go to direct route that that you got to go out of your way to catch the witches again then you've got to interpret and you've got to reinterpret and so forth that this idea of catching the nearest way is is not going to where as turned out even with Duncan because he missed trust he trusted somebody he shouldn't have trusted as will turn out with Malcolm and his scene with Macduff where the nearest way would be to say yes I'm a good king believe in me but the not the nearest way is to pretend to be a wicked King and there were the wicked Prince and so forth that thou thou wouldst be great are not without ambition now how is that different from being with ambition this is just because he's speaking she's speaking Elizabethan English and you gotta have enough syllables in the line aren't not without ambition yeah the double negative is weaker so by saying that he's not without ambition she's saying yeah you have some but not maybe as much as I'd like right but and also I mean I completely agree with you I also listen to your phrase double negative that we're in that double mess again and double negative doesn't always make a positive in the arithmetic of this play but to be not without something is highly characteristic of the world that we're in here that's a way of being something is to be not without ambition but without the illness should attend it the footnote in my Arden here says evilness wickedness the word was not used for sickness in Shakespeare's day this is one of these things where one would like to believe one's footnote but in fact what does the word illness mean in the course of this play yeah I mean tense not thou not minister to a mind diseased he says to her doctor and the doctor replies thereto the patient must minister to himself the idea of the sickness of this functions here as well but but if we if we take our footnote at face value without the evilness should attend it what fell wouldst highly that wouldst thou Jolla Lee what is highly and wholly what what is somebody paraphrase that for us here that was that sorry what thou wouldst highly that wouldst thou Jolla Lee what does it mean you can hope you can gain by them by the right way yeah that you you deeply you could equal you you highly desire it but you're hoping to get it without any sin or cost or you know loss of your own image of yourself as a good person or something like that would not play false and yet would strongly win so already let me say that this Lady Macbeth sounds not completely unlike some other characters coded female that we've encountered in the play that we have the double negatives that we have here again not not woods not play false yet what's wrong we will when the there there's a way in which the connection between Lady Macbeth and those weird sisters is already being rhetorically developed when we first encounter her in her own voice that's have great gloms that which cries thus thou must do now again this is a play in which things inanimate things cry out all the time and cry out injunctions that have to be both listened to and also interpreted and that would rather that dost fear to do than wishes should be undone what's difficult about this passage and what's difficult about many passages in the first part of the play is the way in which they Poulter with us in a double sense they function with all these double negatives they are this is actual a fairly straightforward thing that she's saying you don't have the courage to go out and get what you want you're hoping it's going to come to you indirectly you don't want to be regarded as evil or as scheming or as ambitious but the whole passage is cut through with all of these negatives hi V hither come here hi V hither that I may pour my spirits in thine ear why ear yes it's the it would be a way of poisoning some somebody that you would put poison in their ear we certainly we have from Hamlet the idea of poison in the year it's a it's it's at least it could be a poisoning absolutely it could be a whispering or whatever it is but it's again a kind of ventral she's going to infuse him there's a sense in which again if one thinks in very abstract gendered terms she is penetrating him rather than he penetrating her that he is the vulnerable open figure she is going to to intrude upon him and to pour her spirits into him and chastise with the Valor of my tongue all that impedes thee from the golden round now what's the golden round here of course is the crown again and that that that team will also reappear the so that before the rest of the world comes to encounter Lady Macbeth in the person of the messenger and then the arrival of Macbeth and of Duncan and so forth we have already this double voice admissible position of the letter and her own response to the letter and because of the doubleness that is involved in her own response that it's the all of these these sentences that are balanced the one only that which that highly that which that holy and so forth she's already working within this rhetoric of doubleness even before Duncan comes to the castle what do you think about the relationship between Lady Macbeth and the witches is it far too simple to say they're versions of her she's versions of them how do you see them related if at all does she have a beard for example she owned sexes herself right and and how and why I'm sure but why why would that be something she might desire to do um it's a man's world and if she wants power then she would have to play that game yeah it's it's because to be female is somehow to be weak or it's a deficit or it's something like that so to unsex here is also in a way to resect I mean we could say that she is in this medial space that they're in where we're beards but women so that she's no sex or she's both sexes or something like that yes couldn't you say also that the witches are a part of Macbeth as well I mean they both reflect a fusion of the two of them well we certainly certainly can say that but but we've actually in a way already said that by talking about his encounter with them on the heath so now I want to do something else I want to look at the way in which the witches are not a kind of avatar of Lady Macbeth so that we can come back to talking about the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth but but so just for right now I want to see if there are elements of commonality or distinction between the witches and Lady Macbeth in a way their predictions cause him to consider actions that he might not have considered previously just like Lady Macbeth's urgings cause him to he at this stage of the plays a acts very equivocal II and yet he has both those influences both from the witches and from Lady Macbeth could we say that they have already poured their spirits into his ear since we began with his they're hailing him and with with the message that they delivered to him they are themselves spirits of the earth of the air they said there's a sense in which this is again happening a second time that it happens in the world of the supernatural in which the the witches have at least in the text this monstrous look of both or neither you should be women but your beards forbid me to interpret that you have so and then you move so it's a little bit like bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream who in the in the internal world of the play has an ass's head because he has behaved like an ass but there are other characters in that play will behave perfectly well like asses who don't look like asses because they're not in that magical space of transformation and the existence of a character really is sort of half ass half man allows you to see that all men II love behave a little bit like asses for example so here too we have a world which is not the ordinary world it's the world of the heath it's the world of the witches is the world of a knight is the world of imagination whatever it is in which these figures have these monstrous guises but it turns out that these months disguises are if I say just you won't misunderstand me that they are allegories of a kind of mantra city that functions in the ordinary world without our being able to see it or or encounter it that the physical visible monstrosity of these witches allows you to say AHA which with Lady Macbeth you don't have any of that physical apparatus in fact in the production across the way she looks like a kind of Victorian lady she was a mobcap and she has a long dress and so forth she doesn't seem at all really witch like but the question is is she performing a similar function in his relationship to her in her relationship to him to what extent is the dreamworld of the heath the this wild world is this world which is like the the green world or the inner world or whatever of a comedy to what extent is that the counterpart the performative counterpart of what seems to be the quiet domestic world of the Macbeth's because we haven't even gotten to the murder yet we haven't even gotten to the point where Duncan enters the upon the battlements and where the deed is done yes um one things I think is interesting though is that in Macbeth's kind of first soliloquy after he sees the witch is and he finds that he gets to be Thane of quarter he says when he goes you know the supernatural soliciting cannot be ill cannot be good the equivocation and he said well if it's good why am i yielding to this suggestion the the horror of which is on fixing my hair so he's already had the idea of the nearest way yet before he writes to her right you know because in a way one is so taken off and with Lady Macbeth's power and and you know the witch is putting this in was she put this man but he's the one who's come up with this idea before he's even written a letter to her that's absolutely the case and yet he will go back on it once he's with her partly because as you're suggesting when he's alone he can have both of these thoughts when he's with her she's got half the Lots and so he's the good cop she's the bad cop she can say you know the when you do it then you were a man on this whole question about what a man is a man is somebody who dares to kill the king now when the the ghost of Banquo disappears now it disappears I am a man again so manliness or or maleness seems to be connected to this notion of unproblematic action or non non confrontation with one's inner divided 'no sits there's something about about and and when he says to her you know bring forth men children only for that i undaunted metal should bring forth nothing but males the idea here is that that that that women produce female nests produces this kind of inwardness or this kind of equal creation and that a race of pure males here would be a single state of man again rather than the doubleness rather than the divided nests I'm just I'm wondering if you think that the play if the play sets us up by the the what you've already talked about the parallelism between Banquo and Macbeth getting this the Prophecy's whereas the play set us up to wonder if Banquo wouldn't have done the same thing had he had a lady Macbeth of his own oh well that's interesting because of course he doesn't there's no lady Banquo what is there instead what is he got the Macbeth doesn't have he's his son he's a son and that distinction I mean when when Macduff is looking for revenge and he says he has no children that the I can't be simple and eye for an eye because you can't kill his children because he doesn't have any children that this is this idea that Banquo has a son is is my fears in Banquo stick deep and so forth this is the thing that that that Macbeth can't bear because when he starts thinking about it he thinks well I'm going to do the deed and Banquo is going to get the reward his sons will be king Banquo he may know was it was supposedly an ancestor of James the first so that the one of the things the play does especially in that perspective glass scene in which they the the row of Kings stretching out to the edge of doom in the in the cauldron scene with the wishes predicts the the rule of James and James's air is into the future it's thought that perhaps the last picture as a picture of James or that in my imagination is kind of mirror coming out to the audience facing King James of sitting in the audience and showing him himself but that but but so that the play in which Banquo is the good guy his son escapes and is in fact the the predicts the future which is the present that is the present that is being performed here allows for this this but but precisely Banquo lives in an all-male world there's Banquo and there's flowers there's no woman there's no trouble Macbeth is very dependent upon Lady Macbeth as we tell can tell from the letter immediately and she uses it as kind of Krypt she uses it as a script from which she's going to develop this entire plot and the the what is her role actually in the murder yeah anybody she takes the the knife of the knives up the of the men who were supposed to be guarding King Duncan who have been drugged and puts them on their person and covers them with Duncan's blood infirm of purpose give me the daggers yes indeed is the scene in which the the the deed is done but it's not completely done because the no one has been blamed for it she goes back into the scene of horrors she takes the daggers from him it's a classic on Manning gesture he's infirm she takes the sword the dagger and takes in that moment the control the the male control over this and then she then she retreats wonderfully into her femininity into her fainting spell into because just as he's beginning to kind of natter on about about things in a way that seems to her uncontrolled she draws attention away from him and this question about whether her her faint is a real faint or a false faint is something that scholars have debated to you what it what is it is she faking well she's not the fainting kind up to this point when we get to the sleepwalking scene we'll find that you know the sleep and waking which are an issue for all both of these characters have become topsy-turvy for her as well but before we get to the sleepwalking scene which I do want to get to let's talk a little bit about the scene of the murder itself and about what happens as a result of it the because it's this is where the Porter scene comes in as well it's it's it's night the the murder takes place and we see the dissociated conversation between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth did you cry when now as I descended and so forth it what are called Stickle mythic lines here let me show you this stick Oh mithya or stick Oh mythic lines lines of verse that fill out the blank verse line by by using one piece of it rather than the whole so hark when I descended you know the little fragments of lines is this is a it's a Greek term from Greek verse but it is to show you again the fragmentation of their control over a language and over thinking that that the language itself begins to break down as we saw with Othello's fit where he was a fit in prose in that case instead of in verse and then it is covered over by this over overly prettified language there lay Duncan his golden silver skin laced with his golden blood and so forth that were Macbeth begins to speak in overly elegant language as he gave what gains control and begins to kind of try to tell a story here but the who discovers the body sir Macduff yes Macduff and Lennox come to the castle to wake the King in the morning and that there's a knocking on the gate that is again part of the mythology of this play it's a very powerful powerful signal both from the real world and from the world beyond and when Macduff discovers the body how does he describe it what's what's what seems to have happened anybody remember yeah more it's kind of repetition of liras horror speech it's a horror horror horror tongue in our heart cannot conceive nor name thee then Macbeth says what's the matter this is right so that there's the this is kind of apocalyptic sense at the end of the world that that that every you know the king is dead the king has been murdered everything is upside down and so all those those energies that were in the outer world in the in the heath world in the witch world upside down fair is foul and foul is fair that that fee Matic which which appears Macbeth and Banquo repeat those words as if they have heard them when they don't in the in the second appearance so the witches use that as a refrain so here also the world has become upside down it's topsy-turvy the fair has become felon the felons become there and and the the whole of Scotland here the whole of Scottish nobility enter into this world of Nightmare this world in which everything is somehow the opposite of what it seems to be and how do the sons of Duncan respond why therefore each of themselves there's and then here there's there's you know danger in men smiles again remember that where the father thought you could tell from the face what the temperament of the person was here they see that you cannot trust smiles and you cannot trust people's expressions and they not only flee they split up and this is quite crucial to that one goes to England and one goes to Ireland that these are for them places of safety as contrasted with the Scotland which is this place of tremendous danger and and of blood immediately and then and paradoxically or maybe not so paradoxically they're fleeing of course like the fleeing of plans puts upon them the suspicion of the deeds as the text that they are blamed because they have fled who who caused this who suborn the groom's and so forth maybe it's the sons so this is a very clever way again of getting rid of the rivals to the throne because of course what's what what is Duncan done I try to mentioned this before what is Duncan done a visa vie his older son that has made Macbeth feel that he has to act Prince the Prince of Cumberland the Prince of Cumberland who is the the the official next in line to the throne your footnotes will tell you again the Scottish throne is not automatically generationally from from oldest different from the King to his son and so forth there needs to be a choice here in this case the choice is made by the king himself that he invests the malcolm with this title of the Prince of Cumberland and this precipitates the action on the part of Macbeth yes I'm wondering why doesn't Macbeth become known as King Macbeth in this play other plays that we've seen when when the prince or the other successor to the throne changes into a king becomes a king ah his name changes and they in the speech prefix assuming right that's a very good question I absolutely don't know the answer to that I have no idea why that is and it's a very good question because it's often in fact in some recent very good textual scholars have tried to look at the point in some other history plays when the speech prefix does change from rich to Kay rich or something but we'd never do get Kay Macbeth here that's that's extremely interesting I one could you know thematize some answer like he's never really the king Orson but in fact he is the king so so I don't know the answer and I think it's it's not a little legitimate but a fascinating question I'll try to find out something about it yes smell please yeah who is in charge of those would that have been the typesetter or would the playwright would have been expected to have some control over what those are you know it we don't know yet it's not the play rides usually not to play right it's it's it's it's often in respect of the performance itself it's not this is not some of the plays don't even have speech prefixes sometimes the speech prefixes are put in by editors but let's see what this one says hold on a second and we'll take much of your time I'm not been able to find it out in time to use up our time I will look it up and get back to you yes so the fact that Macbeth doesn't refer to as King once he is didn't bother me so much Duncan wasn't either in Scotland and is not England it's just yes right right right in the in the Norton that it's the first the first person in the plays King Duncan Duncan of Scotland and when he talks he's referred to as King Duncan okay I'm King Duncan but the character name is list you know I should say that in the sources in Holland sheds Chronicles he's described as Macbeth and I never got a little bit of it at the beginning of your text here Macbeth Macbeth squeen he's not described as as King Macbeth though it's also should be said that at the Shakespearean history that the history of getting Shakespeare's play here is does not accord with the industry that we have in the chronicle sources then in the chronicle sources Macbeth reign for about 10 years and was thought of as a very good king that the idea that Duncan is what was a virtuous king who was slain immediately by a usurper who was a less good King is not the story that the sources tell Duncan is actually a rather weak King Macbeth was a a successful king for a long time it's not and here we get this notion that he users it turns bad is immediately you know replaced by the return to virtue but that's that's this play time this is not not reflected in the chronicles at all which just goes to show you again the chase pray knows how to tell a good story that this is not this that this is not a this is not the versified version of a chronicle this is taking this these elements as materials and making of them a piece of drama that is only secondarily about the history of Scotland that it's really about a whole set of other things I'd like for us to talk for a second about the Banquo scene before we come to the flute blocking scene I want to see if we can stay within the chronology to play a little bit by the time the first of all why does Macbeth want Banquo dead we've already a little bit touched on this sorry because yes because because because of the Flan's issue but notice that at this point he is trying somehow to outsmart the prediction prediction says usually King your sons will be Kings so he believes one part of the prediction but he's trying to control this the prediction by that's like the the appointment in Samarra story you know he's trying to do something that will deny one part of the prediction even as the other part of the prediction comes true so he he gets the murderers together and he sends them off to to kill Banquo and Fleance and half of this and only half of this gets done which leads to the feast scene in which the ghost of Banquo appears so what I'm interesting here among other things are these various apparitions that appear in the play and the way in which they seem if they do to escalate so and to change character what what various things are seen by Macbeth the dagger yes which we don't see except in very little realist productions is this a dagger to see before me how about that then we get to the ghost of Banquo which do we see do we we don't see it you think we don't see it yeah we usually we do see the ghost of Banquo so that that the the you'll seen in various stages of this that the the there's a chair or a stool it seems to be empty the ghost of Banquo quietly arrives and sits down and smiles at him and everyone sitting around the table doesn't see this except Macbeth himself and so so here we are more within the consciousness of Macbeth that thus this this vision that he sees is also shared by us but it also gives you that epistemological question about sort of is it real or is it not what is the status of a ghost of the ghost of Banquo in this period does the ghost of Banquo speak no no okay so these are the things that Macbeth sees and he also sees of course the weird sisters and their apparitions and that's this this scene in which Lady Macbeth crucially does not see the ghost of Banquo but Macbeth does see the ghost of Banquo is it leads to this conversation about on Manning and about you know the I showed me something real like a hurricane Ian tiger and I you know will run toward it rather than away from it the if I run away from it protest me the baby of a girl but this kind of thing I can't bear the there's a split between his consciousness and her consciousness that develops here or that begins to develop here so how do we get from Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo to the sleepwalking scene where it's Lady Macbeth who begins to see things what happens between them that gets us from the one place to the other yeah or what happens in the play one point in the scene why do you keep alone she says - yes so there seems to be he seems to be going more and more within himself and less dependent on her for motivation the one of the reasons that he says I'm going to be alone for a while it's the sort of sentence the murderers it's true he's alone but he's also he he's he's beginning to do more things in order to try to shore up his his that what he thinks he's earned here but yes there is there that that that twins nest that we saw with them is no longer functioning what else yes Macduff and his family are murdered not his family his wife and kids are murdered but she seems to talk about in her sleepwalking seems that's the yes exactly the Thane of Fife had a wife exactly so that is escalating expanding and none of these actions of course none of the zero of them are explicitly motivated by the weird sisters on the heat they don't say go do this they don't say you can be king if you murder Macduff you can be king if you murder Duncan they don't say any of these things they simply predict some future and then then the but this is the Thane of Fife had a wife is part of again sure I described this in my chapter but they would what's wonderful among other things about this sleepwalking scene is that again when we talk about repetition the audience gets to re-experience the horror in case you have forgotten how horrible this was and remember that we weren't present at the murder of Duncan it's told to us it's it's we're outside that chamber but the audience gets to read perience this again in a kind of play within a play scenario in which there are on stage innocent Watchers the doctor and the waiting gentlewoman who are watching Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking and taking notes this is a kind of medicalization they're taking notes and trying to figure out what's wrong with her and slowly these clues begin to to unravel themselves and they are completely horrified and so they're on stage presence it's like Edgar in King Lear when he says that I would just I wouldn't take this from report it is in my heart breaks at it they're onstage horror reanimates the horror for us and and what what if it what are the apparitions that appear to her or so to speak what does she see in her mind's eye blood yes the the and where does this blood on your hands business come from is it I mean it peers in her dream where else does appear in the play I'm sorry ah that's certainly true yes that the little water clears me of us of this deed that's what what Lady Macbeth says but the idea that that you can that the blood of the innocent can merely be washed off your hand that the hand washing of Pilate is certainly present in the backstory here what else where within the play itself who talks about bloody hands Macbeth the the the this my hand will all the multitudinous seas incarnadine making the green one red that that said that not only can I not wash my hand this blood is going to infiltrate all the waters of the earth making the green sea red everything from this deed the whole world is going to become infected with this act and where else sorry yes yes yes exactly exactly that that the badging the face and the hands of the murderers of Duncan and at the the hand begins as well as we say to detach itself from any body so you the scrub come seeling night scarf up the murderous hand a day and so forth it the so that by the time you get to the to the sleepwalking scene you have all of these images of blood of bloody hands of the the impossibility of washing of the backstory of another kind of death of the innocent and so forth and all she's doing is trying to wash her hands all she's doing is this repetitive motion again a very nice thing about this production at the actress Shakespeare project is that the sleepwalking scene seems to begin all over against anybody remember this to those who've you've seen it if you go and see it she the she begins again at the end of the sleepwalking scene so that you get very much this sense that this is a recurrent dream again that you're in this repetition that it's not one dream that they happen to see but as they report this happens all the time and that she too is stuck in this repetition of but but why should it be that her interior tea is now visible to us why should it be that we that this the the the bring forth men children only they completely unattractive Achmed is unsexed powerful Lady Macbeth now turns into a woman with a nightmare in a nightgown yes but when she does show this infirmity it's when she's not conscious she's actually in another state huh so it's not it's not as she is when she can stand up and speak for herself she's in another place it's extremely important and in fact we never see her regain her senses so to speak she goes off stage she dies offstage he says she should have died Hereafter this suggestion is made that perhaps she's done away with herself and so forth and that that we she is in another state an altered state we could say but her this other state of hers is somehow analogous as well as non analogous to that empowered other state of the witches the witches are differ a kind of nightmare kind of cultural nightmare as opposed to an internal psychological nightmare but these are all alternative stages states to to the waking world the world of conscious action please saw something else interesting in the way that the the way Macbeth was influenced the witches were giving him clues and although there's a line in here where they talk about the the the ship at the beginning they say about the the pilot or the the sailor whose wife wouldn't give her the chestnuts they said they can't basically she said we can't sink the ship but we can shake it up but Lady Macbeth actually has the power because she is in the real world at this time to make things happen so I think that she exercises that power but when she the line you point to is an important one those ship cannot be lost yet it can be tempest-tossed but the idea that that there's a limit to their power but within that power there's within those limits there's a tremendous amount of power and here Lady Macbeth is precisely in that tempest-tossed situation that again inside-outside situation and and the fact that she was so powerful that she was so that we do if you take her from the letter reading scene which is also a kind of off stage on stage moment to the sleepwalking scene which is an off stage on stage moment one about hyper consciousness I read this text and I'm interpreting it and the other this internal associative script that she that that is her green here again that the idea that that dream might subtend the whole play that it might become the whole play becomes extremely powerful and Macbeth by contrast begins and you know this is manifest in the play to lose feeling that where he had so much feeling now he has sucked full of Horrors remember that the the be gone from the banquet to the something full of horrors that that at the time was that that his senses would cooled he a night shriek this is the response to that question about his hair being unfixed at the beginning that at the end he he is impervious to any end and the shriek of course is the shriek of the women about the death of Lady Macbeth in his offstage that what the cry of women was that noise the cry of women now the crime began the play is all about the cry of lament from the beginning to the end yes she unsex is herself oh that she um in a sense castrates herself which of course she can't physiologically do but she makes herself from powerful to powerless and it's in that state that she ends her life well I think first thing that the first unsex me here is actually a gesture toward power as we said earlier and that yes right right and also she doesn't have children but there was some illusion that she had a child but we don't know what happened to them yeah well this this is again much is made of this of the wood either is she child Lizzie how many children Helene famous title of my article how many children had Lady Macbeth where the author of the article thought that this was actually a foolish question to ask though in fact critics from that time to this have sort of asked this question children died very frequently in this period children were foster doubt there were lost there's no inconsistency this isn't you know Shakespeare makes a mistake exactly for all we know she was married to somebody else before him this is how I'd like to see this that the you know he's younger than she that she knows she's had a lot of worldly experience now she has this young hero who knows what's going on here but but what we know is that that he has no children doesn't ever say she has no children actually now that I think about it but the the the there's a sense in which her connection with the world becomes more and more and more attenuated and that that finally she is in this period of this this situation of her subconscious or our unconscious performing itself on the stage and and then she dies and he says she should have died Hereafter and then he is alone and when he is alone we have he has nothing left to lose basically that's that's why he can say at least I'll die with harness on my back that there's there's but between that time and this of course comes the unmasking of the apparitions comes the news that the apparitions that he thought were revealed to him to be security blankets you know they know such things a man not a woman born and so forth turn out all to be the juggling fiends who palter with me in a double sense turns out to be that that he's misinterpreted all these expect and again it unravels itself that you get Macduff saying macduff was from his mother's womb untimely ripped reminding us again of the childbirth scenario and maybe of that early moment and then you you hear the news about the moving Grove now again in this time period as today you know you see still modern films in which guys in camouflage also have twigs in their helmets or something this is not an unusual battlefield activity to hide yourself behind or as pieces of landscape so it should not come as such an enormous surprise it's a failure of interpretation here and I don't think that we need to imagine you know all the trees or me often the production really shows you the tree is marching along here but you could perfectly well do it in a way that would make more sense in terms of warfare that you would see the illusion of a moving Grove but in any case this something weirdly I was going to say listen to me there's something extremely for him liberating or freeing about getting out from under those apparitions there's a moment at which he rebounds as a hero at the end when he goes into the the battle when he repeats so to speak that moment that the other thing of court or you know nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it that's the moment when he repents actually in this case Macbeth's goes back into the battle and then the next thing we see is behold where comes the usurpers cursed head so we have got again the the enemy they and again this is this is cultural practice in period if you were to go through the gates of London you would see the heads of traders on pikes that this is this is not an a fantasy this is actually something you could also see in the cultural theater that is to say the public world of Shakespeare's time but the play doesn't end only with the death of Macbeth it ends instead with reconstitution of the state on the on part the part of Malcolm and this is that moment that we saw at the end of King Lear the moment that we see at the end of every one of these plays in which somebody tries to pull everything back together again and as we said with Edgar or Albany depending upon who you think speaks those last lines at the end of King Lear this is a diminished figure figure neither as great as Duncan nor as great as Macbeth who is the survivor here and let's just look if we can at what happens at the very end we shall not spend a large expense of time before we reckon with your several love so here already we think we got the Royal we back but we've also importantly got a different notion of we ness if you like that where the we-ness of the bit of the middle of the play was Macbeth Plus Lady Macbeth here we have my Thane's and kinsmen henceforth the Earl's the first that ever Scotland in such an honor named what's more to do which would be planted newly with the time there's almost always this thematic of the agricultural rebound here the this and what needful else that calls upon us will perform in measure time in place in other words after the play these things will happen one second and we'll be out of here the just one second sorry okay all right the rest is silence as they say at the end of Hamlet okay I'll see you next week for at noon Cleopatra

Channel: CosmoLearning

Views: 88,572

Rating: 4.8110237 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: HFzYuXOLqgc

Length: 110min 48sec (6648 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 18 2015