University Lecture: Macbeth and the Show of Kings, William Carroll

good evening it's a great pleasure to welcome you to the 56th annual University lecture lecture series is one of the great traditions at Boston University established in 1950 the lectures have become a highlight of the academic calendar they recognize that the accomplished teacher can report on research and thought not only to fellow specialists but to general audiences and in language which is comprehensible to intelligent listeners which I assume all of us are in this audience we should be suspicious of claims that the matter of a particular discipline is too complex for general understanding by the public while it is true for example that our knowledge of DNA was first gained by specialists working at the frontiers of genetics the subject is now deservedly part of what the educated person knows and can talk about the tradition of public lectures by great experts is an important function of universities our lecturer tonight professor William Carroll earned his undergraduate degree at Oberlin and his graduate degrees at Yale in the 33 years since he joined our faculty he has established a remarkable record as a scholar teacher and academic administrator he is published extensively and he is one of those prolific writers for whom quality comes first and quantity is a consequence of intense application and energy generations of Boston University students have learned how to write from him and how to understand authors as diverse as Shakespeare and Nabucco on the sound principle that if scholars do not administer at Universe cities then non scholars will professor Carroll has been a backbone of the administration of his departments and college he was director of Graduate Studies for his department in 1989 and after a respite between 1992 and 97 he has continued performing this crucial service to the present it is a measure of his versatility versatility no less than his devotion that between 1987 and 1989 he was the interim chairman of the department of art history but it's far fair to say that nothing has fixed his attention more than the works of William Shakespeare it is also fair to say that the bard has not been ignored by the rest of the world for example Google has approximately 17 million hits for Shakespeare professor Carroll's presentations on Shakespeare in print in the classroom and in the lecture hall show not merely that there is always something new and useful to say about the bard but something essential Shakespeare had choice words to say about many things in sonnet 66 he said I quote art made tongue-tied by authority perhaps this use of authority was referring to troubles with censorship but professor Carroll is a great authority on Shakespeare and has not made him tongue-tied quite to the contrary as you are about to learn ladies and gentlemen please welcome professor William Carroll thank you very much president Japan Ian's friends colleagues students ladies and gentlemen my thanks to you for coming here tonight at this busy time of year I'm greatly honored to be here speaking in this great tradition of university lectures I am particularly honored and flattered by president romanians introduction as I was listening to it I felt a little bit like the Thane of Cawdor just before he was taken away to be executed nothing in his life became him like the introducing it and speaking of Cawdor I'm also pleased as I begin to speak about the infamous Scottish play whose name I will pronounce openly shortly to have a member of the clan Campbell present tonight Provost David Campbell who may know that one of the main branches of the Campbells in 16th century Scotland was that of the cod or Campbells the date of tonight's lecture furthermore comes just five days after the traditional date of Shakespeare's birth and 1560 for making him four hundred and forty-one years old and were just a few months short of the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot conspiracy part of the context of Shakespeare's Macbeth so if something goes wrong tonight there have been plenty of warnings before beginning I would also like to thank the provost and especially Randy Rubenstein and PJ Jorgensen of the Provost's office for guiding me through this process and making it happen my thanks also to Diana Parr cially the head of the design department in publications for the splendid poster she created from the images I sent her this is going to be one of the few lectures you'll ever hear that we'll have difficulty living up to the poster finally I would also like to recognize those students from my present and recent undergraduate Shakespeare courses and those graduate students from my seminars on Jacobi and drama and culture their questions and responses to Macbeth have been important in shaping my thinking about the playing and my colleagues and early modern literature in the Department of English have provided a major will support in intellectual sustenance over the years my lecture has three parts over those of you who will be counting a brief introduction then two sections of more or less equal length I have a number of images to show tonight and I should explain that some of them are not of the highest quality for which I apologize but given the age of the materials and the quality image I was able to obtain they're not always crystal clear so Macbeth in the show of kings introduction when Shakespeare awoke on the morning of March 24th 1603 he might have heard as many in London did the proclamation read by Robert Cecil announcing the death of Queen Elizabeth that night and the succession of James the sixth the King of Scots to the throne of England is James the first trumpets and heralds proceeded to the various city gates to repeat the proclamation which was heard according to one observer with great expectation and silent joy Elizabeth's death had long been anticipated but the peaceful transition to James's ascent was a surprise to many at the time for approaching death was accompanied by dire predictions of chaos and bloodshed perhaps even civil war for Elizabeth had failed and what many saw as the chief duty of the monarch to produce a viable heir and continue the lineal succession of sovereign power the Virgin Queen had remained childless the James the six of Scotland descended from the line issuing from Henry the eighth's sister Margaret Henry the seventh eldest daughter claimed the grant the crown on the grounds of direct lineal descent Parliament quickly passed the succession act that after tracing James's line on the English I pronounced a most joyful and just recognition of James's immediate lawful and undoubted succession descent and right of the crowned as next and sole heir of the blood royal in addition to the blood royal James also possessed two other considerable and more practical assets he was male and he had two male sons plus a daughter just in case of emergency Shakespeare had thus survived the most momentous political event of his lifetime not just the succession of a new monarch but the institution of a new royal house the Stewart's the prevailing critical interpretation of Shakespeare's Macbeth without serious challenge until about 20 years ago has been turned the King James or authorized version that the play was written in late 1605 or early 1606 to flatter or pleased the recently crowned King James and that its setting in Scotland and its thickly embedded allusions to contemporary events reflect not only James's homeland but his own intellectual interests such as witchcraft for James had published a book on witchcraft in 1597 the play it was argued affirms an Orthodox Stuart interpretation of history showing that royal at a Tennessee one in the end the overthrow of the usurper Macbeth not only led to the rightful succession of Malcolm but more importantly as we shall see to the ascendancy of the Stuart's from the descendants of Banquo hints to the very monarch who was presumably viewing the play with complacent satisfaction yet much recent scholarly work such as that of David nor Brook has undermined the traditional authorized version of the play revealing the gaps fissures and contradictions within it while at the same time redirecting our view to the contested political discourse of the period first powerful arguments by James Buchanan King James's tutor in Scotland and many continental writers justified tyrannicide the idea that a monarch who had become a tyrant could lawfully be deposed a position King James specifically attempts to refute in his own writing and second polemicists asserted that the kingship itself far being from far from being an absolute divine right was to some extent a constructed relationship between the people and the monarch and that the people as in any contractual relationship had the right to change monarchs when they felt it necessary James had worked hard to counter this argument to in his political writings but James's position was losing ground historically as his son Charles the first pointedly discovered in 1649 when his head was chopped off Shakespeare's play two chops off the head of one of this Scottish Kings moreover it stages the murder of not one but two kings amply justifies tyrannicide and seems to suggest that the institution of lineal succession by Duncan is a disaster the play seems less a piece of flattery to James that an example of the early modern discourses that constituted and contested sovereignty my intention today is to take up one strand in the historiographical re-examination of Macbeth and to suggest another dimension of the plays intervention in its historical moment my point of departure will be two questions my students frequently ask first Macbeth you will recall slays the rebels attempting to overthrow the lawful king Duncan then receives the prophecy from the witches that he shall be king Hereafter along with Banquo who has received his own prophecy Macbeth then returns to Duncan's camp where rewards are promised the first question is why is macbeth so upset when duncan names his eldest son malcolm the Prince of Cumberland as Macbeth says in an aside that is a step on which I must fall down or else or leap for in my way it lies in other words what could Macbeth Act expectations have been to the witches prophesy that bank will will be lesser than Macbeth and greater not so happy yet much happier because they tell him thou shalt get Kings though thou be none the second question is if Banquo is to be father to a line of kings why is it his son around at the end of the play you recall that Flay Anse has fled when Macbeth's hired murderers kill his father and why is Flay Anza parently forgotten in the coronation of Malcolm the first question has a deceptively simple answer the Scotland of Shakespeare's play has an elective not an inherited monarchy one of the things I want to investigate today is what this apparent fact means in terms of the plays continuing focus on the concept of succession the answer to the second question whereas flyouts will require a longer and more complicated answer I will begin with an examination of the discipline of genealogy in the early modern period and after this detour returned to the ghost that haunts Macbeth's future part one the genealogical imperative given James's substantial assets royal blood two sons and the alleged deathbed approval of Queen Elizabeth the question arises in retrospect why there was ever any doubt that he would be Queen Elizabeth's successor James's royal succession looked on paper quite clear as a modern genealogical chart shows that's should be the handout you have here we have a typical modern genealogical tree with its standard features goes back only to Henry the seventh it omits all the children who did not figure in the eventual history of succession it omits the bastard children and adulterous lovers and it is drawn in clear straight lines sharp right angles moving top to bottom in chronological order so suggesting as well as representing the absolute clarity of descent it is genealogy as teleology everything leading inexorably and simply to James the first but this type of chart is also genealogy as an expression of ideology it represents politics as natural destiny it's a visual incarnation of the succession act that had proclaimed James to be King in the decade before Elizabeth's death however the genealogical picture was not so clear Robert Parsons for example a jesuit intellectual and polemicist published a lengthy work in 1595 the challenge James's possible succession Parsons argued that as many as a dozen people had substantial claims especially his preferred candidate the eldest daughter to the king of Spain the Infanta Isabella who would he hoped returned England to Catholic rule but even some Protestants such as Thomas Wilson in 1601 observed that there are 12 competitors that gape for the death of that good old princess the now Queen Elizabeth's own godson Sir John Harington said in 1602 that had it had been in fact the policy of the state that is a counterpoise to the claim of Mary Queen of Scots James's mother some other titles should quote underhandedly be set on foot at home here then is Parsons considerably more muddled genealogical chart they had the first image the chart is not a tree but a whole forest so heavy it has to be turned on its side the legend at the upper left says this is a perfect and exact Arbor in genealogy of all the kings queens and princes of the blood royal of England at the left margin the Arbor begins with William the Conqueror sorry you can't actually see the writing so clearly just to his left off the margins of the page lies the historical period covered in Shakespeare's Macbeth in the reign of Edward the Confessor Edward is the English king in Macbeth - whose court Malcom flees he will send 10,000 English soldiers to help liberate Scotland on the right margin of the chart however there is nothing like the originating single solidity implied by the branch of William the Conqueror rather here is an efflorescence of chaotic even embarrassing growth strong saplings noxious weeds withered branches star for genetic nourishment James is actually over there here to our illegitimate sons but not daughters disinherited sons and pointed personal histories Edward v put to death by his uncle King Richard Howe L disinherited by his father and so forth and in place of the ex post facto perspective of James's inevitable we have instead twelve different persons that by way of succession to pretend each one of them to be next after Her Majesty that now is clearly a quite different view for Parsons intention was not to cast light but to mystify and confuse James and his supporters therefore had to demolish the succession claims of several others as well as to fend off a tax on his own claims his liabilities as lineal successor were in fact nearly as great as his assets his enemies pointed out that there were nearer claimants in the House of Lancaster that he was excluded by the common law of England which borrowed all foreigners born outside the realm from inheriting within the realm that Henry the eighth's will confirmed by two acts of parliament had established his sister Mary's line as having a prior claim to Margaret's that James's mother Mary Queen of Scots had been put to death for conspiring against the life of Queen Elizabeth and hence by Act of Parliament she and all her heirs lost all right title pretence or claim to the crown of England and so forth even those who supported James's claim like the Scottish theologian John Leslie in 1584 a Catholic supporter of Mary produced genealogical charts that obfuscated James's claim as much as they supported it next image like Parsons this tree also begins with William the Conqueror but his position now represents the ground the beginning of prescient history not a branch but the roof James is somewhere up there at the top is a similar arboreal plenitude in confusion as similar as the Parsons and Leslie genealogies are however they were used to prove exactly the opposite point to short circuit now a long historical narrative James peaceful ascent to the throne and his triumph over all the other claimants was largely made possible by two things one his claim though shaky in many ways was nonetheless a very strong one and two more importantly he had reached a secret agreement with Elizabeth's chief minister Robert Cecil who stage-managed the succession for James and then announced it to the nation the unruly genealogical arbors of Leslie Parsons and others would eventually be pruned and thinned out by the authority of historical hindsight genealogy would be written by the winners the issue of succession would be transmuted by possession and genealogies reference representing symmetry and harmony were produced where there really was none as in this chart by Ronald else tract next image where we have a completely harmonious and symmetrical up to James at the top and the next one by Benjamin Wright similar thing that's Mary Queen of Scots the handshake represents marriage and Union you can see she's ambidextrous because she had two two husbands what we would today consider genealogy developed in the late 14th and 15th centuries from the position of The Herald The Herald's task was to reveal or confirm nobility through heraldic devices and in doing so Harold's frequently had to articulate pedigree or dissent the formulation of charts and tables soon followed by the late 1500s producing genealogical charts and tables had become a serious business the College of Arms received its current charter as the official guarantor of the degrees of honour and descent in 1555 like all businesses however the crafted genealogy became susceptible to fraud and counterfeiting or just wishful thinking Sir Thomas Smith complained as early as 1583 of heralds who would for money give one quote Arms newly-made and invented the title whereof shall pretend to have been found by the said Herald in perusing and viewing of old registers in 1605 one of the heralds of Arms complained I find that I am of less esteem since I came into that office than I was before for I feel the office hath somewhat disgraced me in too much that now by the lewd demeanor of some the name of Harold has become odious and will fall to the ground in satiric character studies for 1628 John Earl broadly sketched the stereotype of the Herald his trade is honor and he sells it and gives arms himself though he be no gentleman he does with Gentry like some shameless queen fathers more children on them that ever they prefer God by the end of the 17th century the figure of the dubious Herald was mocked on the stage this play ESOP the comic playwright John Vanbrugh brought in the sycophant II character Jacob quaint who introduces himself to ESOP sir I'm a genealogist he saw he understands his contemplating marriage and he offers his services to produce Aesop's pedigree as a suitable wedding gift quaint begins for memory with Noah and his three sons he boasts I could take it further but I begin at Noah for brevity's sake pressed by ESOP as to his truthfulness quaint admits that I have debated the business a little with my conscience certainly genealogy became a familiar practice in 16th century England the very identity of the nation was founded upon the invented genealogy of Geoffrey of Monmouth who claimed that Britain was founded by the imaginary brute or Brutus grandson of Aeneas 2,000 years before the Christian era brutes supposedly founded London as Troy Novant and begat a long line of kings not ending until the death of King Arthur several historians of the Tudor period such as Paul d'Or Virgil disputed such claims that rebut the claim remain the story of brute remained in literary and historical works throughout the period and served as a powerful genealogical narrative of national identity one up-and-coming young playwright paid the College of Arms in 1596 to renew his father's application from 20 years earlier for the following coat of arms next image the grant was awarded to John Shakespeare on the grounds that he had been a Queen's officer a bailiff in Stratford and had lands and tenements worth 500 pounds the motto for the shield was written in two different forms in the Herald's report non sans joint and non comma sands droit without the comma it reads not without right a fairly weak assertion we'd say while with a comma it reads no without right ie not justified as an officer of the Queen Shakespeare's father was justified in such a claim but others were skeptical about the playwrights entitlement to this distinction in 1602 the York Herald accused the man who had made the grant have improperly elevating base persons to positions of honour and drew up a list of cases of abuse among them was the Shakespeare crest contemptuously labeled here Shakespeare the player Shakespeare's great contemporary Ben Jonson seems to have known about the incident before in one of his plays a rustic clown who has just paid thirty pounds for his coat of arms is mocked with its motto not without mustard Shakespeare we can safely say had some personal experience with the College of Arms in the production of new titles more authentically noble families commissioned their own pedigree charts for special occasions however such as this one made for the union by marriage of the Howards in the Mowbray's next image very elaborate one there very noble families or this next one for the Campbells of Glen Aria this is the Provos ancestor who only only seems to be lying down on the job you notice it's even color-coded by gender and title and rank and so on the genealogical imagination structured and informed many different disciplines of knowledge genealogical tables were employed to support claims of inheritance in lawsuits and legal controversies next image and the next image this is part of a lawsuit the James Percy they appeared in local histories next image typical description kind of book they appeared also in national chronicles next image john speeds history of britain at the line of the Saxons next image Sir Walter Raleigh's history of the world the origin of the genealogical impulse was a the Bible which provided a seemingly inexhaustible fount of material next image we have the genealogy of from of Adam and so on down next image this is actually Adam's shield Adam was it Adam was Adam was a gentleman as we know these are his three sons and their their growth next image next image you can see the table shows the everything flowing down again through the generations next image these go on for hundreds of pages by the way next image next image okay we tend to think of the genealogical table for chart as strictly an embodiment of chronology in history but could also represent the conceptual the liberal arts for example next image this is it's hard to see but these are all the liberal arts this is actually it looks like an organizational chart of CAS all there among them one example and every one of these is illustrated the next image please is rhetoric and those are all the orders of rhetoric laid out in the various categories such charts could also represents the represent the principles of salvation and damnation next next image this is what to avoid through the various things there next image the universal Church Catholic of which the Church of Rome is just one of many instances of a universal Church one writer described his chart as a visual catechism the early modern Jenny excuse me the early modern genealogical tree embodied above all the hierarchical and patriarchal structure of society and thought with all relation flowing clearly and directly from the Father here at the very center of mean next image it all flows from him but the genealogical focus I'm pursuing here was that of the political specifically the jacket being claimed to the English crown and how it will appear in Macbeth James had royal blood through the English line for Margaret but he was also at pains to establish the lines of his Scottish descent which could who has claimed be traced back as Van Bruges genealogy offered to Noah or Fergus were the lost tribes of Israel depending on the genealogist thus prior to and shortly after his ascent to the English throne James's supporters began to publish ever more elaborate royal genealogies he would not be an exaggeration to say that a campaign of lineal purification was undertaken in 1604 George oh and Harry published the nameless ultra of such works entitled here's the full title the genealogy of the high and mighty monarch James by the grace of God King of Great Britain with his lineal descent from Noah by diverse direct lines tube rudest first inhabit of this Isle of Britain and from him to cabbed wallet er the last king of the British blood and from thence sundry ways to his majesty wherein as plainly showed his rightful title by lawful descent with page after page of genealogical narrative in multiple columns first image from Noah you see the different columns next image again each column is a different line being traced in prose next image even more elaborate next image until we arrive at James king of Scotland the very last item in the long book written texts in the first few years of James's reign in England also presented the genealogical imperative at length panegyric welcome Eames of the new king not only congratulated him on uniting the kingdoms in his own person but for bringing such a pure hereditary lion to the job in effect James and the supporters continued to fight the genealogical battle against Parsons and others who had disputed his claim for decades after his ascent in fact well into the next century long after both Parsons and James were dead among the most important claims supporting James's accession in England was the descent of the House of Stuart from Welsh royalty thus James would already have had English royal blood even if there had been no connection through Margaret the descent from the Welsh began it was said in the aftermath of the reign of Macbeth King of Scotland here's the genealogy is represented by John Leslie the catholic supporter of mary next image this famous image purports to show the origin of the Stuart's at the very top of the tree is Jacobus up there our James annexed his mother Mary Queen of Scots we count down from James through nine monarchs and then through several others to flee Uncas flee aunts at the very foundation and at the very foundation solid as a rock as Banquo the Banquo of Shakespeare's play thus the link is established from Banquo in the reign of Macbeth who was the 85th King of Scotland to James the six the 106 King of Scotland as many historians told the tale when Banquo was murdered by Macbeth smen flyouts fled to Wales where he impregnated the Welsh princess the furious father conceived such hateful displeasure towards flay on that he killed him the daughter delivered a bastard a now fatherless son Walter when he was a young man Walter was taunted that he was a bastard and begotten in unlawful bed and an anger he killed his tormentor fled Wales for Scotland achieved honour and reputation there and so was made Lord steward of London of Scotland hints the family name steward or Stuart several generations later one of the Stuart descendants married Marjorie Bruce daughter of Robert Bruce and their offspring became Robert the second and the rest followed more or less in orderly fashion leading to James one wonders why this genealogy would have been a comforting narrative of origin for James or any of the Stewart's since it involves a possible rape pillage intimacy murder and a kind of rags to Rich's story that hardly reflects ancient nobility but this genealogy the founding myth of the Stuart dynasty was as you might now by now expect a product of the imagination not historical fact Banquo and Fleance were invented by the early Scottish historian Hector Bochy in 1527 prior to his work no such persons had ever appeared in chronicles court records or any other document we can only speculate on Boujis motives in manufacturing Bank one flyouts but the result is clear they solidified the line of Stuart succession and produced a direct derivation from the Welsh hands hence English line to the Stuart's as well as connecting the Stuart's to the long Scottish line back to Noah within a few decades the Banquo fly-off Smith had congealed into accepted historical fact except for a few history sceptical historians such as Sir George Buck who in 1605 and a work otherwise rhapsodic and its praises of James in his royal blood discreetly said that this alleged descent not being acknowledged by the best Scottish historiography Xand a thing not honorable I may well omit it in the first few years after 1603 then the Jacobean regime and its supporters though firmly in power and without any substantial political rivals continued to assert reaffirm and then always pronounces absolute the lineal authority and blood legitimacy of their monarch and dozens of texts and genealogical charts James's claim was propped up and even extended so far that one sympathetic Scottish historian claimed the title of every race which is at different times ruled England is United in the person of our most gracious King part to Shakespeare and the Kingsmen it's hardly an exaggeration then to say that the most important domestic 'el domestic political issue between 1588 year that saw the defeat of the Spanish Armada and possibly Shakespeare's arrival in London to begin his playwriting career and 1603 was the question of Queen Elizabeth's successor Shakespeare's great arc of eight linked history plays Britain between 1588 and 1599 represented the Wars of the Roses from the reign of Richard ii the to the death of rich the third and the founding of the Tudor dynasty the same dynasty that was about to collapse for lack of an heir this historical cycle can impart be understood as a long anguish exploration of the issues often catastrophic in nature of lineal succession as each King awaits or at times helpfully initiates the death of his predecessor two years before James's accession Shakespeare had already in Hamlet explored the unsettled state of Denmark a political world in which the sole eldest son of the rightful king had not inherited the throne because the Denmark of the play like the Scotland of it Beth was an elective not an inherited monarchy lamenting that Claudius had popped in between the election and my hopes Hamlet struggles to inherit his father's strength and bravery if not his kingdom at the end dying Hamlet can only accept as a fact of realpolitik that the invading foreigner Fortinbras will take over the Danish crown I do prophesy the election lights on Fortinbras he has my dying voice a gesture of defeat made worse by the fact that Fortinbras not only has Hamlet's vote but is appropriated even as it is silenced Hamlet's own voice and in King Lear in 1605 just the year before Macbeth Shakespeare had explored the chaos attending a monarch without a son who divided his inheritance or tempted to among three daughters with a subplot of an equally misguided father who disowned his eldest legitimate son to divert his inheritance to his younger bastard son these plays suggest that like many other writers of the period Shakespeare understood the complexities and and betrayals of succession for him it seems the principle of primogeniture that underlay lineal succession was not necessarily a good thing much less a divinely ordained one in his first few years as king of England James had managed to become widely unpopular among the English nobility for diluting and corrupting the honor system by granting literally thousands of knight who had to whoever could pay and many of these new Knights were Scots who had flooded down to London to partake of the new Kings largesse as one English observer put it the Scots hang like horse leeches on James till they could get no more falling than off by retiring into their own country or living at ease leaving all chargeable attendance to the English new titles of nobility were granted wholesale by the Prophet James even more seriously a small group of radical Catholics bitterly opposed to James's Protestant rule began to plot against him this group whose most infamous member was Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up Parliament the royal family and virtually all the political and legal bureaucracy of the kingdom on November 5th 1605 the Gunpowder Plot conspiracy as it became known shakespeare alludes to this conspiracy in the porter's speech in act two of macbeth shakespeare's theatrical company had been granted royal patronage and become the king's men upon James's ascent marching in his coronation entry into London wearing the Kings livery but if they intended to flatter their King by staging Scottish play in the first few years of his reign their aim seems to have been off London audiences certainly had a strong curiosity about this strange country and they're still largely unknown King and this curiosity was fed through the circulation and publication of things Scottish but in 1604 Shakespeare's company had staged a play entitled the tragedy of gallery an account of events of 1600 when James was still in Scotland his archenemy the Earl of gallery had allegedly tried to assassinate James but gallery himself and his brother according to the soul record of the event issued by James's government were killed in the incident many people at a time openly doubted the official account shakespeare's company had inexplicably been printed permitted to stage this play but they were forced to shut it down after only two performances if that representation of treason attempted regicide and royal deliverance was found unacceptable what is there about Macbeth the second Scottish play Shakespeare's company mounted in two years that might have been found flattering to James or his Scottish allies the Scotland of Shakespeare's Macbeth is after all a site of disorder rebellion treason foreign invasions wild Kern's and Gallo glasses blasted Heath's frightening tempest ominous sounds even brutal warriors like the merciless MacDonald suffer mutilation and dismemberment Macbeth the captain reports unseen him from the nave to the chops and fixed his head upon our battlements the clash of armies at the beginning of the play is so great and terrible the captain tells us that it reminds him of another Golgotha the place of the crucifixion where men seemed to bathe in reeking wounds all this without even taking into account the queasy unsettling presence of the witches in this violently aggressive world haunted by strange images of death a faint success in battle rightly received reward from his king and the coin of the realm in Macbeth is evidently noble titles The Witches prophesy to Macbeth three titles that will be his vein of gloms Thane of Cawdor king Hereafter but Beth demands that the witches explained further by sign Isles death sign almost his father i know i am thane of gloms but how of Cawdor Thane of Cawdor lives a prosperous gentleman and to be king stands not within the prospect of belief no more than to be Cawdor but the treasonous thane of cawdor who Macbeth has defeated in the King's name has been condemned to death and is soon executed by silence death in Macbeth has become Thane of plums bike adores death Macbeth has became Thane of Cawdor how else could he become king then but by Duncan's death or how could anyone for that is the worm at the heart of succession succession requires indeed it is inseparable from death and the form of death is irrelevant whether the subject be Macbeth's own father sign 'el or his father King Duncan the witch's prophecy - Macbeth - Banquo at first seems different more positive thou shalt get Kings though thou be none but Banquo's death will also be required women excuse me when the traders are all quelled Macbeth and Banquo attend the king who Folsom Li praises his worthy as cousin the sin of my ingratitude even now was heavy on me thou art so far before that swiftest wing of recompense is slow to overtake thee would thou it's less deserve that the proportion both the thanks and payment might have been mine only I have left to say more as they do then more than all can pay I have begun to plant the animal labor to make thee full of growing what Macbeth was surely expecting to hear next as his reward the honour he had earned in battle while Duncan and his sons remained safely behind the lines is that Duncan would name him as heir apparent his successor the principle of royal succession in the Scotland of the play is that of election usually of the worthy is Fame not necessarily the sovereigns firstborn son even more to the point the kingship according to the Chronicles was to alternate between parallel lines of dissent and Duncan in Macbeth and Macbeth were cousins Malcom moreover was in the sources a minor not of Abel age and prohibited from inheriting nevertheless Duncan turns away from it Beth and Banquo to announce proudly sons kinsmen Thane's and you whose places are the nearest no we will establish our estate upon our eldest Malcolm whom we name hereafter the Prince of Cumberland Duncan thus alters the ancient Scottish system by turning it into one of primogeniture and lineal succession and he makes the very mistake the Queen Elizabeth had been so careful not to make naming one's own successor urged to name Mary Queen of Scots James's mother her her heir presumptive Elizabeth replied thank you that I could love my own winding-sheet princes cannot like their own children though that should succeed unto them in assuring her of the succession we might put our present state in doubt as Elizabeth had feared and Macbeth's aside reveals Duncan has just spoken his own death warrant after Duncan's murder which Macbeth blames on Duncan's sons Malcolm and Donalbain who have fled Ross logically concludes then tis most like the sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth - which Macduff reports without comment he was already named and gone to Scoon to be invested but while Macbeth has now become the lawful king he cannot rest for he soon recalls the witch's prophecy about Banquo then profit like they hailed him father to a line of kings upon my head they placed a fruitless crown and put a barren scepter in my grip Vince to be wrenched with a none lineal hand no son of mine succeeding if it be so for Banquo's issue have I defiled my mind for them the gracious Duncan have I murdered to make them Kings the seeds of Banquo kings ironically Macbeth now wishes that he had a son who would succeed him in the kingship here then in Macbeth's obsession with his own succession may be the explanation of Banquo's unusual prominence in Shakespeare's play the story in the sources of the story that Shakespeare used Banquo is an active co-conspirator against Duncan not the moral figure of Shakespeare's play who experiences some temptation but in contrast to Macbeth would do only that which would still keep his bosom franchised and allegiance clear Shakespeare thus decontaminates the Banquo of his sources perhaps because he is here so prominently the origin of the Stuart line certainly Banquo's importance to Macbeth dominates the center of the play indeed after the murder of Duncan the Macbeth's ascent to the throne Macbeth's first act as king is a clever interrogation of Banquo's travel plans so that hired assassins can intercept and kill him in fly ons moreover it's striking that Shakespeare does not show Macbeth haunted by the ghost of Duncan the Scottish King father-figure kinsman who has been so clear in his great office that his virtues will plead like angels trumpet-tongued against the deep damnation of his taking-off instead after the murder of Banquo in act three and Flay Oz has escaped to his genealogical destiny Macbeth is literally haunted by the ghost of Banquo especially I think by the manner of his appearance according to the folio stage direction the ghost of Banquo enters quote and sits in Macbeth's place at the banquet table in his near hysterical reaction to the ghost whom no one else sees but Macbeth tells his wife the time has been that when the brains were out the man would die and there an end but now they rise again with 20 mortal murders on their crowns and pushes from our stools Macbeth refers to the 20 or more mortal gashes that Banquo has in his head but the line also suggests by the use of the word crowns that Banquo has in effect been crowned by his murder and that he will push Macbeth from his stool or place just as Macbeth pushed Duncan from his this harrowing vision leads Macbeth to seek out the witches himself to know by the worst means the worst Banquo had warned in the first act that the instruments of Darkness tell us truths win us with honest trifles to betray us and deepest consequence but Macbeth is now indifferent to anything but the future the unknown power that speaks the second set of prophecies knows Macbeth thought and tells him the future beware the Thane of Fife none of woman born shall harm Macbeth and Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane Hill shall come against him but these prophecies are not enough and Macbeth demands more yet my heart throbs to know one thing tell me if your art can tell so much shall Banquo's issue ever reign in this kingdom the question that of course had already been answered back in the first act at which point the witches call forth a show of eight kings in Banquo last with a glass in his hand according to the folio stage direction the vision of Banquo's progeny each of whom looks like Banquo living on his king's overcomes Macbeth what will the line stretch out to the crack of doom worse the last figure carries the glass or mirror which shows me many more an infinitely receding number of Banquo kings this vision of Banquo's lines stretching out to the crack of doom with the eighth King holding a mirror in which many more appear may extend even to the reigning monarch James himself perhaps sitting in the audience as I've tried to suggest with the earlier material Shakespeare's audience would surely not have been surprised to encounter this genealogical chorus line for the show of Kings was a recurring feature of Royal discourse for two centuries and more and had been prominently displayed in the early years of James's reign as part of his campaign of lineal reaffirmation such shows presented the unbroken line of Kings from Noah next image there's no next image to the present Henry the eighth seventh Henry the eighth and so on it's about 30 pages of Kings this is truly the fatal vision that shatters Macbeth so devastating that at the end of the scene he sweeps off to even greater acts of tyranny and savagery beginning with the wholly unnecessary slaughter of Macduff's family it's no wonder that in one of the greatest speeches Shakespeare ever wrote Macbeth should so feel the burden of time and history the future he cannot evade tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time and all our yesterday's have lighted fools the way to dusty death for Macbeth this vision of life's succession of days is just a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing but for the Stewart's it is a tale of the greatest signet significance an account of sovereign destiny the show of kings in act 4 then takes its place among the genealogical discourses of early Stuart England bringing to life and putting on the stage those royal predecessors of the reigning monarch here if anywhere we might conclude that Shakespeare was attempting to flatter his King and yet if we return to Les Lee's famous tree next image and look more closely at Shakespeare's text we realized that shakespeare's show of eight kings is one king short of the nine read it needed to reach james the missing monarch is of course James's mother Mary Queen of Scots who has been thoroughly erased from the historical scene Mary's disappearance it's from the play is certainly part of the more general erasure and suppression of the maternal in this play as it has been described by such critics as Janet Adelman but I would also argue that in create in creating this very deliberate gap in the line of succession Shakespeare was not only avoiding an unpleasant subject but revealing his own skepticism about succession in general and about the Stuart claims in particular James's mother had herself suffered by now familiar fate her head chopped off in 1587 as a traitor accused of plotting regicide and James had in 1606 the year of the play commissioned a monument to be built in Westminster Abbey to which when it was completed he had his mother's coffin transferred James owed his own kingship to his mother's deposition and ultimately her death meanwhile her plots against Queen Elizabeth had become notorious the less said about Mary it seems better but her highly conspicuous absence in the play in fact marks our unavoidable disturbing presence the end of the play as many readers have noted accompanies Malcolm's coronation with an uncanny series of repetitions Macduff is entered with Macbeth's head justice Macbeth had beheaded MacDonald at the beginning of the play Malcolm has taken no part in the battle but left it all to Macduff just as his father Duncan relied on Macbeth the worthy esteem Macduff kneels to professes loyal to King Malcolm Justice Macbeth had done to King Duncan Malcolm promises rewards to his followers with the same metaphor that Duncan had used in the first act what's more to do which would be planted newly with the time he promises he will perform and measure time and place and like Duncan before him he hands out titles to those who have slain the enemy my Thane's and kinsmen henceforth be Earl's the first that ever Scotland and such an honour named in creating new honors Malcolm may be attempting to circumvent the high mortality rate of current title holders but given what we know the Scotland of the play he has an effect just handed out even more death sentences worse yet when Macduff enters with Macbeth's head he greets Malcolm himself with his new title The Pale King for so thou art behold were stands the usurpers cursed head a salutation repeated again by Macduff and then by everyone hail King of Scotland this form of salutation links Malcolm with Macbeth who was created by the witches all hail Macbeth hail to thee and by Lady Macbeth by the all-hail Hereafter thus also linking The Weird Sisters with the victorious Scots Malcolm has necessarily gained his new title as everyone seems to do in Scotland through an act of violence the reign of Malcolm moreover the Chronicles tell us was like those of almost all Scottish Kings in this period plagued by rebellions large and small to which he would routinely dispatch Macduff to suppress them after one such incident and a by now unsurprising repetition Macduff returned to the king for the head of the captain of that route so that for his manhood here and showed he was made by the king Earl of March Malcolm's reign in fact became known like james's for his excessive generosity in granting titles of honour he created many Earl's Lords barons and knights many of them that before were things were at this time made Earl's Malcolm's lineal descent according to The Chronicle histories sorry madam Malcolm's lineal succession to the throne seems to have carried with it no more authority than that conferred by the earlier principle of succession by election finally where to return to the second of my original questions is the founder of the Stuart line at the end of the play Flay Anse is gone fled into the darkness without a word as his father Banquo was murdered his absence strikes me as equally as significant as the absence of Mary Queen of Scots in the show of Kings the gap between Malcolm's coronation and the origin of the Stuart line is precisely the vacancy that royal genealogists had attempted to fill but Shakespeare leaves it empty the future uncertain Duncan's establish establishment of primogeniture as the new system of succession and Scotland was seen by the Stuart's as the key to James's own claims of the crown through lineal inheritance but Shakespeare reveals the troubling consequences of Duncan's actions and the clear if guarded impression that Duncan's action was a violation of law and tradition the fact that he had to name Malcolm his heir marks the very novelty of the act in the end Shakespeare's play represents succession as still a vexed unresolved question for at the centre of Macbeth in its complex geological context throbs a spectral vision of missing heads chopped off erased forgotten the line of heads will stretch from McDonald Macbeth and the armed head of the prophecies to Mary Queen of Scots and eventually to James's own son Charles sometimes it seems the show of kings is just a show with the death of Macbeth Macduff had said the time is free but that declaration seems in retrospect like the most wishful thinking thank you well it's I describe describe it to my classes as sort of the the Dracula of Shakespeare's plays because there's more blood in it than almost any other play but it's I would say it's not by comparison with other place we could think of over the top at all compared even with Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus but it certainly has a it has an obsession with with beheading and with the with the the appearance of these floating heads and of course beheading was the ultimate punishment for treason and there's a long elaborate description of what happens to someone who's convicted of attempted regicide or of regicide and after the entire body is tortured the last thing that happens is that the head is cut off because it was the part of the body that had imagined the treason and of course waving over on 25 or 30 heads were on poles on top of London Bridge waving in the breeze and every foreign visitor remarked when they came to London they were quite surprised to find this is the sort of welcome to London greeting there's a there's a kind of paranoia of treason I would suggest all through the Elizabethan but particularly in the early part of James's reign and and somehow this is like the consequence of it I think the other thing I'd say is that within the play itself but bets and the Macbeth and his wife have a continual series of speeches and moments when they say they call on darkness to hide their deeds they ask that their eye not see what their hand does they don't want to see anymore the actions that are being acted out and in some ways the ultimate separation of sight and consequence is to literally take the head off so the I can no longer see the hand and I think that's also a figure for the kind of insanity you know that ultimately happens in the play but it's a it's a it's a fairly over-the-top play I'll grant you that certainly a very strange play oh sorry yes that the word challenge is probably far too strong because after all it was the king's men they performed regularly at court but I think he's skeptical of lots of things and it's even before James comes to the crown and Hamlet in those place in the 1590s those history plays I think we see lots of skepticism about the theory and principle of how how the monarchy changes and succession the irony is that during his lifetime the only monarch he had known that was Elizabeth in fact it's been estimated that maybe 95 percent of the people alive in 1603 had never known any other monarch than Elizabeth and so they had not gone through the regime change that was about to happen and it brought up all cotton or 15 years actually for two decades it brought up all kinds of anxieties about succession and as it became clear that she was not going to have an heir it only increased the anxiety in 1571 Elizabeth had her government pass a so-called statute of silence which forbad any public discussion or printing of any any any discussion of the succession of the company of the monarchy and that was 30 years before she died so she didn't want the subject brought up but the subject was brought up and so I think his challenge is wrong is too strong but I think he's like many people skeptical yes no idea fence what seems connected with Wales very interesting first shakespeare's tendency to an anti Welsh leaning this basis if Mary was suppressed as an embarrassing ancestor the Tudor made Tudors calm well strike him take it off to the royal standard could it have been thought that looking back to the gentleman of the bedchamber would married Queen Catherine for the Welsh directly into a lion there was such a thin Lancastrian claim that wealth connections were better forgotten well that would be our view but you you heard in the for instance in the title of the tour-roland harry thing the line goes through Cadwallader you know and so the Welsh was important because one drop of Welsh blood meant English royalty and so however disreputable it might be in other ways hearth in a claim any draw any claim that had blood in it was better than any other kind of claim and so it didn't seem to matter and and the oddness of the of the fly on story with murder and illegitimate children and he's a bastard and so forth his son as a bastard didn't seem to matter because it made of what it made a blood connection but yeah he's not a fan of the Welsh or the Scots either for that matter obviously the questions officer Murphy we have the anti maternal in the play don't we the witches are the witches are the origin of the prophesies of genealogical destiny and so it's first of all suspect to begin with becomes it's true of course but its origin is problematic and remember Banquo's warning that the instruments of Darkness tell us truths to win us to their harm and I think that the witches at least in certainly in the second set of prophecies but probably in the beginning as well say and speak what Macbeth is already desired he wants to be king he expects to be king they tell him you'll be king and he says right I'll be king who knows the prophecy though of course doesn't say thou shalt be king by killing a helpless old man who's asleep in his bed and drugging the the two guys outside his outside his door they they just say you'll be king and in a way it's not that in a way they understand or the witches what they say they know what he'll do it's the only way you can get a title in that in that culture is by killing your predecessor or so it seems but I don't know what to make really of the witches but we'll see have a distinction project on that coming up other question think we have time for more questions if there are any sorry I'm not oh yeah sure right signifying the three three kingdoms right that's right well the question certainly one question about the play has been whether James actually saw it or not and probably he did there was performances of Shakespeare Company staged several plays at Hampton Court in the summer of 1606 when James's brother-in-law visited the the King of Denmark there was but there are other reports of that period of that visit and describing a elaborate day-long drunken parties and there's a real question whether James was ever alert enough to see the play then it was again performed later at court but just because a play was performed a court it's not always clear that James was present or awake or sober probably he saw it but I don't think you could count on it and and certainly the play was first staged in the Globe Theatre where there was no monarch no monarch at all yes we've actually been on stage actually well if I mean that's a nice I mean it's a nice idea that we like to think about it couldn't have couldn't could not have happened at the Globe Theatre because James wouldn't have gone to the Globe Theater or to the indoor theater for that matter the Blackfriars the other problem with the play and knowing whether exactly what its occasion was is that with the only text we have of it is from 1623 seven years after Shakespeare's death and it's been amplified or modified slightly by another playwright Thomas Middleton who there's some songs in the play in the Hecate scenes that have been added apparently around sixteen ten eleven twelve so that we don't have the what we do the text we have is not the text that was played in 1606 exactly and we're not you know we can't absolutely say what that was but I mean if they took it to court then it's possible that James was you know she held the mirror up just right that he'd be there professor mendillo that's an interesting question from an astronomer I should have anticipated that question there must have been there must there must be something like that the the the trouble is that prophecy is a dangerous act and prophecy had been forbidden by Act of Parliament prophecy was associated with revolution too often and with subversion and rebellion and so forth nevertheless when the prophecies were what you wanted to hear then they were permitted but I have to say I haven't looked at astrological charts or astrological books and I'll I'll take that up and perhaps from your own private library I'll look at some of those I really don't know thank thank you for that spectacular talk and the only part of it that made me feel uncomfortable was the question from the audience about making you a consultant Presidential Search Committee the way you describe what happened to Kings made me feel very uneasy but but it did not pain for interim thank you I wanted first to present to you a framed copy of the poster great thank you very much it's a great poster and also a token of our appreciation for your time thank you so much for wonderful

Channel: Boston University

Views: 14,858

Rating: 4.5510206 out of 5

Keywords: College of Arts & Sciences, Shakespeare

Id: JyFJrxLlJWw

Length: 72min 54sec (4374 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 30 2010