Macbeth: …Goodness Knows the Wicked Die Alone

Feraco Search for Human Potential 18 November 2014

If Act Four seemed like a slow build (it’s as long as the first act, but with half the scenes), Act Five is a breakneck sprint to the finish – seven scenes jammed into fifteen pages of script (virtually the same length as the three scene second act), jumping between several different locations and casts of characters. That sense that things are roaring towards a conclusion as they’re spiraling out of control is a heady one, but it’s also false: things may be spiraling out of control for Macbeth, but they’re actually proceeding in very orderly – one might say prophesized – fashion.

Shakespeare takes a similarly ordered approach to his material. Since he has to tie up his loose threads during the act – theme-wise, character-wise, and plot-wise – we get re-introduced to some of the material that’s been temporarily sidelined. Lady Macbeth, for example, is absent during the entire fourth act. But she’s back for her curtain call, in her most famous scene (the “sleepwalking” scene).

The Macbeths’ sleep throughout the play has been uneasy, filled with visions of fear and guilt, and their waking lives have grown increasingly nightmarish. Now Lady Macbeth is locked into a nightmare, tearing at her hands as she tries to wash them. She believed that a little water would clean her (and her husband) of murder; clearly, one can wash the blood from one’s hands, but one can never remove the stains on one’s conscience.

It strikes many readers as somewhat odd that Lady Macbeth, not Macbeth, would have a final attack of remorse. She’s supposed to be the evil one – the plotter, the planner, the pusher, the puppeteer. Macbeth may be the engine of death, but she – at least at first – provides the fuel. But it’s not actually that surprising, and it has nothing to do with the Lady’s femininity finally asserting itself in a play that largely obsessed with the meaning of manhood.

Consider, if you will, that Lady Macbeth gained nothing through Duncan’s murder; the control she believed she’d have was ripped away as soon as her husband proved too unstable to rule. And if you also consider that Macbeth has never been the same following Duncan’s death, she’s lost her only tie to humanity as well. Macbeth is really all she has, and now she’s bound to a crazed shadow of a man she loved.

Moreover, if children give meaning to men’s lives – this being the source of Macbeth’s obsession with his “barren scepter” – what would they do for women? If Macbeth fails to be a man by not having a baby, does Lady Macbeth fail, on some level, to be a woman by not birthing and rearing a child? Macbeth already tells her that she’s only fit to have sons, for her spirit’s far too bold and vicious to pass down to daughters. He means it as a compliment, but in a work where all lines and distinctions blur –“Fair is foul” – doesn’t that just underscore how trapped she is? If she’s not allowed to act as men do, and she’s clearly not comfortable in the woman’s role, where can she find peace?

We’ve alluded to “Macbeth’s missing child” before, as well as to the fact that there are several schools of thought regarding the possibility that Macbeth does – or did – have one. Evidence includes little offhanded lines, such as Lady Macbeth’s declaration (to an unsurprised husband) that she’s nursed an infant before. Since we can’t assume she’s lying (the tone of the conversation presumes that her husband wouldn’t be surprised by the disclosure), several possibilities remain. She could have served as a nurse for another woman’s child; the practice wasn’t all that uncommon, and it pops up in other Shakespeare plays (Juliet, for example, nursed from the Nurse). But that typically signifies that she’d had a child of her own.

She and Macbeth could currently have a child, just one that never appears onstage. Supporters of this theory assert that his presence accounts for Macbeth’s weirdly dispassionate pursuit of power (he’s doing it for his son and wife, not for himself), as well as his complete and utter panic over the idea of Fleance becoming king (couldn’t that just happen as a result of Macbeth dying of old age, since Fleance is, after all, much younger than him?). But to be honest, I don’t buy this one; I have a very hard time reconciling the “fruitless crown/barren scepter” speech with a child who’s even more thoroughly hidden than Fleance.

That leaves two other possibilities. One is that Lady Macbeth has married before, had a child with her husband, was left a widow, and married Macbeth. Somewhere either during or after that sequence, her child was killed somehow. History shows that the real Macbeth’s wife did, in fact, have a child from a previous marriage.

But considering how thoroughly and intentionally Shakespeare changed the Lady Macbeth character from her historical antecedent, and considering that there aren’t any other allusions to a prior marriage anywhere in the play, this, too, seems to be an empty explanation. Shakespeare’s precisely handled virtually every other aspect of the script; it would be odd for that moment to sit there in isolation, like a lost fragment of a deleted scene that accidentally found its way into a film’s final cut.

The other possibility – and the most painful one – is that, indeed, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth did have a child…but that he (we will assume it’s a son, thanks to Macbeth’s obsession with them as well as his “men-children only” line) died at an early age due to unspecified causes – a family line killed off in one fell swoop. This not only explains Lady Macbeth’s “nursing” line, but amplifies its power in that scene; by alluding to their dead child, Lady Macbeth strikes the rawest nerve for both of them that she can.

When she says she would kill her child had she promised to do so, there’s nothing Macbeth can say in response to that: it’s an unimpeachable affirmation of her resolve to keep her word. And you’ll notice when re-reading that scene that, indeed, Macbeth says nothing. He pauses, then changes the subject – If we should fail– And Lady Macbeth cuts him off: fail? We She lets that line hang in the air for a moment, as if to say: Don’t you and I already understand failure?

That sequence has been read in many, many different ways, depending on whether the director and actress agree with this interpretation. If it holds, the explanation doesn’t excuse what Lady Macbeth and especially Macbeth do over the course of the play: their crimes are terrible. Yet I think back to my older sister, working with dying children, and think also of their terrified, powerless parents. If you’re to outlive your child, one thinks, the universe must flip upside down, the natural order of things reverses and falls apart…fair becomes foul. And I think of Macbeth, who seems unnaturally hungry for certainty, craving knowledge of how things should happen, and I wonder if, in those parents’ shoes, all I would want is for things to make sense too.

What I’m trying to say, and what I know I’ve said before, is that the Macbeths’ hungers and desires are probably more complicated than they initially appear – that they, themselves, are complex figures, not cartoonish villains. And when one remembers how Lady Macbeth thought Duncan looked exactly like her father, and how that sight alone stayed her hand – that because he looked like someone she loved she didn’t kill him – one re-reads the second scene of Act II differently as well.

For here no longer stands the craven, plotting witch in woman’s form, seizing the daggers from her weak-willed husband, marching down to viciously stab the dead king before spreading his blood over his guards’ drugged faces. Here instead stands a woman who, seeing that her husband has botched a terrible but necessary task, must protect herself and her loved one – the only one she has left – from getting caught.

The stereotype of maternal ferocity holds that a mother will grimly do what’s necessary to protect her young loved ones, no matter how unpleasant. Lady Macduff says as much when she talks about the wren defending her doomed nest, and we’ve talked at length about the woman from 1984 bracing her arm against the hailstorm of bullets. In that sense, then, there’s a sort of grim maternity on display here from Lady Macbeth: If my husband puts himself at risk by acting like a frightened child, I will protect him – us – no matter what.

So she goes back downstairs, confronts what must look like the corpse of her father (torn to ribbons), and does what she has to do. They are, as Macbeth later says, so deep in blood that it feels impossible to turn back.

When she comes up, she tells Macbeth that she’s grateful she’s not a coward like him – that her hands are red, but her heart’s not white. But white’s the color of virtue as well as cowardice, and Lady Macbeth will never be pure, even though she’s the one who lives up to her word (and Macbeth the one who keeps messing up or altering plans).

Remember, she doesn’t though it’s a corpse (and kill anyone; this is probably the first time she’s ever inflicted physical harm on a human being, even dismissing her stated willingness to hurt her baby for the moment). Her bravado, which stands in marked contrast to Macbeth’s tortured regret, reveals itself as simply that – bravado masking anger and bitterness over her husband’s actions forcing her to do what she’s done, empty posturing hiding a deeper hurt.

And it’s that hurt that comes to the forefront now, as water cannot wash away her crimes, cannot wash away the psychological trauma Lady Macbeth’s inflicted upon herself. Even here, she does not cut a sympathetic figure. But she does cut a tragic one. Who could have guessed, back when we met her in the first act’s fifth scene, that the amoral Lady Macbeth’s fatal weakness would be her conscience?

The Doctor and gentlewoman listen to her talk in her sleep –

What’s done cannot be undone

– and decide that there’s nothing that can be done for her. The doctor says she needs the divine’s help more than a physician. They’re right. This is the last time we’ll see Lady Macbeth alive; she kills herself.

And you’ll notice that Shakespeare has spent the entire play slowly removing Macbeth from everything – not just from people, but from what once made up his life. When his wife dies, she does so offstage, and he merely acknowledges the loss when it’s reported. The shift in priorities – from her needs to his own, from providing for another to single-minded destruction – is complete. Macbeth is irredeemable.

Most of the next few scenes whip by in a quick blur of details; very little of what we read here has significance beyond its present meaning. We learn that: – Macbeth has fortified his castle at Dunsinane in anticipation of Malcolm’s, Macduff’s, and Siward’s (an English lord and Malcolm’s uncle) attack – Most of his men now openly acknowledge his corruption, and that many have deserted him – Donalbain is nowhere to be found – Macbeth plans to make his last stand here, no matter the cost – Malcolm, as he approaches Birnam Wood, gives orders to every soldier to strip the trees of branches and carry them in order to make enemy scouts inflate their numbers. – This, of course, gives the impression of trees marching from Birnam Wood on Dunsinane…exactly as the prophecy warned.

When Lady Macbeth shuffles off this mortal coil, Macbeth launches into a rare monologue (not a soliloquy). In the “sound and fury” speech, he states that life’s end no longer saddens him, because every day we live merely serves as a way to march closer to death. Our lives are just “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

One cannot assume Shakespeare believes this; there’s plenty of evidence in his other plays to suggest that, indeed, he found human existence to be profoundly fascinating. But from Macbeth’s perspective, this speech makes perfect sense. As the play draws close to its conclusion, he can look back at what happened over the course of it and marvel at how arbitrary the things that felt so serious seem now.

What was it all for? Power? He’s lost (or losing) it. His wife? She’s dead now. Fate? Fate’s abandoned him. Fear? He really killed a king he liked and friend he loved because he was afraid? What could possibly frighten him more than the thought of doing what he’s done – of, as Kierkegaard put it, losing himself?

No, he’s not doing what he’s doing for any reason now. He thinks he’s hatching plans, making independent choices, and generally executing a strategy. But it’s a delusion. Like a wind-up toy wound up too far and left alone in an empty room, Macbeth is simply going through the motions now, defending a castle he can’t truly want to occupy against enemies who only hate him because he made them hate him.

So “Birnam Wood” draws near, and Macbeth, declaring that “there is no flying hence or harrying here,” leaves to join the battlefield himself. Siward and his son (the imaginatively named Young Siward) lead the first charge against him. It’s not successful. In fact, Young Siward makes it far enough to face Macbeth directly, but the mad king simply guts him and moves on, laughing that someone of woman born would be stupid enough to stand and face him rather than flee. Just another family line destroyed, another father or son eliminated. For those of you keeping score, that’s four “pairs” (Duncan/Malcolm, Macduff/Son, Banquo/Fleance, and Siward/Young Siward) of fathers and sons in the play, and Macbeth kills a member of each one (two fathers, two sons… …Quite the body count, no?

But no sooner does he kill yet another son than Macduff arrives, challenging Macbeth to turn and face him. Macbeth tells him to leave, that he’s been avoiding him –“my soul is too much charged with blood of thine already.” Macduff isn’t going anywhere, and he says that, since Macbeth’s crimes are too terrible to describe with words ( a deed without a name ), his sword will speak for him. Act I’s Lady Macbeth would be so proud of him.

As they fight, Macbeth gloats; he knows (“knows”) he can’t lose, for Macduff is of woman born. But, as it so happens, Macduff isn’t – not literally. He never passed through the birth canal. Shakespeare writes that “Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped.” This means to describe a less-modern version of the Cesarean section – Macduff wasn’t coming out, so they cut open his mother and ripped him out. No word on whether she survived the procedure… But the apparitions were right all along.

Macbeth – stunned, shaken, feeling trolled, furious – now knows that he’s doomed. But he refuses to surrender when Macduff tauntingly dares him to do so: even here, he’s futilely trying to resist Fate’s dictates, cursing those who “keep the word of promise to our ear, and break it to our hope.” The wind-up toy spins on. The battle moves offstage.

Siward and Malcolm appear in the wake of that clash, discussing the grim nature of warfare.

The people they care about most will fight for them, but that makes those cherished ones more likely to die. Ross, who seems to have become Shakespeare’s designated bearer of bad news by this point, tells Siward that his son died in the battle, but that they’ve collected his body.

Upon hearing word of his son’s demise, Siward asks, “Had he his hurts before?” – meaning, was he facing his killer, or were the wounds on his back? Ross confirms his wounds are “on the front,” and Siward…well, he doesn’t sigh with relief as much as he solemnly, grimly nods, saying that his son therefore earned as noble a death as a fighter could merit.

Something of an interesting commentary on Foundation Question #6…

Siward’s reaction to the news reverses Macbeth’s almost nihilistic reaction to Lady Macbeth’s death. Unlike the king, Siward sees great value in dying – and in living –“the right way.” Yes, his son died much too young. But at least he died fighting; at least he died with his eyes open, battling to uphold a righteous cause, facing that which needed to be, if not defeated, at least resisted.

As Siward speaks, one can’t help but see how closely his sentiment mirrors the Fat Man’s from War.

Our children fight because they must; if they die fighting for something good, long before age and experience take their inevitable toll, what better fate could we arrange for them? But whereas Pirandello’s character doesn’t truly believe what he’s saying – his words are his last, desperate coping mechanism – Siward does.

This scene is worth noting not just because it reflects how different values have shifted across different eras. The play’s chiefly obsessed with, in no particular order, the relationships between fathers and sons; the degree of control a man has over his own fate; the “right” way to live one’s life, particularly in the face of contradicting responsibilities; and how one responds to adversity, loss, and pain. In a play such as this one, this tiny section of dialogue may as well be a line drawn in the sand.

Here, the meaning of your life isn’t determined by how safe you felt, how many threats you neutralized, or even how long you led it, but by whether, on the day Death came for you, you were brave enough to stand your ground and face it.

And that’s what’s so sneaky about the way Shakespeare finally sends Macbeth to his death. What looks like futile, doomed desperation at first blush – why even bother resisting Macduff when you know he’s going to win? – is really Macbeth’s last stab at some semblance of noble human dignity and courage.

After spending the vast majority of the play alternately paralyzed and compromised by his fears, operating under cover of darkness and shadow, Macbeth stands his ground: you’re going to kill me, but I’m not going easily.

I know

But he does go, in the end. Once Siward finishes speaking, Macduff walks back onto the stage, carrying a pike with Macbeth’s head jammed on its spike.

This is the mirror image of the defeated “rebel leader,” Macdonwald, from the play’s second scene; no telling whether Macduff unseam’d Macbeth from nave to chops first.

And we can’t help but notice that Macbeth, like so many of the characters in the play, meets his end offstage – already out of sight, and someday out of mind.

So now, it seems, we’re going to get our Hollywood ending after all. The witch is dead, or at least the one who listened to the witches is. Malcolm’s been elevated to the throne, and the play ends with him discussing the need to get down to business – reaching out to those who fled the country, promoting those who just fought by his side to new roles (Scotland’s first earls!), and so forth. It looks, at first, like a tidy little conclusion. But, of course, it isn’t.

There’s a key distinction between Macbeth

and Shakespeare’s other works. Most tragedies give their audiences some relief at the end of the action; we call this cooling-off catharsis.

Macbeth

is decidedly, emphatically non-cathartic.

Macbeth may be dead, but the play’s survivors are broken, beaten, and scarred. Scotland has suffered catastrophic damage, and the leadership vacuum that formed following Duncan’s murder hasn’t been completely filled. For reasons both Susan Snyder and I mention, we don’t particularly like or trust Malcolm, who assumes the throne at the end of the play. And there’re a hugely problematic loose thread still dangling, even after Macbeth’s death, that threatens to unravel everything…

I’ve spoken at length about how detail-oriented Shakespeare’s scripts are, and how surprising that quality really is – since, after all, these weren’t meant to be widely read the way they are today, and were originally composed by hand.

Nothing seems to escape his field of vision. So when he leaves a giant, gaping uncertainty in place – one which inconveniently hearkens back to a specific earlier moment in Act Four – it should grab your attention. Did you spot what Shakespeare didn’t address with his conclusion? Where’s Fleance?

Malcolm’s king now, sure. And Donalbain’s out there in Ireland somewhere; we can assume that he’s one of the people Malcolm’s alluding to when he mentions the need to reach out to the members of the Scottish diaspora. That makes for two members of the royal family still alive and kicking, still very young…and fertile.

So what in the world happens to the royal line? Fleance Sisters allude to when they tell Banquo he shall beget kings; he has no other sons, and he’s a bit too dead to have any more at the moment.

must be the person the And the only way – the disappear.

only for Fleance to become king is for the royal family to do what Macbeth tried to make it do: way –

In order for the prophecy to come true – and we know the prophecies are going to come true, since James is sitting in the audience freaking out about the genuine witch chants – Malcolm has to die, probably childless (for if he has children, they need to die to). Donalbain also needs to die, with the same conditions in place regarding his potential children. And since both Malcolm and Donalbain are roughly the same age as Fleance, they’ll need to die young if he’s going to have enough time to learn how to rule, then teach his sons how to rule, all without foreign invaders sensing the country’s weakness during an extended period of turmoil.

The play ends by pretending that the problems at its core – the wrongful destruction of the royal family and seizure of the country it once rightfully ruled – have been solved with Macbeth’s death and the removal of the tyrant from the throne. In actuality, Macbeth was simply a catalyst: his actions don’t annihilate the royal family, but they annihilation.

By getting rid of Duncan, he starts the cascade that must – Malcolm’s and Donalbain’s lives as well. Scotland, in short, seems (at least to people who aren’t paying close attention at the play winds down) to be on the cusp of a very good, very fair But nothing, it seems, ever comes that easily. set the conditions for their day. must – ultimately claim