Discuss Macbeth and Its Imagery.

Ans.

Introduction

A.C Bradley, the eminent scholar and critic on Shakespeare, chose four plays as the great exemplars of Shakespearean tragedy, namely.

‘Hamlet’, ‘Othello’, ‘King Lear’, and ‘Macbeth‘

These four tragedies “differ from each other almost as they do from ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Antony and Cleopatra”. During the years these four great tragedies were written, the two comedies with tragic overtones, i.e., ‘Trilus and Cressida’ and ‘Measure for Measure’ were, most probably, also written. But it should not be inferred that this period, in which great tragedies and comedies with tragic overtones were composed, “was caused by tragic events in his own life or even, as some believed, that it was a reflection of the disenchantment of the Elizabethans or of the Jacobeans”. All great literary masters and artists possess a tragic sense of life- and Shakespeare was no exception. Moreover, Shakespeare turned to tragedy only when he had completed the cycle of English Histories (historical plays)-a cycle which included at least two tragedies. Also, he had perfected his comedy in ‘Twelfth Night’ and quite naturally and understandably, wished to devote himself to “other sensations”, and also because he felt at the height of his dramatic and poetic powers that he could display his deepened understanding of human life only in tragedies.

Macbeth’ (1605-1606) is based mainly on Holinshed’s ‘Chronicles’, the story of Donald’s murder of Duncan; but Shakespeare also consulted Buchanan’s Latin ‘History of Scotland’. For other details-this play was written for performance at court-Shakespeare consulted several of James I’s own works, especially ‘Daemonologie’.

The finished version of Macbeth shows no signs of heterogeneity of materials on which they were based….. Display of diverse facts and fiction into coherent dramatic required extraordinary powers of craftmanship. Shakespeare’s art-construction was as supreme as his more generally recognized gifts as a poet.

Subject of ‘Macbeth’

The subject of Macbeth’ was contemplated by Shakespeare because King James was delighted with a Latin playlet performed at Oxford about the promises to his reputed ancestor Banquo, that he would be father to a line of Kings. The plot was on a theme in which James was passionately interested witchcraft. The plot also offered opportunities for comments on the qualities necessary for a good ruler, another subject in which James was interested. When the play was actually being composed the discovery of the ‘Gunpowder Plot’ gave Shakespeare the opportunity to link the theme of regicide with a topical event. It is for this reason that Macbeth in called “the royal play of Macbeth” by Mr. H.N. Paul.

“Macbeth” is the shortest of Shakespeare’s tragedies, and it is the most closely-knit of all. One scene, besides the Hecate interpolations, has been regarded as dramatically weak-the scene in England, in which Malcolm thesis the loyalty of Macduff. Even so this scene is a powerful means of showing the effects of Macbeth’s reign of terror; by contrasting the good and bad ruler it underlines the need for the liberation of Scotland; it fills in the outlines of Malcolm and Macduff, who till then had been shadowy and insubstantial and at the end, when Macduff hearts of the slaughter of his family, he is provided with a personal motive to strengthen his public determination to overthrow Macbeth. The scene is very effective.

Despite the almost unequalled intensity of the poetry and despite overwhelming dramatic power displayed throughout the play, “Macbeth” is more difficult to perform than any other of the greater tragedies….. The real difficulty is that modern audiences no longer believe in witchcraft…A modern audience, with only a historical knowledge of demonology, may find the witches absurd rather that evil, so that the impact of the scenes in which they appear is liable to be blunted.

IMAGERY IN THE PLAY

The Porter scene was supposed to be spurious, but it is not, It is, also, not primarily comic. It actually adds to the suspense between the knocking at the gate, so brilliantly interpreted by Thomas Be-Quincey. and the discovery of the murder. There is calculated anachronism which brings home to the audience the modern reality of the play. The three imaginary knockers at the gate of hell have damned themselves, by overreaching themselves. The equivocator and the farmer are references to Father Garnet, who equivocated about his knowledge of the Gunpowder Plot, and went under the name of Farmer. The third knocker, the tailor, was chosen, perhaps unconsciously, because of numerous tailoring images in the play. This group of images is much wider than those connected with the man in ill-fitting garments to which Caroline Spurgeon (these notes have her comments elsewhere) drew attention. The significance of this image is not that Macbeth is “a small ignoble man encumbered and degraded by garments unsuited to him” as that the garments are stolen. Macbeth, before the murder, objects to being dressed in borrowed robes and wishes to wear golden opinions he has earned “in their newest gloss”. It is only in the last Act that his kingship appears as “a giant’s robe upon a dwarfish thief.”

The contrast between the man and his clothes is one example of a much wider contrast between appearance and reality, which is expressed also in images that contrast the picture with the thing depicted. There is a continual opposition between desire and act, and between the hand and the other organs and senses. The use of antithesis as the predominant figure links up with the contrast between grace and evil in the play, which is found also in the contrast between the weird sisters and the good supernatural used by Edward, the Confessor.

Other significant imagery relates to feasting, sleep and insomnia, milk and babes and medicine. The feasting symbolizes the concord of society which is destroyed by Macbeth’s crimes, as the banquet is interrupted by the appearance of Banquo’s ghost. Sleep like-wise symbolizes the natural order. as the insomnia of Macbeth and his wife. with the terrible dreams that afflict them in the night are a direct consequence of their guilt. Milk-the milk of human kindness, the milk of concord-symbolizes he natural ties and affections violated by the Macbeth. The naked babe represents the claims of pity. It is therefore proper that Lady Macbeth, before the murder, should urge the evil spirits to take her milk for gall, and that in inciting her husband to the deed she declares that if she had sworn, as he has done, to the murder, she would, while her babe

Was smiling in my face

Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums

And dashed the brains out.

So Macbeth, in contemplating the murder, uses the image:

Pity, like a naked new-born babe,

Striding the blast.

(Act I, Scene VII)

These lines are pronounced in a speech in which Macbeth gives prudential arguments for not murdering Duncan-for instance, the fear of damnation after death and also the possibility of judgement here on earth, that he may be murdered in his own turn and also that the murder of Duncan, a noble old man, his own guest, would be viewed with horror by people. Macbeth never confesses that he is deterred by the inherent evil of the deed itself. His unconscious horror is revealed by the imagery he uses at this point:

I dare do all that may become a man;

Who dares do more is none.

(Act I, Scene VII)

This is the nearest in refusing to do a deed because it is evil-it does not become a man.

Lady Macbeth taunts to instigate him. She calls him less than man, a coward, even a beast. In the last act of the play Macbeth compares himself to a baited bear and thus he becomes less than a man by repudiating his natural instincts.

The imagery from medicine is concentrated in the last scenes. It is occasioned partly by Lady Macbeth’s illness but it is applied both by Macbeth and by his enemies to Scotland. The disease of Scotland can be cured by the death of Macbeth himself.

Macbeth has affinities with Richard III. In both the ambitious subject,

“….Wads through slaughter to a throne,

And shuts the gate of mercy on mankind’.

In both the criminal subject suffers from terrible dreams, and he is finally overthrown and slain. Richard is completely a villain Macbeth becomes a villain and never losses our sympathy entirely because we are tempted and suffer with him. Like all tragic heroes of Shakespeare, Macbeth is destroyed by fate as well as by the particular weakness through which fate is able to work. Through Banquo’s reactions to the ‘weird sisters’ prophecy and also from Macbeth’s own admission we know that “chance may crown me without my stir”, that he need not “catch the nearest way”, the temptation to murder Duncan is incensed by Malcolm’s promotion, by Duncan’s decision to stay at Macbeth’s castle and by Lady Macbeth’s determination to overcome her husband’s scruples. Even at this point Macbeth decides not to commit the murder, and he is won over by his wife side-stepping of the moral question by producing a practical scheme for the murder.

Macbeth’s guilt is intensified by Shakespeare by making Duncan old, saintly and a sleeping guest, and by not allowing the murderer to share the guilt with a number of thanes; but Shakespeare, at the same time, makes Macbeth so brave and imaginative that he seems a very real like character to commit this type of murder. The contrast between the man and his act is the tragic substance of the play; but Macbeth become the deed’s creature.