Macbeth was written for James VI of Scotland, I of England, on his accession to the united thrones . James had written and published a work on Demonology, and had been brought up under the guidance of the Scottish earls, in Scotland . So witchcraft would be a pertinent inclusion in the play, as would 'Scottish aspects' that ring true in the mind of the recipient : verisimilitude would be unduly stretched if, say, English court practices were foisted onto a specifically Scottish ambience and locale .
The Duncan of the play was the first King of a United Scotland [roughly as seen in its present parameters] that was a union of four peoples--Picts, Scots, Britons and Angles . The hub of his kingdom and of the action in the play is Northern--Inverness, Forres, Dunsinane : the Moray Firth, the hub of Pictland (reflecting the Pictish ascendancy within the Scottish monarchical system) .
Now to some Scottish historical data, that would be no news to James VI / I, that Shakespeare partly veils over, and that go some way to explaining the motivations prompting the play's central pair, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth : ''...a curious law of succession delayed the establishment of a single dynasty . In the old Gaelic system, the king was theoretically elected from a royal group called the Derbfine which included anyone whose great-grandfather had been a king and in theory there was chosen as successor to the throne a male who by age, strength and character was most suited to the hour. He was known as Tanist''. (J.D.Mackie,A History of Scotland ,pp.42-3)
Here I'd suggest that Macbeth in Act I,Scene2 has by deeds projected himself as Tanist . Praise is heaped on his heroism from all sides--in sharp contrast with the near-captive, Malcolm --but it is to be inferred that this is Macbeth's normal, not simply current, role, for the newly-arrived Ross (I,2 :48ff) describes Macbeth as that Bellona's bridegroom without specifying him, yet everyone knows whom he means . Elsewhere (I,2 :9ff.) the Captain, in describing Macdonwald, points up Macdonwald's qualities as putative Tanist--Worthy to be a rebel for to that..: i.e. his worthiness is revealed in ferocity and leadership--but whose strength is all too weak before Macbeth, the Tanist by proof .
The two military actions here in which Macbeth is engaged and excels are reported at the same time, yet take place some distance apart : Ross specifically arrives from Fife, yet Macbeth was in the thick of both. And this reporting-scene is embraced in the two initial scenes involving the Witches, hypostatic persons for whom time and long distance are no obstacles . The same seems to be true of the ubiquitous Macbeth . The Witches are elementals, and the two warring actions involving Macbeth are couched in terms of the four elements : two spent swimmers ; his brandished steel Which smoked ; the Norweyan banners...fan our people cold ; lapped in proof ; Curbing his lavish [from Old French 'lavasse', deluge of words] spirit .Macbeth is part of this elemental warfare, and emerges as hero and victor . His opponents are tainted with elemental evil : Macdonwald--the multiplying villainies Do swarm upon him...his damned quarrel ; Sweno--his lavish spirit ; Cawdor--dismal conflict...disloyal traitor [ 'warlock', from A-S 'waer', truth, and 'loga', traitor/deceiver] . In short, Macbeth is in action not only as Tanist, but is also a good witch, scourging the kingdom of maleficent influences . It is in this context that we should understand Shakespeare's schematic placing of Macbeth's good witchery between the two scenes of the malevolent Witches . Macbeth foils the advance of malevolent influence, he scorches their chestnuts, so he joins the sailor on the Witches' current list of opponents . In this context too , one can read a double-entendre, harbingeing evil consequence in Hail...Hail addressed to Banquo, and All hail...all hail addressed to Macbeth : the elementals conjuring the material elements--here hail--to rain down on these two battlefield scourges of their work, of their evil work, of Evil, and its intrusion into contemporary affairs in Scotland .
To return now to Mackie (ibid.) : ''Fresh complications were produced by the Pictish preference for matrilinear descent, and somehow there came into being a system where successive kings were chosen alternately from different stems of the royal house, one of which came to draw its power from Atholl and the other from Moray . The alternative was not effected without reciprocal violence, but it persisted . Even when , as in 997, one of the main stems of Kenneth MacAlpin died out, the succession still oscillated between two branches of the remaining stem, and when Kenneth III died in 1005 the crown passed not to his son Boedh, but to his cousin, Malcolm II, who was his slayer ...Inevitably the notion of direct hereditary right became familiar, and with it a tendency for a ruling king to keep the succession in his own line by exterminating claimants of the other house . Malcolm II had no son and it became his great objective to secure the throne of Scotland for his grandson Duncan, son of Crinan, Abbot of Dunkeld . In pursuance of this plan he killed the grandson of his predecessor (Kenneth III) ; the murdered man, however, had a daughter or grand-daughter, Gruoch, who had borne a son, Lilach ; she, by a second marriage, became the wife of Macbeth, son of a mormaer of Moray and himself of royal descent'' .
Regarding this, I'd say firstly that Macbeth is not a History . If it had been so treated, and genealogy depicted, family feuds drawn, as in the Henry the Sixth Trilogy, we would have a treatment of dynastic struggles, within which maelstrom the regicide and subsequent murders effected by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth would perhaps be apposite, understandable . In particular, one would understand Lady Macbeth's single blood-feud against Duncan, which finishes the matter, so that the subsequent remorse via the accumulating murders that she has not promoted would be understandable . James VI /I would understand the various significances . But the success of the play hangs not on this particular, but on a general fascination with the central pair . Shakespeare achieves this fascination by wrapping coherent historical reasons, and justification for action, up in a lugubrious Scottish mist, an elemental ambience, so that our attention is then directed at these elemental forces imbuing the central pair .
So far Macbeth has been mooted as Tanist and good witch, both from the text . To these are added the Witches' prophecies of Act I,3, and these stir up in Macbeth suppressed dynastic ambitions (I,3 ;149-50)--My dull brain was wrought With things forgotten . Now this could be read, cynically, as simple polite excuse-me . But Banquo's observation that our partner's rapt (I,3 :56 ; I,3 :141) seems to corroborate Macbeth's comment : that he is dumbfounded at finding things forgotten being actualised in prophecy and literally in the bestowal of the Cawdor thaneship . This is the good witch dumbfounded at the benevolence of evil witches : What, can the devil speak true ? (I,3 :107) . And to Banquo's Good sir, why do you start ? (I,3 :51), one might well respond to Banquo, 'Good sir, why do you not start ?' . Both Macbeth and Banquo are Duncan's champions, the scourges of Evil, but Macbeth is specified good witch, who responds so to the Witches because he is elemental, he has a feel for the import of supernatural prophecy . Banquo's is a brusque, unbelieving, take-it-or-leave-it attitude---who neither beg nor fear Your favours, nor your hate---and only begins to give it credence later (III,1 :1ff.) within a context where his fear is aroused . His fear, though, is aroused by Macbeth the man, and not, as with Macbeth, by the elementals .
If we look at I,3 :149-56, we see that Macbeth mentions things forgotten openly before Angus and Ross, who are instant, visible reminders to Macbeth--your pains Are registered where every day I turn The leaf to read them--of the royal cause he champions now as he did in the past . Thus, Let us toward the king . There is no question of his loyalty here to Duncan, yet the convergence of prophecy and fact calls into question both Duncan's continuing kingship and lineal succession after him--Macbeth, that shall be king hereafter . But Macbeth here with Banquo wants to talk out the mystery openly--let us speak Our free hearts--with Banquo . If the Witches' evil seed had taken firm root in his mind by this point, the talking-through with Banquo would not have happened, for Banquo then would, logically, be an opponent .
Macbeth so far is not suborned to evil, but the matter of his prophesied succession and his desire to commune with Banquo on the matter suggest that he already favours hereditary succession, from Duncan to Malcolm, or he wouldn't wonder at this prophecy that forswears it . Malcolm's is a lineal right to Macbeth's collateral right . When we move into Forres palace (I,4), we find that Macbeth's response to Duncan's effusive praises is that he was only doing his loyal duty . But this response is specifically couched in terms of separate Houses of the same royal family : ''to your throne and state, children and servants, i.e. your entire House'' . This can be read as the beginnings of wilful separation, but it is made openly ,and in the context (I,4 :22-7) it is an acknowledgement of submission-in-service of lower to the greater House . Then Duncan goes on to attest that he will foster and nurture this lower branch of the family tree . In heaping on the praise, Duncan has been elevating Macbeth to a high-point of unquestioned Tanist and king's champion, and at that peak he chooses to elevate Malcolm further, to the rank of Prince of Cumberland . The king's intentions regarding the consolidation of a united kingdom are understandable, but he lacks nous and regal objectivity in promoting from his own House the recent near-captive, Malcolm, to Prince . To the Tanist, Macbeth, this action 'places' him, for all the praise that's heaped on him .
I think Macbeth's abiding concern--before now, here, and right through this section right up to the night of sex with Lady Macbeth--is with maintaining his pre-eminence in the land (cf. I,7 :32-5) as Tanist, good witch and Champion of the Right . Reputation achieved through deeds is all, and it is in this light that I read Macbeth's aside (I,4 :48-53) . Titles bestowed are the public register of earned merit, yet, at the climax of Duncan's eulogy on Macbeth, the king--incongruously in Macbeth's mind--bestows the title of Prince on the manifest non-Tanist, Malcolm . This, the title--The Prince of Cumberland...in my way it lies--is a public challenge to his pre-eminence, On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap--not insurrection, but rather, Macbeth seeing Malcolm marked at a higher level on the scale of eminence, with an it that he must surpass . The 'Stars, hide your fires' statement refers back to the signs of nobleness (I,4 :41) that Duncan sees as investing Malcolm along with the title : pre-eminence and nobleness instantaneously donned at the donning of a title .
It is the unmerited title of Prince--not the recipient--that challenges Macbeth's pre-eminence . The black and deep desires are a revelation of a long-held ambition to establish himself as Tanist, and the consequence of the Gaelic system of Tanist is that merit and not simply blood is the criterion for election to king . Macbeth's endeavours to this end are public and not subversive : they are rendered in the service of Duncan and his House . As I see it, the black and deep desires are so to outstrip all, even the scions of the upper House (like Malcolm), that at Duncan's death Macbeth will be the automatic choice for king among the Derbfine, the royal nobles who join here with Duncan to sing Macbeth's praises . It is a private ambition manifested to the public eye as deeds in service, and, to this newly awarded title and challenge, Macbeth will answer with renewed vigour and deeds .
Much depends on how one reads the last two lines (I,4 :52-3) . 'The eye winking' may suggest a wished-for public ignorance of his subsequent deed, but a wink is a momentary thing, and usually betokens the winker's complicity in, and approval of, the deed . Macbeth reads the course he has taken as self-projected Tanist as having public approval, yet this course induces public fears (as Macbeth reads it) because it instances the renaissance of the old Gaelic system of Tanist in the face of current reality, which is a settling into a system of hereditary lineal succession . ''They may well fear the probability of chaos arising from such a change,'' says Macbeth, ''but when I've overleapt this princely title, reasserted pre-eminence , and been elected kingly Tanist, there would be no need for winks and fear : let that be Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see .
Where is the 'public approval', if this is solely a matter of Macbeth's private ambition ? I cite as corroboration Banquo's at-first-sight astonishing equanimity in the face of the Witches' prophecies . He, like Macbeth, is a champion of good against evil, in the king's service, yet the prophecies, which would seem both in his and Macbeth's cases, to subvert his king's lineal succession, do not cause anger or furore--merely 'tis strange (I,3 :122)--in his mind . And why ? Because the notion of Derbfine and Tanist is still floating around, there is still the possibility of oscillation between lower and (currently) upper House---the ubiquitousness of the term 'cousin' firms out this intra-dynasty scenario---and the concept of hereditary lineal succession is not yet firmly established . Moreover, Macbeth has general approval as pre-eminent champion of the good, not as seen through the veil of chivalry, English or European, but within the context of the specific nuances of Scottish social and political life of the time . Indeed, the notion of Derbfine and Tanist is still in the air in the later post-Macbeths exchange between Macduff and Malcolm . Malcolm's restoration, and lineal succession with it, are proposed--with the Macbeth episode as having been an undesired interregnum--and Malcolm advances his 'Supposing I were the acme of evil' . In the first place, he is sounding out one of the Derbfine, and Macduff's riposte underlines the fact that merit, a position for good, and not divine right, or even lineal right, is the crucial criterion . This corroborates Macbeth's self-projection s Tanist, and underlines the fact that he is not an isolated instance of a defunct social type . Merit and the opinion of nobles such as Macduff are still the criteria .
I have said that Macbeth is a good witch . For 'witch', look at his gnomic utterance at I,3 :146-7, which is redolent of the incantatory language of the three Witches . For 'good', look at Lady Macbeth's analysis (I,5 :16-25) of Macbeth's character : Thou wouldst be great, Art not without ambition--the Tanist--but Macbeth is too full o' th'milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way . He will not force his accession by killing the incumbent, but takes the long way of establishing his worth . His ambition for possessions--Thou'dst have...if thou have it--is confined to possession of the king's trust that he can fulfil instructions by deeds . Lady Macbeth attributes to fear his not taking the nearest way . She sees his intransigent goodness and active spirit paradoxically as lack of spirit--the intransigence That which...should be undone, the lack of spirit to be counteracted by my spirits in thine ear . It is a breaking-down towards a restoration : her means to actualising 'Hail--'whole'--king that shalt be !' . Her Satanic whispering in his ear will point up the nearest way, directing Macbeth towards the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the tree of dynasty .
In I,5 :38-54, Lady Macbeth is Evil personified, her milk for gall--the evil witch--contrasted with Macbeth's milk of human kindness--the good witch , and Lady Macbeth 's transformation is redolent of the protean nature of evil elementals . In greeting Macbeth, she says that Thy letters have transported me beyond This ignorant present, and I feel now The future in the instant--this partakes of something already felt and seen in this special Scottish ambience : the Witches' definite and Macbeth's apparent ability to outstrip time and overleap space . The good and evil witches here (I,5 :54-73) are contrasted too in attitude : to fervour and incantation, Macbeth's ripostes are starkly plain, matter-of-fact . They are concerned with current reality in dealing with Duncan : the king ''had a right to Cain or food-rent [cf. Duncan's figurative development of this right : I,4 :55-6] and to Conveth, a night's entertainment, from his land-holders'' (Mackie,ibid.) .Macbeth has been the hero of the hour, but the more mundane reality is his thaneship of Glamis and Cawdor, a tenure of land held by military service . Duncan's right of Conveth, a night of entertainment, is the reality behind the tonight-tomorrow exchange . Moreover, if one compares the willing interest and enthusiasm in Macbeth's words to Banquo (I,3 :153-6) with the curt We will speak further (I,5 :71) to Lady Macbeth, one has the measure of Macbeth's response to Lady Macbeth's wooing by imperative .
So Lady Macbeth switches to wooing Macbeth to her intent by sex (I,7 :35-58) . His sexual virility is equated with regicidal, dynastic virility . His reasoned calculation, in this scene 7, of the pros and cons of regicide is met with slurs on his manhood . The upshot is a sexual night to remember, by way of which the good witch and Tanist-in-the-long-run has been transformed into evil witch and king via the nearest way , with malevolence supplanting the milk of human kindness .
Lady Macbeth's subsequent disintegration before the bloody train of events shows her to be an evil witch manque . Her nightmares and visions emerge from within her, like the bubbles (I,3 :79-80) to which Banquo alludes : proofs of spirit only when the content is agitated . By contrast, Macbeth is predisposed to meet and control the bloody chain of events, insofar as the evil elementals do not intervene . He wants to talk out the prophecies with Banquo, he will speak further with Lady Macbeth : he wants to reason out things that impinge upon and may damage his status as champion of the good . On his transformation, this reason becomes calculation in the cause of his evil will . Also, he is a man of active ambitions : before the transformation he purposively made ambition converge with the king's and the general will ; afterwards this diaspora becomes a concentration of ambition within himself, especially after the fait accompli of the regicide . After the regicide, Macbeth too has his bubbles of remorse--the product, from within, of an agitated spirit . Where he differs from Lady Macbeth is that he has been marked out as target of the Witches' malevolence, in token of his earlier scourging of evil influences from Scotland . Upon Hecate's intervention, what before was malevolent toying--Macbeth was treated on a par with an innocent sailor and a matter of chestnuts--becomes full-scale retribution . With complicated brews, spells and conjurations, the Witches produce bubbles, apparitions, that are unquestioned proof of their 'spirit', and that look way into the future, while including gnomically divulged truths about the past--Macduff's Caesarean birth . For all that Macbeth is a good witch gone bad, he does not have this measure of potency . He can rationalise his own 'bubbles' of remorse, but the apparitions are beyond him . These 'bubbles' enslave the malevolent human to the malevolent elementals, and this is the tragedy of Macbeth .
Before concluding, I'd like to say something about Macbeth's domain that is perhaps pertinent to the play . Residing there is the Satanic Lady Macbeth who pours my spirit in thine ear . Of Macbeth's name, the'-beth' syllable seems to be cognate with Gaelic 'beithir', serpent/ monster . So 'Macbeth' renders 'Son of the Serpent' . At I,5 :66, Lady Macbeth recommends that Macbeth be the serpent under 't . The serpent of Loch Ness is of vogue interest, but its manifestations are reported from time memorial--St Columba supposedly had two encounters with the Ness monster(s) centuries before the time of the play's action . Whatever one believes about the Ness monster, it is still a dark mystery, as is Inverness Castle in the play, with its peculiarly charming effect on the senses . The martlet which makes his pendent bed and procreant cradle there (I,6 :8) is the swift, which spends more time in the air--feeding, sometimes mating, and even sleeping on the wing--than any other bird, yet it is attracted to the specific air and battlements of Inverness Castle . Evidently the air as well as the presence of the martlet deceive Duncan and Banquo, for this is a place of evil : in names, locale, associations, mood, atmosphere, and , ultimately, deed . All this is mentioned because it points up an alternative reason for Macbeth's transformation therein . Without wishing to decry the potency of Lady Macbeth's sexual charms in effecting the Transformation, the matter does seem to turn on an Inverness that drips evil . When the Witches set their malevolent sights on Macbeth before and after the Inverness regicidal interlude, that place of evil becomes their vehicle for evil .
In conclusion, I'd like to register my admiration for the Macbeth of the concluding scenes . He has been a champion of good gone bad, the pre-eminent man of action, who fears what is beyond his reasoning powers, and throughout has been under the evil eye of the Witches because he championed the good . He is transformed to evil ways in an evil place by evil Witches ruled arbitrarily by Hecate, and all of whom are commanded by little spirits, presumably particular manifestations of the Devil himself . It is a sequence of string-pulling, with Macbeth the lowliest puppet . Yet when Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, Macbeth does not run away from this and subsequent realisations of the second prophetic trilogy, this time concerning his death . That is to say, Macbeth would not run away from human enemies, as did Malcolm and Macduff--the crew of the New Restoration . But not only does he face them : he does not run away from, but rather faces up to, the evil elementals . He defies them and their supernatural powers : before his death he erases his long-standing fear of the elemental, and is retransformed into Champion of the Good, but this time opposing not, as earlier, the vehicles of evil--Macdonwald, Sweno, Cawdor--but the evil elementals direct . Macbeth is a tragic hero of the Corneille type, who realise their Hamartia, yet remain defiant to the end : he is eblouissant, dazzling . Macbeth spits into the face of Evil that had transfigured him .
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