Essay 2: Macbeth, Acts I and II

YouTube video on Act I, scenes 1 - 4:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4rnwHVpLYw 

The political context of Shakespeare's England in 1606, the year Macbeth  was first performed, is important to note. It shows that the establishment of a ruler in England and Scotland was supposed to be a very clear, objective matter-- established by a hereditary line--usually from father to first-born son, king to king, but if there are no males, then the daughter becomes the ruler, the Queen. But what constitutes a royal lineage is often highly contested and vulnerable to different interpretations. If the king is supposed to have absolute power, then the origins of that power are in reality very fragile.

When Henry VIII died, Elizabeth I became Queen, because Henry VIII had no sons. Elizabeth I was the queen during Shakespeare's first 11 years as a playwright and theater entrepreneur, and she supported him. (Elizabeth was a Protestant and she made the Church of England Protestant, but, according to recent research, Shakespeare's father John was a Catholic, and so if  William still believed in Catholicism, he had to hide it. Scotland is the setting of Macbeth, and Scotland was a Catholic country.)  There were Catholics who made the argument that the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots (Scotland) was the rightful ruler of England, because she was the oldest surviving child of Henry VIII's father, Henry VII of England, and these people didn't recognize the validity of Henry VIII's last marriage, since he had converted to the Protestant religion. 

Scotland was separate from England until 1603, 3 years before the play was produced. King James VI of Scotland inherited the throne from his mother, Mary Queen of Scots when he was only a year old in 1567, because Mary had opponents who ran her out of the country for some questionable  actions.  Mary tried to get the protection of her cousin, Elizabeth I, but she was basically imprisoned by Elizabeth and later executed, because Elizabeth feared Mary's claim to the English throne and thought Mary was plotting against her.  (Mary and Elizabeth's big ornate tombs are in the same room--not even 10 feet from each other-- in London's Westminster Abbey.)

James VI of Scotland became James I of England in 1603, because Elizabeth had no children and James, a cousin, was the closest male relative to her, and he united the two countries. Interestingly, although he was baptized Catholic, he kept England Protestant. So James I became the patron of Shakespeare, just as Elizabeth had been, and Shakespeare in writing a political play like Macbeth had to seem to support James's policies. James knew from his own family history that a lot of people disagree about and fight about who should be the ruler and how hereditary lineage is vulnerable to interpretation, and so he developed a doctrine called the Divine Right of Kings— the idea that all other people in a country should have absolute respect and loyalty and obedience to the king, since "God" gives him this power. It's similar to the idea of the pope's infallibility in the Roman Catholic Church: the king can do no wrong. So since James I was Shakespeare's patron, the playwright and theatre entrepreneur had to seem in his play to support the Divine Right of Kings. But Shakespeare had a complex mind that could deal with ambiguities, so we'll see what you think.  

Further elaboration of Act I, scenes 1-4, Apr. 1, 2020 at 10:36 am

A major theme early in the play, which is tied to the theme of loyalty to the king of the nation, is trust. And along with that is the irony that trust is a very fragile thing. Look at what King Duncan says when he's angry about the Thane of Cawdor's betrayal:

There's no art
To find the mind's construction in the face.
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust. (Act I, Scene 4, lines 12-16)  
(You don't have to mention the page number in Essay 2 if you cite act, scenes, and lines, but it's 24 in our No Fear Shakespeare edition.

Notice the word "built" near the word "construction." Shakespeare's plays are truly poetry, especially because he uses many tropes in characters' dialogues and soliloquies. (Also, the noble or "upper class" characters speak in iambic pentameter.) Here, trust is like a building that you construct. But what does one construct it out of? Perhaps a leader will see a certain consistency of behavior in his subordinates for a long period of time, but as the king suggests, people tend to look for trustworthiness in someone's facial expressions. 

Think about this issue of trust in the context of all that has been going on in the first four scenes of the play: Duncan trusted MacDonwald and the Thane of Cawdor and found out that he couldn't; Macbeth and Banquo earned his trust by winning the double battle for Duncan, and he puts so much trust in Macbeth that he decides to become the great general's guest the very same evening that Macbeth comes back from the war. Macbeth and Banquo don't know whether they should trust the witches' prophecies about them. And given Macbeth's asides and soliloquies, the audience at this point might wonder whether Duncan should trust Macbeth. (So far, we haven't met Macbeth's wife, but we are about to.)

And in my video, I didn't talk about iambic pentameter. Has anyone looked it up? Take the beautiful line: "To take the mind's construction in the face."

If you pay attention to the weak and strong syllables, you'll see that there's a pattern; first notice: To take--the first syllable is weak or unaccented, and the "TAKE" is more strongly emphasized or accented." The same goes for "the MIND'S," and "con STRUC," and "IN" and "FACE," whereas "the," "con," "ion," and "the" aren't said as forcefully. 

There are five units in iambic pentameter. These units are called iambs (consisting each of one weak and one strong syllable). In Greek the word "pent" means five. Of course, 5 x 2 = 10. 5 iambs, 10 syllables.  The word "meter" means the measurement of weak and strong syllables within a particular unit.

Let me give you contemporary examples of iambic or non-iambic meter:
ba RACK o BA ma (the first 2 syllables are an iamb, and so are the next 2, but the final syllable is extra)
You would never pronounce his name:  BA rack O ba MA, right?

DON ald TRUMP (the first syllable is extra: the iamb is ald TRUMP)

But why does Shakespeare have great musical ability in his poetry? Many poets of his time and even earlier used iambic pentameter. But what Shakespeare does in, say, a 10 line passage, is to have some lines that are perfect iambic pentameter, and other lines where he has one metrical substitution in each line. What is a metrical substitution? It permits variety instead of a singsong meter that's always the same. Instead of weak/strong in the first 2 syllables or the last 2 syllables, you might have strong weak or strong strong or weak weak, or you might have a line that is missing the first syllable (9 syllables instead of 10) or adds an extra weak syllable at the end (11 syllables).


MONDAY, APRIL 6: MACBETH, ACT I, Scenes 5-7

Scene 5- Notice, in the letter to Lady Macbeth that she reads at the beginning of the scene, how Macbeth associates his success with HER success: "my dearest partner of greatness" and "what greatness is promised thee"--being a queen (p. 30- I, 5, 1-13). Does it perhaps signify that she has, in the past, already made it clear to him that she is deeply invested in his power and status and he is acknowledging that?  Does the letter also imply that Macbeth himself was very ambitious (at least unconsciously) even before the witches spoke to him? Or could Lady Macbeth have been the driving force behind her husband's ambition all along? In a patriarchal society like Renaissance Scotland (or England), very few women would have any opportunity to gain power and status on their own, so if Lady Macbeth is truly ambitious on behalf of her husband, a feminist analysis--see topic 1 for essay 2-- could explain it.

Lady Macbeth's reaction to the letter is tremendously revealing. In essay 2, I could imagine quite a few of you quoting the whole soliloquy on p. 28 (lines 14-28) or a lot of it as a block quote and then analyzing what it reveals about her psychological makeup. She's only thrilled for exactly one sentence, and then she starts doubting her husband's ability "to catch the nearest way" of becoming king because, although she knows he has SOME ambition, he's TOO NICE! So what does she mean by "the nearest way"? I think you know. It's not nice. She talks about morality and how it stands in the way of ambition. You see, the issue of trust comes in again: she trusts him as a faithful husband, but she doesn't trust his ability to do what she considers the best thing because of his character traits. She believes that she needs to use her persuasive powers, and she uses exactly the same trope of pouring something into a person's ear that is used in Hamlet about five years earlier to describe how Hamlet's uncle Claudius killed Hamlet's father the king by pouring poison into his ear.  Lady M doesn't consider it poison but medicine, but the play's audience might well consider it poison: "Hie thee hither,/ That I might pour my spirits in thine ear/ And chastise with the valor of my tongue/ All that impedes thee from the golden round...."  "Spirits" can mean liquor (alcohol) or intoxication and can also mean spirited behavior. Also notice the words "chastise" and "valor" (bravery). Think about what techniques of persuasion Lady M wants to use on her husband.

Next, Lady M is surprised (and maybe happy) to find that the king is coming to visit, which we already know from the previous scene, but are you surprised that she then speaks of "the fatal entrance of Duncan"? Was it obvious already what she was up to? She pretends to be annoyed at the short notice, but is she really annoyed or faking it? 

But look at the next soliloquy (after the servant announcing the visit has left and before her husband returns) from lines 39 to 55 of the scene; even she might have a little trouble from her conscience, so she is telling herself not only to be tough and to ignore ordinary morality for the sake of her ambition but also that she can't "be" a woman any more: "unsex me here.... / Come to my woman's breasts,/ And take my milk for gall...." If you are doing a feminist analysis of the play, you definitely need to quote some of this passage and look at how one or two critics deal with what seems to be the stereotyping of female AND male behavior. Even if you're not doing feminist analysis in the paper, this passage would also connect with topics 2 and 4 and maybe even 3.  It's interesting that in this one scene, we find 2 of the most famous and remarkable soliloquies in the play.

The dialogue between M and Lady M (p. 34, lines 55-76)  is brief, and there's definitely some sweet-talking, but can you identify the sentence in which she forcefully tells him what she thinks has to happen? And does he agree or does he delay the conversation? And why? (Obviously, you're not necessarily going to answer all my questions in the comments section of this blog post, but always try to find an answer on your own.)

Scene 6-  This scene has beautiful courtly language, but we don't need to discuss it, beyond saying that everybody's incredibly polite to one another, especially Lady M, who wants the king to think that she is tremendously loyal to him and is entirely in his service and loves serving him. Is she a good actress in terms of gaining his trust?

Scene 7- I think we've seen so far that Shakespeare in this play is already a master of psychology.  Macbeth's extremely poetic soliloquy shows that, even before his wife has a chance to pour her persuasive words into his ear, he's already thinking about how to use the opportunity that Duncan has inadvertently given him to "replace" him as King because he says it needs to be done quickly, but, perhaps more importantly, the speech also shows that his wife was right in her first soliloquy: he does have an active conscience, and he rehearses all the reasons that the murder would be morally wrong and would come back to haunt him. 

Note that the word "trust" is present; it is becoming a motif (recurring trope or image) in the play, not only a major theme. He knows Duncan trusts him and has "double" reason to do so. And this is not only about the Divine Right of Kings and the sanctity of hereditary succession to the throne because M talks about what a kind, moral, benevolent, mild guy Duncan is--he's not a cruel despot. The last sentence of the soliloquy shows that M, like his wife 2 soliloquies ago, is not sure he can pull it off; his ambition may not be strong enough. 

In the second part of this scene, look very carefully at the dialogue between M and Lady M.: 

• How does he carry his indecision from the soliloquy right before into his first major statement to his wife? 
• What techniques does she use to convince him to go against his sense of morality? 
• Does her rhetoric-- her way of speaking, tropes, and images--have any thing to do with the ideas about gender/sex that she included in her second soliloquy? 
• What are the key words in her persuasive speeches in this dialogue? 
• What effect do her arguments have on M by the end of the scene? And why?

In the comments section of this post, various students agreed that Lady Macbeth uses gender stereotypes to persuade Macbeth to kill Duncan and realize his ambition and that she seems to be successful.


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YouTube video on Act II:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_NhyfNEmAc

Please click on the link above and watch this before class on Monday, April 20 or at the beginning of class.