Essay 2: Macbeth, Act V

ACT V:       Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Scene 1-  We haven’t seen Lady Macbeth in a while, and she has never seemed out of control the way Macbeth has been. But now the doctor identifies a manifestation of her psychological disturbance for the first time in play: sleepwalking: “A great perturbation in nature, to receive the benefit of sleep, and do the effects of watching” & “slumber agitation” (lines 8-10).

This continues the motif of sleep in the play: Macbeth and Lady M have “murdered sleep” & their own sleep is murdered by either conscience or fear of being caught or both. If you agree that the unconscious is revealed during sleep, then  Lady M may display unconscious guilt, OR unconscious fear that also probably exists on a conscious level.

At this time, the Spring of 2020, we need to be like Lady M in washing our hands a great deal—yet during the day, when we are awake, to avoid actual viral contagion; it has nothing to do with avoiding conviction for a crime or avoiding a terrible sense of guilt. She, on the other hand, does not LITERALLY have blood on her hands but FEELS that she does; her husband hallucinated a lot earlier in the play, and she is hallucinating now: “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” (line 30). Notice that the word “damned” occurs very close to the word “hell”; this can easily suggest Christian damnation due to the commission of sin. Is this visual and tactile hallucination a symbol of moral contamination, of her shame at wrongdoing, or is it a symbol of her fear that evidence will be used to convict her of a crime? A sentence like “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand” (lines 42-3) surely reveals her hopelessness, but is it shame or fear? Or is it both?

Note that during this sleepwalking episode, Lady Macbeth thinks she is in dialogue with Macbeth, and she’s trying to get him to be calm as she did in Acts II and III. Some of the language is very close to what she actually said to him: ‘What’s done cannot be undone” (line 57) is close to “What’s done is done” (Act III, Scene 2, line 14).. But perhaps she sounds more desperate than she had. Ironically, she tells him to go to sleep while she herself is asleep, experiencing a nightmare.

In his dialogue with the gentlewoman, the doctor does not want to believe that Lady M and her husband have killed people, but the 2 of them hear her mention Banquo and Lady Macduff (“the Thane of Fife had a wife”) in the context of their deaths, and this is probably quite convincing to him. His final speech includes the line: “More needs she the divine than the physician” (line 64). Remember that in Shakespeare’s time, the Early Modern period or Renaissance in England, there were no psychologists; the “divine” or priest/minister served that function. The doctor’s final sentence is: “I think but dare not speak” (line 69). Does he dare not say that he thinks she’s guilty because talking in one’s sleep is quite convincing but not legal proof? Or does he not want to accuse the queen (and king) of a crime and therefore risk his own life? Or both?

Scene 2-  Soldiers in Malcolm/Macduff’s army are ready to fight Macbeth’s forces. Caithness tells us what we already know from Act III and Act IV, scene 1—that Macbeth has psychological problems, “He cannot buckle his distempered cause/ Within the belt of rule” (lines15-16). Isn’t that a wonderful trope? Having even temper and good judgment (“rule”) is like being able to buckle a belt and wear it comfortably, whereas Macbeth has a big stomach (“distempered cause”) and the belt can’t fit over it. Angus’ speech confirms this interpretation of Macbeth; the trope of blood in relation to hands that Lady M is obsessed with in the previous scene now applies to Macbeth: “Now does he feel/ his secret murders sticking on his hands” (lines 17-18). Angus sees him as a “king” who is more like a “dwarf” (mental dwarf?) who stole the king’s clothes, which are too big for him, than an actual king. And he perceives that Macbeth’s soldiers are not really loyal to him; they are just mechanically following orders.

Shakespeare gives us an important piece of information in this scene: the forces of Malcolm and Macduff are going to meet at Birnam Wood, whereas Macbeth is assembling his army at  Dunsinane Castle. When did we hear these 2 names of places? Turn back to Act IV, scene 1, lines 90-94, and Macbeth’s reaction to what the Third Apparition says. 

Scene 3- When Macbeth recalls the Third Apparition’s prophecy, is he really confident as he calls for his battle armor, or is he really doing what he says his mind will never do: “sag with doubt nor shake with fear” (line 10)? In his speech to Seyton (lines 20 to 31), why is he upset with those who support him (as opposed to Malcolm’s followers? Does this relate to what Angus says about M’s soldiers in the previous scene? In the first speech, he claims that he is invincible, but in the second one, he says, “I have lived long enough” (line 24): what’s going on?

In the next part of this scene, M. is upset with the doctor who was in scene 1 because, after the latter reports that Lady M has insomnia—thus continuing the play’s motif of sleep—the doctor denies the possibility of giving her medicine that will cure her mental problem. Once again, M. is looking for a quick fix for the problem that he and Lady M got themselves into and senses that there is none. 


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ACT V:     Monday May 4, 2020

Scene 4-  We learn exactly one thing from this scene—from Malcolm: “Let every soldier hew him down a bough/ And bear ‘t before him” (lines 4-5). His camouflage strategy (to “shadow/ The numbers of our host”) uses the wood of Birnam Wood. What specifically what might this clarify for you about Act IV, scene 1, lines 92-94?

Scene 5-  The first important speech (lines 9-15) shows that Macbeth seems to have overcome his many fears exhibited in Acts II through IV as he prepares for battle, making him a highly practical soldier, OR do you think that he has a better explanation for having “almost forgot the taste of fears”: “I have supped full with horrors./ Direness, once familiar to my slaughterous thoughts/ Cannot once start me.” Is he just too numb from all of his horrible actions and previous fears to feel anxious? 

But the next speech (lines 17-28), Macbeth’s response to the off-stage death of his wife, is a much more famous one. It is an eloquent representation of what we might now call a nihilist philosophical position, because it claims that the fact of death cancels any value or meaning in life, but we can also see it, not as a generalization about life, but as M’s despair about how he and Lady M created their own miserable situation. You should think about what elements (tropes, images, and abstract words, and how they are put together) make this speech great poetry.

Following this remarkable speech, a messenger immediately confirms the “moving of Birnam Wood” close to Dunsinane castle; at first M. is enraged but then realizes he should take the warning seriously: 

I pull in resolution and begin

To doubt th’ equivocation of the fiend

That lies like truth. (lines 41-43)

The translation on the right hand side is not perfect: I restrain my confidence and I start to wonder about the double meaning (“equivocation”) of what the devilish creature told me because it tells a lie [or lies down or presents itself for inspection] as though it is the truth. In other words, Shakespeare uses a word for double meaning—think of its parts: equal & voice-- and then in the verb “lies,” he gives us a double meaning. Isn’t that clever? M. realizes now that the “fiend” was using double talk by saying that M would be safe until the actual Birnam woods moved to his castle when he really mean that human beings camouflaged by tree branches would make it seem that Birnam Wood would reach Dunsinane. So now that M. understands the deeper meaning of the prophecy, he feels that he has run out of luck:

There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.

I ‘gin to be aweary of the sun,

And wish th’ estate o’ th’ world were now undone. (47-49)

Whether he runs away or stays in his castle doesn’t matter. Again, in the second line above, the translation is not perfect: to be weary “of the sun” does mean that M is getting “tired of living” (205), but in Shakespeare’s plays that feature kings, “the sun” is often a trope for the king and his status, so M is tired of trying to hold on to being king; perhaps he finds his past ambition meaningless (“signifying nothing,” as the previous speech had it), so he realizes that he has lost his desire to live and therefore, the entire world “should be” destroyed (“undone”) because he no longer cares about it. This sounds narcissistic, doesn’t it? Then, in the last two lines, he figures that if he has to die, he’d better die like a valiant soldier, “with harness on our back” (line 51), so to some extent, his ego is still operating. Remember that M originally gained the trust of Duncan because he was a valiant soldier in defense of the King and Scotland.

Scene 6- The only relevant aspect of this extremely brief scene is Malcolm’s command to the soldiers to “throw down” their “leafy screens” (line 1) now that they’ve reached the castle safely, so that they can show who they are while confronting Macbeth and his army in battle.

Scene 7- Macbeth, while he is fighting young Siward, whom he kills, focuses in his part of the dialogue on the idea that the young man was born of woman, so of course the prophecy says that Macbeth is going to win. Then we see Macduff appear to speak his determination to avenge the death of his wife and children and to assuage his guilt. Macduff, like Macbeth, is haunted by ghosts: If someone else kills Macbeth, he believes that his “wife and children’s ghosts will haunt [him] still” (line 17), and the translation on the right hand side is correct: “still” means “forever.”

Scene 8-   At first Macbeth thinks that he would kill Macduff (despite the contradiction between the first 2 prophecies in his second meeting with the witches, and says to him: “My soul is too much charged/ With blood of thine already” (lines 5-6) to get him to leave, as if Macduff would not want revenge; it’s interesting that he acknowledges guilt in religious terms. Of course, Macbeth, though told to beware of Macduff, assumes Macduff was born of woman, and he doesn’t consider that there could be equivocation in the “born of woman” prophecy as there was in the Birnam Wood/Dunsinane prediction. Does he fail to read carefully because he’s trying to protect himself from fear and dread? So when he tells Macduff the prophecy to warn him to go, Macduff of course reveals the basis for the equivocation: he was delivered by Caesarian section: “Macduff was from his mother’s womb/ Untimely ripped” (15-16). In contemporary times, we don’t think of a C-section as a baby not being born “of woman,” but Macbeth complains about the fiend’s “double sense” (line 20) and at first refuses to fight Macduff but then determines to do so when Macduff calls him a coward.

The conversation between Malcolm, Siward, and Ross focuses on Siward’s very low key (macho?) words about his son’s death, which one of our critics uses to convey how a patriarchal attitude is conveyed in the play. Malcolm believes that Siward should be more emotional and should praise his son’s sacrifice more.

When Macduff enters “with Macbeth’s head,” how is this a repetition of something reported in Act I? What is ironic about it? What is your opinion of the tone and content of Malcolm’s speech? Is he going to be just like Macbeth or do you feel he will be a just king like his father? Has order been restored to the kingdom and has the divine right of kings been asserted and protected?

At a certain point during this class, let’s look at the 4 topics for essay 2; I would like to answer any of your questions about the topics and hear if you already know which one you’re going to pick.