ACT I
SCENE i
The first word in Hamlet is “Who”; in Macbeth it’s “When.” This is appropriate because of the extent to which Time is thematically explored and even made into a disturbing special effect. Here in what is “more overture than scene” (Goddard, II 108), we meet three conspiring “weïrd sisters” (I.iii.32), or witches — women who have aligned themselves with the dark forces, black magic, and prophecy. The play begins with them starting their meeting the way all business meetings start: discussing when the next meeting is: “When shall we three meet again? / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?” (I.i.1-2). The response — “When the battle’s lost and won” (I.i.4) — points out the phenomenon regarding two sides to the same coin, or the theme of equivocation. Macbeth is specified as the witches’ target (I.i.7). And the final lines — “Fair is foul and foul is fair, / Hover through the fog and filthy air” (I.i.11-12) — set the stage for the chaos and corruption to come. From now on whenever someone is declared “fair,” we catch the grim irony.
A series of witch trials in 1591 included references to Grimalkin and Paddock (I.i.8-9) — the cat and toad familiars — and to rough, stormy weather (Ogburn and Ogburn 800).
SCENE ii
Duncan, the Scottish King (historically in the eleventh century), his sons (Malcolm and Donalbain), and other nobles and attendants come upon a “bloody man” whom Duncan realizes can report “of the revolt / The newest state” (I.ii.1-3). This Sergeant tells of Macbeth and Banquo’s successes in quelling an uprising. Reference to “kerns and gallowglasses” (I.ii.13) indicates first-hand military knowledge.
Macbeth “unseam’d [Macdonwald] from the nave to th’ chops, / And fix’d his head upon our battlements” (I.ii.22-23). As a general, Macbeth wielding a bloody sword is, one presumes, acceptable; but his savagery in eviscerating and decapitating, along with later details, Freud would have something to say about. The Sergeant reports more, but his “gashes cry for help” (I.ii.42). “The passage is like a smear of blood across the first page of the play” (Goddard, II 108).
Rosse and Angus, two other nobles, supply further news that Macbeth has been victorious. Rosse calls him “Bellona’s bridegroom” (I.ii.54) — aligning him with a goddess of war (and unintentionally prefiguring Lady Macbeth). Since the former Thane of Cawdor will be executed for treason, the title will go to Macbeth. Rosse may have deceptively slandered the Thane of Cawdor: his “sophisticated plotting is the kind of court intrigue with which Oxford was intimately familiar” (Whalen, Macbeth 40).
Shakespeare intriguingly rhymes “Macbeth” with “death” near the end of this scene (I.ii.64-65). Its final line — “What he hath lost, noble Macbeth hath won” (I.ii.67) — ominously echoes the witches’ juxtaposed inversions already.
Often in Shakespeare’s plays, “Men who have been valiant on the battlefield can come home to act like cads or criminals in time of peace…. Macbeth, murderer of Duncan, and Macbeth, tyrant of Scotland, are implicit in Macbeth, slaughterer of Macdonwald” (Goddard, II 108-109).
SCENE iii
On the formless wasteland of a “heath,” the witches report their misdeeds, and one, because a woman would not give her some chestnuts, will make sure her husband is harassed by storms at sea, “Though his bark cannot be lost, / Yet it can be tempest-toss’d” (I.iii.24-25). So a husband will suffer because of his wife’s uncharitableness. [The mention of the Tiger (I.iii.7) is a topical allusion to a ship last at London port in 1588 (Ogburn and Ogburn 788-789). Merchants carrying letters of introduction from the Queen sailed to Aleppo — a trading center in Syria — in 1583 (Whalen, Macbeth 42).]
The witches identify themselves as “weïrd sisters” (I.iii.32) — from wyrd, the Old English word for “fate,” but ultimately the extent of their powers is limited and ambiguous. [The repetition of the number nine may relate to the Duke of Guise having been warned nine times that Henry III of France intended to have him killed (Clark 819).]
Macbeth and Banquo arrive, and Macbeth unintentionally, and again ominously, echoes the witches: “So foul and fair a day I have not seen” (I.iii.38). The witches have beards (I.iii.43), so gender is blurry, and it will continue to become impossible to read through ambiguities: “they function by indirection and insinuation” (Garber 707). The weïrd sisters greet Macbeth with his current title, Thane of Glamis; his coming title, Thane of Cawdor; and even King. Banquo asking, “Good sir, why do you start…?” (I.iii.51), indicates that the witches have hit a nerve with Macbeth already. His surprise may include the matter of Cawdor: Macbeth had no indication, apparently, of the guy’s treason. The witches claim that Banquo shall beget kings, and they vanish. Rosse and Angus bring the news that Macbeth has been made Thane of Cawdor, so he and Banquo discuss the strange prophecies. Banquo warns that “The instruments of darkness” sometimes report truths to sucker us in (I.iii.123-126).
“Hamlet is to Macbeth somewhat as the Ghost is to the Witches” (Goddard, II 111) — as a prompt or catalyst to his own intense thoughts. In an aside, Macbeth reveals that either he’s already been considering dark thoughts, or he’s particularly quick to do so now suddenly. He hopes fate itself will do the dirty work, though: “chance may crown me / Without my stir” (I.iii.143-144).
Macbeth had called the witches “imperfect speakers” (I.iii.71), and the scene several times alludes to difficulties in reading (e.g., I.iii.90) and interpreting (I.iii.46). Macbeth asks that Banquo consider what they’ve witnessed. They will think about this and will talk later, Macbeth decides — and he will make a habit of this technique of promising future discussions (I.iii.153-155).
SCENE iv
Accompanying King Duncan and his sons is a character named Lennox. [The 4th Earl of Lennox was regent of Scotland in 1570-1571 during the infancy of King James VI while Oxford was in Scotland.]
The King and his court hear of the previous Thane of Cawdor’s execution: “Nothing in his life / Became him like the leaving it” (I.iv.7-8) — he seemed casual about it [and the elder Ogburns detect a later application to Burghley (800-801)]. Learning from his mistake with this previous Cawdor, he thinks, Duncan gives up on the idea of correct “reading” when it comes to faces (I.iv.11-12). In walks Macbeth.
Botanical metaphors abound as Duncan welcomes Macbeth and Banquo. But he appoints his son Malcolm as his heir, which frustrates Macbeth, who calls the Prince “a step / On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap” (I.iv.48-49). Note this notion of “overleaping.” And here’s a weird line from Macbeth to Duncan: “The rest is labor, which is not us’d for you” (I.iv.44) — meaning, on the surface, that leisure time spent not on you is a chore, but can also be taken in a wider and darker sense: that you, Duncan, do not benefit from what I’m working on.
The progress toward Inverness in northern Scotland where Shakespeare locates Macbeth’s castle is one of many geographical references showing his accurate knowledge of the country.
SCENE v
Lady Macbeth [who has no name of her own in this play, but who historically had the “uneuphonious” name of … brace yourself … Gruoch (Asimov 167; cf. Ogburn and Ogburn 789)] reads her husband’s letter to her regarding the witches. Macbeth calls her his “dearest partner in greatness” (I.v.11), so it’s an odd relationship. They may leave a lot unsaid — it’s difficult to tell (or to read). Lady Macbeth considers that her husband is too kind and insufficiently ambitious — “too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness” (I.v.17) — so she plans to “pour [her] spirits in [his] ear” (I.v.26). (There’s an echo from Hamlet and Othello.)
When she hears that Duncan will be spending the night at the Macbeths’ castle, she delivers a dramatic apostrophe. At first, she says, “The raven himself is hoarse / That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan / Under my battlements” (I.v.38-40). [The raven was taken as a bad omen when one followed Lord Darnley and his wife Mary Queen of Scots on a three-day trip, and when one perched on the roof of the lodging where Darnley was killed.] Lady Macbeth shifts gears:
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe topful
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murth’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry, “Hold, hold!”
(I.v.40-54)
“This is her vivid way of asking to be stripped of feminine weakness and invested with masculine resolve” (Macrone 175). It also focuses attention on what is becoming another theme: bodily openings, hereafter mostly a matter of wounds.
Macbeth arrives and she announces, “Thy letters have transported me beyond / This ignorant present, and I feel now / The future in the instant” (I.v.56-58). The enjambment is effective for conveying this time warp. Macbeth says Duncan is coming tonight and Lady Macbeth asks when he’s leaving. “To-morrow,” replies Macbeth, perhaps pausing, puzzled (?), “as he purposes” (I.v.60) — adding a troubling note of ambiguity or first awareness of his wife’s motive for asking. Lady Macbeth coaches her husband to be more poker-faced, worrying that his visage can be read like a “book” (I.v.62-63). “To beguile the time, / Look like the time… / look like th’ innocent flower, / But be the serpent under ‘t” (I.v.63-66). [Catherine de Medici was called “Madame la Serpente” (Ogburn and Ogburn 794).] As he promised with Banquo, he tells his wife, “We will speak further” (I.v.71).
SCENE vi
The mention of torches in the stage directions indicates indoor evening performances for the court or aristocratic homes vs. open-air afternoon performances (Whalen, Macbeth 62).
Duncan loves the Macbeths’ castle and the weather and is greeted by Lady Macbeth politely. Banquo presents some ornithology about the “marlet” [which was featured on a badge in Mary Stuart’s mother’s side of the family, the House of Lorraine (Ogburn and Ogburn 796)]. Lady Macbeth is declared a “Fair” hostess (I.vi.24), but note that she’s the one who does not use the word “love” in this scene, despite its frequency. She tells Duncan, “Your servants ever / Have theirs, themselves, and what is theirs, in compt / To make their audit at your Highness’ pleasure / Still to return your own” (I.vi.25-28). What on earth does that mean? (It’s interesting that the first two lines end in “ever” and “compt.” And “theirs” = th’ heirs?)
SCENE vii
“If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well / It were done quickly” (I.vii.1-2). Macbeth makes grammatical sense, but note the ringing of “done … done,” as if he wants to be looking backwards at the accomplished murder. In this scene, Shakespeare first coins the word “assassination” (I.vii.2) and the phrase “the be-all and the end-all” (I.vii.5), both used by Macbeth himself, who seems to be hissing a bit in these opening lines of the scene. Well, Lady Macbeth did instruct him to “be the serpent” (I.v.66). He recognizes that to plot against the King is a damnable violation: “He’s here in double trust” (I.vii.12) — actually triple, as “kinsman,” “subject,” and “host” (I.vii.13-14). In Dante’s lowest level of Hell are the traitors, and on these very scores. If only Duncan were a big bastard, this would be easier to rationalize, Macbeth indicates (I.vii.16ff). “We will proceed no further in this business” (I.vii.31).
The coolest thing about this scene involves the way Shakespeare has Macbeth using verbs. Macbeth refers to his “Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself, / and falls on th’other…” (I.vii.27) — Lady Macbeth interrupts. But this is similar to the earlier statement: “If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well done quickly” (I.vii.1-2). Macbeth wants to overleap the murder. About this soliloquy, Marjorie Garber says, “Like Lady Macbeth’s open eyes and closed sense in the sleepwalking scene, this speech refuses to look where it is going, to see where it is headed — and so, in effect, it beheads itself” (“Macbeth: The Male Medusa” 87). Soon Macbeth will say to the “dagger of the mind”: “Thou marshal’st me the way that I was going, / And such an instrument I was to use” (II.i.42-43). He’s looking ahead to the dirty deed, but as close to speaking in the past tense as is possible while still keeping the meaning clear — in other words, his language is “vaulting” or “o’erleaping” the murder.
Lady Macbeth argues against his squeamishness or conscience, saying that his indecision applies to his love for her and questioning his manhood. Macbeth retorts, “I dare do all that may become a man, / Who dares do more is none” (I.vii.46-47). She asks, “What beast was’t then / That made you break this enterprise to me? / When you durst do it, then you were a man” (I.vii.47-49). Remember how we had this conversation?
She insists that his vow to proceed was as binding as hers would have been to the extreme of her dashing the brains out of her own newborn “had I so sworn as you” (I.vii.58). It’s odd and unclear when exactly Macbeth made this supposed vow that she’s capitalizing on.
So “screw your courage to the sticking-place, / And we’ll not fail” (I.vii.60-61). Lady Macbeth will drug Duncan’s officers with wine (I.vii.64ff) so that they can be framed with the murder afterwards. Macbeth says, “Bring forth men-children only! / For thy undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males” (I.vii.72-74). But he is resolved:
Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
(I.vii.81-82)
One established quibble is that of the contours of the Macbeth family. Lady Macbeth indicates in this scene that she has been a breeder. But whither the kid(s)? Later comes an indication that Macbeth has never sired a child. So is this Lady Macbeth’s second marriage? I find none of this discussion at all gripping. (But historically, the woman Gruoch had a child with a previous husband.)
The overall effect of Act I is that a lot happened but what we saw doesn’t quite match up with what seems to have happened — a result either of the incomplete nature of this play, or an intentional effect of anxiety created in us. “So rapid and foreshortened is their [the Macbeths’] play (about half the length of Hamlet) that we are given no leisure to confront their descent into hell as it happens” (Bloom 518). “It is his [Shakespeare’s] intention, in fact, to push through the play in a whirlwind of activity, making very little time seem to pass. For that reason, he has none of the characters age in the play” (Asimov 154).
Macbeth, Act by Act
Macbeth Act I