[Aside] Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme.–I thank you, gentlemen.AsideCannot be ill, cannot be good: if ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.
[Aside] If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,
Without my stir.
Macbeth is discovered by the witches in a deserted, anti-social place. This space is ripe for anarchy and treason. The use of pathetic fallacy reinforces the vicious atmosphere created by the witches’ language yet here, Macbeth chooses to trust the promises of the diabolical trinity. Why?
His first words on stage ‘So fair and foul..’ replicate the dangerous paradox chanted by the unholy trinity in the first scene of the play. ‘Fair is foul and foul is fair.’ It feels as if Macbeth has already been corrupted by the ideas of the witches before he even meets them physically. He is linguistically contaminated by the supernatural creatures whose appearance and language seems threatening to the moral stability of the world.
Yet in the extract above, Macbeth rationalises the irrational. He chooses to trust the obviously corrupt witches. ‘Two truths are told.’ Macbeth validates their words. He wants to believe the witches because they are offering him what he secretly desires. Yet he resists viewing their truths as a form of diabolical temptation. His compliance is the beginning of his moral downfall into the ‘butcher’ Macbeth by the end of the play.
Thus, it appears that when the witches meet Macbeth, they are meeting his subconscious desires, exposing them and revealing the secret, hollow fallibility of the supposedly ‘noble Macbeth’ even before he admits his connivance to himself. Macbeth does not just deceive his King and followers he deceives himself. And this is his tragedy: that he pursues a grandiose scheme that dismantles and then destroys everything he values and cares for. And this seems as true for the world now, as for then.
Human nature persists in obfuscation and self-deception often justified by grandiose ambition and motivation.
A few thoughts.
GCSE English literature Students often ask me why they have to read Shakespeare and how something so old can still be relevant today. look about you, I say. Recent events both in the UK and abroad, show all too clearly the moral quagmire caused by unchecked, self regarding ambition.
And on TV the brilliant Dr Gregory House with his mantra Everybody lies, reveals the human obsession with deception. We lie because we can. We lie about our likes and dislikes. We lie about our fears, our hopes, our characters. We lie to our families, friends and neighbours. In House, patients lie until it practically kills them. Sometimes, it does.
Macbeth is no different.
Macbeth knows he is doing wrong but does it anyway. Why? His arguments accumulate in his head, drowning out his ethical, noble voice spurred on by the emasculating taunts of Lady Macbeth whose arrogant greed blinds her to the moral sacrifices involved.
Ironically, the murder of Duncan destroys the passionate intimacy of her marriage to her beloved husband. They become estranged, separately confronting the world and their consciences until madness and retribution descend.
Why do people ignore their consciences and pursue selfish ends? How can we justify to ourselves the value of a goal that involves hurting others? Human beings are unique in their capacity for self-delusion, their predilection for self-justifying untruth. They offer up excuses for their behaviour. Facile, empty justifications for their ethical failure. Macbeth resorts to murder to hasten his ambition yet finds that his kingship brings nothing but hollow despair and endless violence. His coronation feast is surely one of the most lonely and miserable in literature. He commits a terrible act to stare feverishly at an empty chair.
So lying makes Macbeth abhorred instead of admired. His paranoid thirst for violence condemns Lady Macduff and her family to slaughter. All moral sense deserts Macbeth as he (irreligiously) insists on a fate promised him by the witches. Why does he allow the unholy trinity to unravel his moral character? If Macbeth is essentially weak and susceptible why does he face the inevitability of death with courage and why after all does he speak some of the most moving and emotionally authentic words in the whole of Shakespeare if not the English language in his ‘Tomorrow and Tomorrow speech’?
Before we can deceive others, we must first deceive ourselves is what Shakespeare is saying and Macbeth is a great exponent of deceiving himself. He believes what he wants to believe, it is a very human trait. If he had been able to peer into the future and see his estrangement from Lady Macbeth, his isolation and the suffering his deeds would cause he would not have embarked on that course of action. But once started it becomes impossible to stop until the tsunami he created finally engulfs him. I agree with you about his speech Tomorrow and tomorrow… And have often found it incongruous that one of the darkest and bloodiest plays has some of the most beautiful language, but that’s the genius of Shakespeare and yes, as relevant to us today as it was when it was written.
The opening line of what you quote here, ‘Two truths are told’ – this is how Macbeth is murderer and poet. The truth is rarely pure and never simple, as Wilde had it. And if J Austen hated pictures of perfection, then Shakespeare had an aversion to untextured villainy. Edmund and Iago and Richard, monsters and human too. I enjoyed reading what you have written here, it’s thoughtful and compelling. Made me want to go and reread more of the play! Bill
I am studying this play by Shakespeare. I don’t find it easy, but I am interested in what’s happening in the Macbeths minds! It is mysterious, but good, so thanks for the help!