Act Four Macbeth.
There are only three scenes in this penultimate Act, yet each scene has an emotional intensity that remains in the imagination long after the play is done. It feels to the audience that we have to witness the most dreadful crime of the play before the fallen world can begin to reclaim some moral orientation and eventual stability. If Macduff is to be the agent of this re-stabilization then it is significant that his goodness both problematic or even compromised. Equivocation has dominated the play after all.
Scene One.
Macbeth seeks out the witches again to demand reassurances about his future. Ironically, Macbeth maintains his faith in the agents of destruction, even though their influence has led to his unhappiness and fallen nature. Perhaps he felt truly recognised by the witches and finally known. Their insinuations about his powerful ambitions have inspired his usurpation of Duncan. Yet Macbeth is uncomfortable. Fleance is not dead and Malcolm has the support of England’s King Edward. He needs to know he is safe in Scotland. And the witches must accede to his demands for reassurance.
The witches are visually cooking up malignity when we see their unsavoury menu made compelling through alliteration and pun. ‘Fillet of a fenny snake.’ Hecate compliments their performance. ‘O well done. I commend your pains.’
Their unholy trinities mock and parody conventional systems of power. They exist in a world of rampant otherness.
‘Something wicked this way comes.’ The witches make Macbeth into a thing and a joke. He is their creature, their monster. I wonder if their teasing unsettles us because he is so comparatively trivial in their delivery of wickedness too? Remember in Act Three, Hecate has chastised the witches for their mischief without her knowledge. And all for a ‘wayward son .‘ With all too common human frailties.
When Macbeth demands reassurances from the witches he speaks to them in a tone that is familiar as if he is now one of them. He is a despot: confrontational, arrogant, hasty. ‘ How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags! What isn’t you do? ‘
Their reply strips the world of its meaning ‘ A deed without a name.’ This loss of signification is central to the witch’s ‘fair is foul’ motivation. Nothingness deprives the world of its value and induces a state of chaos. The physical fluidity of the witches is reflected in their linguistic playfulness, in their verbal anarchy.
Macbeth’s loss of all moral coordinates is then vividly demonstrated by his willingness to gain reassurances at the cost of an apocalyptic catastrophe falling upon the world. ‘Even till destruction sicken; answer me To what I ask you. ‘ This desperate need for a deal or trade with the witches foreshadows Macbeth’s wanton cruelty to Lady Macduff in the next scene. Macbeth appears criminally insane.
Interestingly the witches offer reassurances from their ‘masters’ a deepening of the dismal, evil atmosphere of the play yet ironically delivering an unequivocal clarity that combines linguistic riddle with a theatrical illustration. Consequently, ‘Macbeth’ is told in an exclamative triple that he should be ‘beware Macduff’ a warning that seems to confirm Macbeth’s own misgivings and therefore deserves ‘thanks’ for the ‘good caution.’ The witches’ warning is a death warrant for Lady Macduff. Like their promise to Banquo, their words inspire Macbeth’s spiteful, murderous impulses. Their malignity contaminates everything.
The ‘bloody child’ which seems highly symbolic in a drama where children are so much a threat and treated with the utmost cruelty, promises Macbeth apparent safety through the imperative: ‘Be bloody, bold and resolute ‘ yet another trinity employing alliteration to inspire Macbeth actions and mental outlook. The only condition attached to such behaviour, ‘laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born Shall harm Macbeth.’ Macbeth seizes upon this declaration as a sign of his invincibility. How can anyone not be born of a woman after all? It is surely impossible and therefore Macbeth is safe. Yet think about the way this promise reinforces the rejection of the maternal and the feminine in the play. Lady Macbeth desires to be ‘unsexed‘ so she can destroy Duncan. Her repeated insults to Macbeth about his manhood when he is attempting to renege on his promise to kill the King. And this foreshadows the reversal of the Act One Macdonwald scene wherein Act Five Macduff becomes Macbeth- like in order to kill the latter. It is as if Macduff’s exemption from maternal origin and nurturing bestow a power upon him that allows him to destroy Macbeth’s tyranny.
Macbeth still shows his predilection for selectivity when trusting the witches, however. He decides he will make ‘ double sure’ of his safety from Macduff and kill the latter.
The prediction about Birnam Wood and Dunsinane seems to guarantee the future for Macbeth. Yet typically of Macbeth’s insatiable desire for satisfaction, he demands to know ‘ one thing ‘ more of the witches. And this demand destroys any reassurance he has just gained. ‘ For the blood-bolter’d Banquo …points at them for his.’ Once again reminding Macbeth of the original prediction made to Banquo about his lineage inheriting the crown. Futility once more returns to Macbeth’s heart, little wonder that such extreme perturbation inspires Macbeth to order the slaughter of all who inhabit ‘ The castle of Macduff.’ Residual awareness of his sinfulness given brief acknowledgement in the reference to the ‘ unfortunate souls ‘ who live there. Macbeth’s nadir of evil and violence in the next scene is the moral turning point of the play.
Scene two.
Look at the escalating intensity of the dramatic action. The ‘firstlings’ of Macbeth s decision to kill Lady Macduff is quickly enacted in the next scene, such as the reckless violence of Macbeth s unopposed tyranny. Remember Lennox has said nothing to oppose Macbeth’s cowardly criminality in the previous scene. Consequently, when the audience encounters Lady Macduff at the beginning of this scene we fear for her life immediately. The awful dramatic irony is that we realise her impending doom at the same time as recognizing her spiritedness and forthright character.
‘What hath he done, to make him fly the land?’ Lady Macduff’s astute question obtains a typically lame answer from Ross, one of Macduff’s relatives and fellow nobleman. Evidently in this patriarchal even misogynistic world, women are all too easily abandoned for more important political concerns.
‘You must have patience, madam.’ Such a grossly inadequate response condemns lady Madoff to death.
Ross clearly feels the need to defend his relative against Lady Macduff’s justified annoyance that her errant husband has ironically left all his family in the ‘place from whence he himself does fly?’ The audience has witnessed Macbeth’s death warrant and therefore share Lady Macduff’s outrage at her husband’s selfish neglect. This problematic characterization of Macduff is especially important as his execution of Macbeth returns Scotland to supposed stability and order. Yet the agent of this stabilization is not unblemished morally. Shakespeare needs the next scene to try and reclaim at least some of Macduff’s compromised nobility.
The banter between mother and son after the unimpressive departure of Ross heightens the audience’s liking for the Macduff family. Natural affections like we witness between mother and son ha e been entirely absent from this nightmarish even nihilistic world. This brief glimpse of affectionate, teasing family banter reminds the audience of what Macbeth has driven out of his oppressed Scotland.
The unknown messenger who tries to save Lady Macduff with his desperate warning provokes her resounding retort to the contamination of Macbeth’s malign influence. ‘ whither should I fly? I have done no harm.’
Lady Macduff’s innocence and nobility are no protection from evil. In fact, it is her trust in her husband that places her family In such peril.
When Lady Macduff is confronted by one of Macbeth’s killers she shows courage and loyalty to her husband despite his desertion of his family. This courage is reflected in her young son who is savagely murdered on stage in front of his mother before the killers turn on her too. This moment is the most obscene in the play. The audience is sickened by what they have witnessed in front of them.
Scene Three.
The function of scene three is to rescue Macduff from ignominy. So the audience journey to England to meet with the absent figures of Malcolm and Macduff himself who are situated before King Edward’s palace, underlining the allegiances of Macduff and his privileged political concerns over the needs of his close family.
Malcolm’s function in this scene is to discover the innate nobility of Macduff so that the death of Macbeth at Macduff’s hands should feel like a return to lawfulness and stability. Macduff’s function is to show the suitability of Malcolm as a trustworthy monarch after the reign of the tyrannical Macbeth.
The audience recognises that Malcolm is right to be suspicious of Macduff as the latter’s loyalty is not a given and he raises the problem of Macduff’s desertion of his family. ‘why in that rawness left you, wife and child.’ This problem is not resolved by any reassurances from Macduff. The screams of his murdered family are still very fresh in the ears of the audience and Macduff’s moral blind spot remains a matter of immense concern. Macduff simply speaks of Scotland’s suffering at the ‘tyrants grasp’ employing personification to suggest the savaged body of the female country. Again the audience recognises an uneasy connection between Lady Macduff and Scotland., anticipating the brutalized ripped womb of Macduff’s dead mother mentioned in the final scene of Act Five.
The segue from Macduff’s defiant ‘I am not treacherous‘ to the immediate retort of Malcolm, ‘But Macbeth is.’ reveals the understandable cynicism of Macduff when facing supposedly loyal nobles. We might recall whoever that Macduff discovered King Duncan’s body immediately after he arrives at Macbeth’s castle, exonerating him of any suspicions of murder.
The testing of Macduff through the degenerate confessions of the Prince makes for an interesting diversion from the macabre murders in the previous scene. Malcolm is palpably more discerning than his father in whom he trusts. The tests include reference to Malcolm’s voluptuous nature and his avarice. Macduff proves his loyalty and morality with his suppressed outrage after a catalogue of confessions by Malcolm.’ Fit to govern! No, not to live.’ Malcolm is thus consoled by his country man’s virtue.
Ross appears apparently unaware of the death of Macduff’s family or unwilling to communicate it. We suspect him of moral cowardice once again.
When he does find the courage to speak the mechanical tone reveals his sense of numbness at the news as he must feel guilt at his desertion of Lady Macduff and anger at his relatives similarly neglectful behaviour too. The use of the present tense, ‘ Your castle is surprised’ underlines the ever-present horror playing through Ross’s mind. The alliterative ‘savagely slaughtered’ engenders unmentionable horror and it is truly a sign of Macbeth’s evil that he does not even need to be named as the killer. His malignity is a given.
How thankful are we to hear the mention of ‘Merciful heaven’ from Malcolm? It feels as if the nightmarish godless universe of Macbeth is finally coming to an end with the re-emergence of moral values and the need for emotional acknowledgement. ‘give sorrow words.’ Instead of the pernicious duplicity of the Macbeths’ behaviour.
The effect of the news on Macduff is devastating. His abject horror and misery are almost impossible to process and this disbelief is communicated via the use of interrogatives and exclamatives. ‘My children too?…my wife killed too!’ The extremity of Macduff’s grief is underpinned by his knowledge of his own guilty contribution to the horror. The disbelief shows his humanity and the depth of his grief however negligent he might have been in pursuing political ends over protecting and nurturing his family.
When Malcolm shifts in his reaction to the horror by attempting to appropriate Macduff’s grief and to convert it into a weapon for revenge, Macduff’s retaliation reveals a critical turning point in the play’s representation of masculinity.
So when Malcolm commands ( rather like an echo of Lady Macbeth) ‘ Dispute it like a man.‘ Macduff’s response reminds his Prince that ‘ I must also feel it as a man‘ for to be a man is to be human. To feel grief and acknowledge guilt. ‘Sinful Ma duff, They were all struck for thee.’ This confession of responsibility is essential for the denouement of the play. We must believe in Macduff’s innate nobility if he is to be the agent of transformation and stabilization at the end of the play.
By contrast, Malcolm still subscribes to the ‘manly’ associations with violence because he wants the Kingship. Macduff acknowledges he will use his sword against Macbeth but this is out of a desire for revenge and justice rather than any desire for power.
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