Macbeth Act Five Scene Three Continued.
MACBETH
I’ll put it on. Send out more horses; skirr the country round; Hang those that talk of fear. Give me mine armour. How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor
Not so sick, my lord, As she is troubled with thick coming fancies, That keep her from her rest.
MACBETH
Cure her of that. Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain and with some sweet oblivious antidote cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor
Therein the patient must minister to himself
Macbeth orders his’ armour’ on and then shortly afterwards demands it be removed, suggesting his mounting disorientation with the emotional impact of his impending confrontation with fate. His armour is a certainty in his life, a literal and metaphorical anchor to his former life as a successful soldier where he was once universally feted and admired.
His question to the doctor, ‘ How does your patient?’ communicates his continuing affection for his wife even in the midst of chaos, and his desperate plea to the doctor to ‘Cure her of that ‘ communicates something impossible yet universal , a wish that a beloved figure can be healed, despite all the evidence to the contrary. The ‘sweet oblivious antidote‘ he hopes for, cannot be sourced anywhere, as well Macbeth knows, as he is a large part of the disease. The only ‘oblivion’ remaining to the abject Queen is death through suicide. Yet desperation makes us all self-deceiving and the power of Macbeth’s pleading shows his grieving predicament uneasily mirrors our own at times of great distress. This is dramatically unnerving as the audience feel his acute sorrow and is even subsumed by it, yet at the same time, we remember how much his cruelty has brought this abject suffering upon both his wife and himself.
The doctor’s retort is bleak, ‘minister to himself,’ and attempts to bring ironic clarity to his master whilst preserving his own safety. We know that the ministering will not end well and suspect that the doctor is giving voice to the dismal foreshadowing of the Queen’s desire for self-harm and destruction. Oblivion of course would constitute an afterlife in hell, as suicide at that time, was seen as an insult to God’s gift of creation. The world of Dunsinane castle, like Macbeth’s interior self, is bleak indeed.
