Macbeth Act Five Scene Eight.
Q) Look at how the characters speak and behave here. How do you think an audience might respond to this part of the play? Refer closely to details from the extract to support your answer.
Malcolm’s conversation with the English leader, Siward, demonstrates his political acumen and also reveals the effects of Macduff’s grief-stricken reminder about what constitutes humane masculinity. Interestingly, Malcolm exchanges the first person pronoun, ‘I’ for the Royal ‘we’ within the same sentence when he addresses the English leader. This underlines his awareness of his success which will restore legitimacy to the throne of Scotland and the audience would be relieved to hear the Royal ‘we’ on the tongue of Malcolm after the chaos of Macbeth’s criminal sovereignty. Malcolm’s reference to ‘friends’ using the plural, emphasises the mutual losses on both sides: specifically within the English and Scottish Armies. Malcolm is civil and politically astute and the audience probably senses a level-headedness about the new King, that repairs the affectionate recklessness and naivety of Duncan.
By contrast, the response of the English leader is less concerned with ‘safe’ friends than victory and honour. If the ‘day’ is ‘cheaply bought’ with relatively few casualties, then ironically one of the fatalities is Siward’s own son. The fact that death is treated as a commodity shows a great deal about the situation on the battlefield. Ross’s reassurance about Siward’s son’s death paying a ‘soldier’s debt’, continues this financial metaphor, indicating how much honour is valued more than emotion in this still degraded world.
Yet there might be an ambiguity about Siward’s question, ‘Then is he dead?’ as if the shock is making him numbly ask for verification not unlike Macduff’s use of interrogatives in the previous Act. Perhaps the apparent heartless expediency of Siward is a mask for his buried grief?
We are left to guess at the depth of feeling buried beneath the Spartan-like question, ‘Had he his hurts before?’ This concern with the public visibility of his son’s bravery seems to satisfy his father that his dead son is now ‘God’s soldier.’ Malcolm’s accountancy- like response, questions the extent of ‘sorrow spent’ as if grief can be measured and balanced against a final cost. This financial reckoning is a characteristic of Malcolm too, who uses a similar analogy once he learns of Macbeth’s death too. Malcolm appears to be a restorative figure of balance and stability, a decided contrast to the violent excess of Macbeth. The extract ends with the reassuring sight of ‘newer comfort’ to the older Siward, as MacDuff comes on stage carrying the decapitated head of Macbeth. This strange ‘comfort’ perhaps shows that violence can only ever be temporarily defeated because its power is so compelling.
Retreat. Flourish. Enter, with drum and colours, MALCOLM, SIWARD, ROSS, the other Thanes, and Soldiers
MALCOLM
I would the friends we miss were safe arrived.
SIWARD
Some must go off: and yet, by these I see,
So great a day as this is cheaply bought.
MALCOLM
Macduff is missing, and your noble son.
ROSS
Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier’s debt:
He only lived but till he was a man;
The which no sooner had his prowess confirm’d
In the unshrinking station where he fought,
But like a man he died.
Then he is dead?
ROSS
Ay, and brought off the field: your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by his worth, for then
It hath no end.
SIWARD
Had he his hurts before?
ROSS
Ay, on the front.
SIWARD
Why then, God’s soldier be he!
Had I as many sons as I have hairs,
I would not wish them to a fairer death:
And so, his knell is knoll’d.
MALCOLM
He’s worth more sorrow,
And that I’ll spend for him.
SIWARD
He’s worth no more
They say he parted well, and paid his score:
And so, God be with him! Here comes newer comfort.
Q) Look at how the characters speak and behave here. How do you think an audience might respond to this part of the play? Refer closely to details from the extract to support your answer.
Macduff’s triumphant and brutal re-entrance on the stage signals the end of Macbeth. Excess has been defeated and stability is restored. The violence employed by Macduff is also conspicuously a matter of personal vengeance. He kills Macbeth in revenge for Macbeth’s needless slaughter of his family. Macduff is not interested in power like his hubristic enemy. Interestingly his execution of the ‘usurper’ reminds the audience of Macbeth’s merciless killing of Macdonwald in Act One. The wheel has come full circle. Natural images are granted voice once again, ‘planted newly’ contrasting with the aridity of much of Macbeth’s gloomy speech making. The once noble Macbeth is now a ‘usurper’ and a ‘butcher’ instead of the ‘noble’ figure he once was. Perhaps the audience feels a sense of anti-climax despite palpable relief, for the final stages of the play seem far more dreary and prosaic than the poetic violence evinced by the fallen protagonist, Macbeth.
The audience may also feel a little uneasy that the repetition of the salutation, ‘Hail’ reminds them of the witches’ greeting to Macbeth in Act One. Where are the witches the audience may wonder and are they still capable of interfering with Malcolm’s newly conferred sovereignty? The audience may also question whether the unemotional measured Kingship of Malcolm will survive for any length of time, especially when the audience recalls the witches’ promise to Banquo about his heirs.
At any rate, the crushing dismissal of Macbeth and his wife as ‘ this dead butcher and his fiend-like Queen’ may fail to satisfy the audience imaginatively. The anarchic chaos of Macbeth has been wantonly destructive, yet the audience is still haunted by the magnificent despair of Macbeth’s nihilistic vision of ‘tomorrow and tomorrow.’ The simple couplets that end Malcolm’s speech and the play suggest peacefulness yet lack vitality and emotion. They bring a closure that may seem only temporary.
Re-enter MACDUFF, with MACBETH’s head
MACDUFF
Hail, king! for so thou art: behold, where stands
The usurper’s cursed head: the time is free:
I see thee compass’d with thy kingdom’s pearl,
That speak my salutation in their minds;
Whose voices I desire aloud with mine:
Hail, King of Scotland!
ALL
Hail, King of Scotland!
Flourish
MALCOLM
We shall not spend a large expense of time
Before we reckon with your several loves,
And make us even with you. My thanes and kinsmen,
Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland
In such an honour named. What’s more to do,
Which would be planted newly with the time,
As calling home our exiled friends abroad
That fled the snares of watchful tyranny;
Producing forth the cruel ministers
Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,
Who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands
Took off her life; this, and what needful else
That calls upon us, by the grace of Grace,
We will perform in measure, time and place:
So, thanks to all at once and to each one,
Whom we invite to see us crown’d at Scone.
Flourish. Exeunt
