final essay
Critical Sources Referenced: Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare's Ghost Writers: Literature as Uncanny Causality. Fawkner, H.W. Deconstructing Macbeth: The Hyperontological View 1990. Long, Michael. The Unnatural Scene. London: Methuen, 1976.
1. NARRATIVE AND SUBJECTIVE UNRAVELING
VANISHING- A state or movement involving the sensation of release from centeredness and metaphysical presence; a process of appearing where the excess of speed in appearances dramatizes the vividness of appearing by making it "immediate" and "pure". (236)
The play Macbeth displays a structure of dual representation. Like the other texts we've studied, the representational world presented in Macbeth is one of order and chaos [world], logos and mythos [this is a dual type of narrative], centeredness and multiplicity. These two forces work off each other to create a tension in the play that causes the action and forces the plot to move ahead.
Opposing forces in the play, are like what Sigmund Freud calls the “unconscious” and “conscious.” They work together as in conflict. So the narrative movement in Macbeth is not merely a move from conscious culture to unconscious frenzy. The play also presents the unconscious as the foundation or limit of consciousness itself. The movement between consciousness and the unconscious, nature and culture, rationality and madness is displayed in every aspect of Macbeth. These realms are connected to one another and not as separated as we would like to think.
The character of Macbeth begins as a lively warrior with much passion but changes a calculating murder at any and all costs. Lady Macbeth begins as an organizing force in the household but moves into a state of murderousness, guilt and madness.
Hence, there is what Garber calls an "uncanny causality" where the characters are involved in identity reversals. Both Macbeths do not merely reverse their character, they take an active part in the emptying, negating, or vanishing of their identity. Macbeth is more active than Lady Macbeth who cannot sustain the negation of identity and seeks— in madness— to retrieve some measure of dignity, etc. . . Macbeth clearly apprehends the death of his enemies, the death of his wife, the fact that he is becoming less and less capable of ruling. He takes all this devastating information as fuel for another tragic act. He fights to the death is an embracing of his own negation.
Maybe some of you have seen the movie: Leaving Los Vegas (1995) Directed by Mike Figgis. This has similar themes of conscious self-destruction and is about an alcoholic ex-screenwriter who slowly kills himself (intentionally) in the decadent setting of contemporary Las Vegas.
The movement of negation can be seen in two realms of Macbeth. First, negation is visible in the content of the play or its representational realm. Next, negation is visible in the language itself, Macbeth includes grammar and rhetoric that incorporates negation through paradox and ambiguity. One example is the witches dialogue, which at certain times is just ominous rhyme scheme. Another is the incorporation of paradox into many of the plays excellent lines, such as: "fair is foul, foul is fair".
II. MEDIEVAL WORLD OF MACBETH: The representational world or setting presented in Macbeth contains the following: Two contrasting forms of nature one is ordered (like culture and consciousness) the other chaotic (like the drives and the unconscious). Order/chaos- Logos/mythos Natural/unnatural The play’s representation is established in terms of stability and instability.
The medieval view of the cosmos was that the natural realm was stable, purposeful, and whole. Anything that deviates from this idyllic view of nature is unnatural, hence violent earthquakes, famine, death, suffering, evil, etc. . . were considered unnatural. See pages 46-7 of the play where is says: "nature seems dead" "Death and Nature do contend." Murder is also a deviation from the natural order. The view was that everything in the universe was connected to God and dictated by a monotheistic power sustaining it. What is natural “fits” within this harmonic realm. The word "nature" occurs many times in the play yet rarely as the source of evil and chaos. It is a used as a norm or standard for defining and controlling people’s behavior, i.e. if something is “unnatural” it is evil. Examples where nature is associated with order and life?
Hence, Lady Macbeth's request to "unsex" herself is called "unnatural" not because of gender roles, but because of the conception of nature at that time. This suggests she is somehow deviating from the "natural" order, which, when used in the medieval conception, becomes a term for morality, that is "the proper way".
III. Forbidden sight - P. 97 Lady Macbeth is also thought to have an unnatural vision- her eyes are open but her senses are shut. What is forbidden to look on changes depending upon cultural beliefs and values. For example in some cultures and periods of history, it is not polite to look at a woman too long. The subject of "taboo sight" is indicative of cultural beliefs and values. Freud describes what’s forbidden from sight as the taboo, or castration. It is what culturally weakens the subject. In Shakespearean culture, the woman without a baby is like the dead, unnatural, or unreal. Lady Macbeth realizes her own position when she says the dead are "the sleeping and the dead are but pictures". Her barrenness makes her culturally powerless in terms of gender. This is an interesting twist on the ancient Greek view which claimed that what is not real (an artwork, or the feminine) is twice removed from reality. Here the unreal is situated right under society’s nose, in the realm of the rotten, barren woman, sleeping subject, or dead entity. In both the literary and film version, take note of the visual imagery and its lessons about the way culture controls “sight.” It considers and questions culturally acceptable forms of viewing. top
Another character value connected to the way culture thinks of nature has to do with childbirth, parenting, and reproductive capacities. These are conceptions of gender, femininity, and sexuality that are determined by a culture and change over time. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were an actual couple that lived in Scotland. In Holinshed's Chronicles Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are noted as being childless after 10 years of marriage. Assuming Lady Macbeth had some difficulties conceiving she could be considered "unnatural". As we have discussed barrenness usually took the form of a negative representation, and Lady Macbeth's femininity is disparaged. In fact Macbeth says to her "bring forth men children only" p. 43.
Issues of birth, parenthood, and its Oedipal development structure the play. In the First prophecy that Banquo's children will be heirs to the throne this is a slap in the face to Macbeth. There are many Father/son and one Mother/son relationships that defy the Oedipal relation, or “natural” cultural structures. In a “natural” and Oedipal realm, actual father do not murder their sons but are succeeded by them. This is reversed in Macbeth because he mixes the natural and unnatural realms. The relationship of father and sons in the play is a critical issue and there are many: Duncan /Banquo, Banquo/Fleance, Macduff and Lady Macduff's own son, Siward and his son.
Consequently one of the central political issues is succession, or the “natural” passing on of identity through the family name. The passing on of identity entails a passage that includes birth and death; the father’s identity is carried on after death when a son is “born.” Parents and children who are naturally related eventually agree to this transference of power. Duncan and Malcolm seem to be willing to work together to pass on the throne. Banquo and Fleance are situated so that the heir takes over after his father's death, as prophesied. Yet, Macduff, like Macbeth is considered an unnatural and this father - why? As a child, the witches say, he was ripped in an "untimely fashion from his mother's womb". Ironically, after his son and wife are murdered he claims that Macbeth could only do something like this since p. 95 "he has no children" The desertion of his family is an "unnatural act on Macduff's part, but probably Macbeth's worst crime in the play is the killing of his wife and child for no apparent reason. Macbeth’s paternity is put into question since he has no prodigy. Ironically, Macbeth's name in Gaelic means "child of life". Certainly, this is a Shakespearean pun on identity. Macbeth murders reveal a subconscious wish to keep the throne for a child he has not even birthed (a product of his imagination). He aims to make his barren crown fruitful. The father, Oedipus, and Macbeth are also symbolic of Scotland. The nation, like any other, is remembered in terms of Oedipal (triangulated mother, father, and child) representation to pass on its identity as well.
V. SIMILARITIES TO GREEK TRAGEDY as defined in Aristotle’s Poetics : ( top) Mythological elements: The play resembles Greek tragedy because it is based on actual events in history as recorded in Holinshed's Chronicles. It is also similar since it includes catharsis, (Look up this term in Aristotle’s Poetics) which means we both identify with and maintain a distance from the main characters. This play is similar to Greek tragedy in that it is also a tragedy which plays out the downfall of an individual’s character as connected to an larger cultural and divine realms. The connection to birth and genealogy is also a feature in ancient tragedy. The connection to the general state of Scotland is at issue, as was Oedipus' connection to Thebes, As in myth, the tragic hero/oine are royalty, representative of the most well-educated and talented “identity.” As in ancient myths, there are accounts incorporating miraculous events. In the medieval text, however, miracles are tied to humanity and nature, rather than a divine spiritual realm.
The way the spiritual and miraculous realm in Macbeth is presented works differently, as tied to the human realm, or more arbitrary than in Greek tragedy. The miraculous/divine realm is the realm of sleep, dreams, death, fantasy and the unconscious. These are the "miraculous" realms Macbeth faces and desires to conquer. These realms still exist today just as they did in Shakespeare’s time as mythological thought for questioning. Modern day mythological constructions of dreams, death, and fantasy are an enormous industry and many literary critics would claim their origins with Macbeth.
However, this realm that is related to the mythological is an ancient conception, and as old as human subjectivity. It is what defies explanation. The witches and the Olympian gods are early representatives. In Renaissance thought unconscious knowledge and un/natural events becomes centered on the human–their "genius"– or tragedy. This is different from the ancient Greek tragedy where un/natural events were centered on society. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, conscious and unconscious thought has an enormous ability to influence the environment.
There are many aspects of the art work, as described by Aristotle in his Poetics, which are present in the play. All of the following are included:
A. Tragic elements. There is both a tragic hero and heroine in the play. Some critics suggest that Macbeth and Lady are perhaps a split tragic subject. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are not ignorant of their deeds like Oedipus. The characters, like Sophocles’ Antigone and Creon, both know what they are doing.
B. Diction- The play uses unrhymed iambic pentameter, also called blank verse. Shakespeare refines the rhyme scheme establishing a precedent for genre, poetry, and verse in literature. His works changes the way formal structure in literature is conceived.
C. Thought- Shakespeare does introduce questions of philosophical, political, or theoretical import, however these are always presented in poetic verse. (many scholarly works on "to be or not to be" as an ontological question).
D. Spectacle- This is a very predominant part of the play, and there is move away from hiding. The dark, deathly (psychological and physical) aspects of tragedy appear out in the open and become increasingly visible to the point of gruesome. Intense fighting and murder appears, and it is considered Shakespeare's bloodiest play. The plot displays a struggle in the world between the natural order and civilized or cultural order. This struggle takes place on two levels:
1. in the ideological formulation of natural/unnatural realms) and
2. inside in the psychology realms of guilt, desire, and betrayal.
E. Plot -The plot relates to the duality of existence (good and bad, natural and unnatural, dark and light), which is an innate part of existence. This duality incites the characters to take action and provokes their involvement in human reason or action. The witches, dreams, ghosts, saints, spirits and apparitions exist as a realm in between the human and divine, dark and light. This is an unconscious dream realm that compels the characters forward. Another example of a bridge presentation is Banquo's ghost that appears to Macbeth. {Sometimes special animals bridge the cultural and natural realms, such as horses (59) Remember the Freudian use of the horse as metaphor for the ego.} The play presents the “duality” of existence, which is either unified or fragmented through direct action, meditation, and character.
Prophecy Like the Oracle prophecy in Oedipus, this play begins with the witches prophesy. What is the status of this prophecy? Does it initiate CAUSE the action or Does Macbeth order his fate, or is it a result of the witches’ prophecy? Like Oedipus Macbeth becomes the slave of this prophecy and the witches word. When he asks the witches: p. 79, "What is't you do?" He is essentially asking a question about the speech they just made over the cauldron, their mixing of various body parts, and obscure natural objects. . . Their response is: "A DEED WITHOUT A NAME"!!!!! What do the witches do? The “do” the non-representational, what’s behind or without a name. They concoct a veritable "linguistic forest" a mixture of meanings without any signification. In the play the witches speak in ambiguous, nonsensical language. They take rational or logical speech to its limit, moving from mythos to logos. Their speech is a prophecy determines the whole movement of the play. It is predicts and seals the narrative action, i.e. Macbeth’s deeds. This is representative of the power of unconscious and non-representational speech. Like the witches prophecy, dreams and non-representational language have the most power in determining our life’s narrative. Behind our life narrative is what one critic calls "A LANGUAGE FOREST" - Fawkner, H.W. Deconstructing Macbeth Macbeth tries to find this language forest, or the forces behind his conscious knowledge. In this search, he in essence becomes the witches’ apostle and a follower of the unconsciuos. His character moves in a tragic projection to confront the unknown, that is to get at the foundation of ordinary speech, culture, and consciousness.
Tragedy is always a confrontation with the unknown. Since the unknown, as such by definition can't be "known" or thought, its seeker always hits a limit. E.g. Oedipus This move to enact the unknown means Macbeth embraces an unconscious language, one of chaos. Without going back to the realm of consciousness and culture he engages in the unknown to the point of a free fall into negativity. The prophecy, he thinks, promises absolute truth. Macbeth wants to grasp that truth "become a philosopher of absolute/not finite truth" and vows to continue his negative action until he has attained that absolute truth. So his actions lead him to the limit of thinkability. He builds a grammar of absence, tragic speech, equivocation, invocation, exclamation, etc. . . In Macbeth, Shakespeare employs a type of speech that is associated with the tragic, and represents experience itself. It would capture pure action and is a speech bordering on silence or senselessness. Hence, Macbeth does convey something universal about LANGUAGE. The characters permit us to think through the conflicting realms of identity and vicariously confront the unknown (as presented through Macbeth and the witches). The poetic and negative aspects of the play are early representations of what Freud would later call the unconscious and capture the unknown in language. top