Oh man, I've been itching to get to this reading. This is what I have been looking forward to the most for this class.
So it is with great joy that I dive into the Scottish play for the seventh or eighth time. I've seen at least two film versions of Macbeth, and the witches are by far the creepiest in the Patrick Stewart version. Witches as nurses? Guaranteed instant goosebumps.
Whenever I read Shakespeare, I always find something knew in his plays that I hadn't seen or paid much attention to before. For this reading, it was in Act 1, Scene 3, Line 125-126. Macbeth says in an aside "Glamis and Thane of Cawdor! The greatest is behind". There is so much which can be unpacked in this one little phrase.
The first is the more obvious. He has achieved Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and the greatest, according to the witches, is yet to come. That's pretty easy to see at face value. But this time, the word "behind" stuck out to me. If this first meaning was all that Shakespeare intended, it would have made much more sense to say "ahead". But he says "behind".
My interpretation of this is that Shakespeare is doing some fore-shadowing for us. It's his way of quietly telling us that Macbeth will begin a decline in his character. At this point in the play, he's pretty squeaky clean as far as his character goes. He's heroic, just, and a good soldier who is loyal to King Duncan. But this is as good as he gets. From here, he begins his descent into a pretty rotten person who does some equally rotten deeds. I hadn't thought to see this line that way before, which is one of the reasons why I love reading Shakespeare plays. Every reading is a new adventure.
One question I have always had about this play concerns the witches. Do they really have the power of prophecy? Or was Macbeth just taking the ramblings of three weird old ladies into his own hands? Was it destiny? Or was it all Macbeth? Truth be told, I don't know. I've never been able to come up with a satisfactory answer.
I love the wording in this play. I really do. One of my favorite parts in this act is the First Witch's story about the chesnuts. The phrase "rump-fed runion" (Act 1, Scene 3) is way more satisfying than "fat pig". Shakespeare is full of excellent insults to store for a rainy day.
On a final note, Lady Macbeth is by far my favorite character in the play. She is so deliciously evil. She's also an incredibly strong female character, at least in this part of the play. When she taunts her husband in the final act, my inner self could not help but rub her hands together in glee. She is so vicious. "Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since? And wakes it now to look so green and pale at what it did so freely? From this time such I account thy love" (Act 1, Scene 7). You can feel the venom dripping off the page.
As always, I can't wait to read more. On with the show!
I hadn't even paid that much attention to the line where Macbeth says "the greatest is behind," but now that you point it out I'm in awe at Shakespeare's ability to sneak little clues into his writing! And as for your question about the witches, I've been wondering about their prophecy as well. Did they actually foresee Macbeth being King? OR did they just say that as a way to entice him, to speak to his dark inner desires? And I'm sure that many people have the same thoughts and questions, but maybe there is no actual answer. Surely Shakespeare did this on purpose...
ReplyDeleteI have always seen the three witches as an iteration of the three fates, and I find that in Stewart's film version the connection between both sets of powerfully prophetic women has a lot more impact than in other interpretations of the play. I think that it highlights both nurses' and witches' dominion over life and death and that it makes us fear the witches in the same way an audience in Shakespeare's day might've feared them.
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