Tag Archives: macbeth

8th Grade Literarture: A Tale Told by an Idiot

by Dave Mathwin

In the Socratic dialogue “Cratylus” Socrates and his friend Hermogenes attempt to discover if language has any real meaning. We know that words can take on or lose meaning depending on context and time. But can the word “door” actually mean something absolute. Can language convey more than our momentary cultural attribution of particular sounds.

Socrates wants to find the origin of names and words, and believes that words, if they are to have any meaning at all, must have a connection to ultimate reality. He comments,

So just as a shuttle is a tool for dividing warp and woof, a name is a tool for giving instruction, that is to say, for dividing being.

“Giving Instruction” can be interpreted as giving us wisdom. Words must be a clue to reality, and how we use words must convey something about how we perceive meaning in the world. Language then, cannot belong onlyto an individual, but neither is it a purely democratic medium. We don’t get to vote on the meaning of words. Rather, language is a cultural possession, a trust, and a storehouse of meaning.

So Cratylus is right in saying that things have natural names, and that not everyone is a craftsman of names, but only someone who looks the natural name of a thing and is able to put its form into letters and symbols.

But Socrates also understands that language has a fluid aspect to it, and no one time, place, or word, can fully grasp ultimate wisdom and pure being.

Perhaps you didn’t that [the names] are given on the assumption that the they name are moving, flowing, and coming into being. . . . Wisdom (phronesis) is the understanding of motion (phoras noesis) and flow. Or it might be interpreted as taking delight in motion. . . . Wisdom signifies the grasping of this motion.

In other words,language and meaning can bend, but not break. Understanding this difference is one of the keys to any healthy life and culture.

I open this post with this blurb about language because as Macbeth transpires, the title character and Lady Macbeth lost their hold on the nature of reality. Both of them can no longer trust their perception. Is a dagger really in front of Macbeth or not? Has the ghost of Banquo really appeared to him or not? Does Lady Macbeth actually have blood on her hands or not? Both of them lose their ability to perceive the world around them, and this only adds to the confusion of their internal moral compass. For them, the meaning of words, the meaning of sight, and the meaning of life itself, all disappear.

One of Macbeth’s most famous soliloquies in the play reads,

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Some see this as evidence of Shakespeare’s pessimism or even nihilism, but we must remember that this speech is given by the villain of the play at the very end of his moral decline. At this point in the story, Macbeth has completely abandoned the moral and social ties that bind him to his fellow man and to creation. As a result, he can make no sense of his experience of the world. Other characters around him affirm the possibility of creating a sensible state once again, but not Macbeth. He does not wish to die but confirms that he has no particular reason to live. He is trapped in a world without meaning of his own making.

One common theme in Shakespeare’s work is the confusion and decay that happens when the normal structure of society gets upended. Shakespeare belonged to a world where the basic order of society was regarded as divinely given, or at least partly divinely ordained. Modern democracies do not share this belief, seeing the social hiearchy as continually fluid, Some believe that all hiearchy should be continually dismantled and the social oder continually refreshed. But even if we do not share the convictions of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, we can observe the effects of a social order that lacks clear delineation.

Our lives are governed mostly by routine. Some find this stifling. I believe (along with Edmund Burke and others) that routine actually liberates. When we need to think and rethink all of our actions and decisions, it brings paralysis, not freedom. Shared routines allow us to easily perceive meaning in the actions of others. Routines also free us up to think and ponder, for example, the meaning of a Shakespeare play. We would not have this freedom if we had to overly scrutinize the meaning of our wardrobe, to give just one example. We would be stuck wondering if a polo shirt or t-shirt would be more appropriate to do the day’s tasks.

Without routine and established order, we would exist in a world where we could not perceive meaning. All standard social cues would be abandoned. Communication with those outside your social and ideological circle would be impossible. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both confuse the meaning of words during their descent into madness and death, especially around the meaning of the words “man” and “woman.”

The “good news” in this situation is that nature itself cannot abide this situation for very long. Meaningful order and hiearchy must reassert itself. This is what Macbeth briefly experiences before his death, when “Birnham Wood” comes to fight with him.

Macbeth’s simple plot hides an important message for us, not just about morality, but about the structure of society as a whole, and what role language plays in the construction of society.

Dave

8th Grade Literature: Hide from Yourself

by Dave Mathwin

This week we continued with Act II of Macbeth and saw the development of the themes introduced in Act I.

In our last post we saw how the witches introduced this theme of confusion into the play, both in where they resided, and how they spoke. Now we see their evil spread to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.

Different versions of Mabeth productions show the witches in different ways. My favorite is the recent Coen brothers film of Macbeth. They only have one witch, and in the play there were three. But the way this witch speaks to herself is like speaking to others. Are the other witches there that we cannot see, or is she driven to schizophrenia by her evil?* I am guessing the latter. The way she unnaturally unfolds her body mirrors this division within her soul (the flapping of her arms also introduces the idea of the witch as a crow or raven, an important element in the play we will touch on next week).

Towards the end of Act I, Lady Macbeth challenges Macbeth to murder Duncan. To do this she calls his manhood into question, a curious tactic considering that we know Macbeth to be the major hero in the battle. One might guess that this tactic would not work, but Macbeth has already let the witches’ prophesies into his heart and mind. He is already confused, and his confusion will grow over time.

To get Macbeth to betray Duncan, Lady Macbeth also calls the nature of manhood into question. The traditional view is that one key factor that separates man from beast is the fact that man can think, reason, and deny himself. A hungry dog would not pass up a meal, but it is possible, for example, for a man to fast for a higher purpose. Lady Macbeth flips this on its head, telling Macbeth that he is wrong for letting “I dare not,” wait upon, “I would.” For Lady Macbeth, what makes a man is that he never denies himself what he wants. When Macbeth expresses second thoughts, Lady Macbeth calls him a “beast,” yet it is a man that can second guess himself, and not a beast.

Can one exist in such an upside down world?

Even before Macbeth actually kills Duncan, he begins to have a hard time with reality. We see this start with his vision of bloody dagger. He is not sure if it is a “dagger of the mind” or real.

After he murders Duncan, Macbeth utters the famous line that he has “murdered sleep.” For the rest of the play, sleep will elude Macbeth, and we can see this is as a physical manifestation of his evil deed. Sleep is restorative, taking our tattered body and mind and making it whole again. Macbeth has torn the kingdom asunder so it is right that he is denied wholeness. In a broader sense, Macbeth’s murder has severed him from nature, as he murdered his “natural lord.” The idea of a “natural lord,” may seem odd to us, but it was a common idea in medieval Europe. For those in Shakespeare’s time, one is born into a particular condition, and one generally stayed in that condition. This was no hardship but a comfort (at least in theory for most). One knew one’s place in the cosmos. King’s had their position not because they were great but “by the grace of God.” The order of things just simply “was.” The eldest son ruled, not because he was the best son, but because that was the nature of things. No one earned their place. Your place was a gift.

Honoring King Duncan and obeying him was the right thing to do, of course. But it was also the “natural” thing to do, just as it is natural for the sun to rise in the morning and set at night. One should strive to conform oneself to the order of nature.

Macbeth’s murder of Duncan (a guest in his own home) unravels the kingdom and also the fabric of creation itself. He has robbed himself of his own place in the world, and now neither God, his fellow man, or even creation itself will give him comfort. He has nothing left, and now he cannot even comfort or reason with himself. Macbeth states that, “To know my deed ’twere best not know myself.”

Macbeth’s schizophrenia aptly matches that of the witches he encountered in Act I. His descent will continue.

Dave

*One reason why I like this artistic choice is that the witch (maybe) talking to herself, seeing things, etc. mirrors what happens to Macbeth. He thinks he sees a dagger and a ghost, and maybe he does, and maybe not. The mirroring of the witches and Macbeth is certainly hinted at in the text of the play, and I think it quite clever to show this visually.