Exploring Shakespearean Tragedy:
A New Critical Theory
By Paul H. and Robin Jaeckle Grawe
© 2024
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This is one of four Exploring Shakespearean Tragedy synopses, each of which collects from the original publication the full argument leading to establishment of the thought-feeling dynamis of one of the four Great Tragedies—in this case Macbeth-–into a single narrative.
Macbeth
from Ch.3, Other Forms of Action
In our work in comedy, we have found that typically dramatic works employ combinations of two variants (like the Counter variants discussed) as an artistic strategy.
Thus, instead of merely considering the analytic feeling for each of our four types of other material, we can consider the feeling two dominant variants working together create as a synthetic, single affect. In Macbeth, for example, we might argue for an interpretation of the play which is long on pathos for Victims—for example, Lady MacDuff and her children—and also long on tension produced by the presentation of formidable Opposition. The combination of the two would be both tense and pathetic and might be called Pathetic Tension. Such synthetic affects deserve their own study and even their own rubrics, single words that stand for the synthetic effect of joining two analytics. For establishing a dynamic or power variant at the end of this study, however, it will be sufficient to notice that Pathos and Tension are the two emphasized analytics in Other Form for Macbeth.
Obviously, we have only done a cursory job of establishing these Other or Counter Forms for Macbeth. It might be worth a full essay to consider these decisions at length, perhaps finding some difficulty in assigning definite roles to English figures in the play, Edward the Confessor, Siward, and Siward’s son. While such work is likely to pay rewards in a fine understanding of the play, we hope most readers will accept Tension and Pathos (representing Opposition and Victims) to be the main Counter pattern for Macbeth.
For our purposes, we don’t particularly need to consider a combination of Counters. Social Alternate Universe is clearly the most distinctively emphasized Counter characteristic of Hamlet, Victim most in Lear, Self as Victim most consistently central in Othello, and Opponents most classically obvious in Macbeth from the Weird Sisters, to MacDuff, Malcolm and Donalbane, Edward the Confessor, and the Siwards.
For our argument ultimately leading to dynamis, we can here ignore the synthetic combination of Counter emphases, but for the record, in addition to Macbeth moving toward Pathetic Tension, we have Othello encouraging Pathos and Inner Tension, King Lear encouraging Pathos, Inner Tension, and Distance, and Hamlet encouraging Distance and Pathos, though the Pathos is largely limited to specific moments like the deaths of Polonius and Ophelia.
from Ch. 4, Special Language
What then are emphasized A2E2 (Special Language) elements in Macbeth?
A standard procedure from our comedic studies has been to ask instead if there is an A2E2 element which is so strong that we are loath to consider any argument that does not make it a lead element.
Macbeth is a play about a national state in crisis. It is filled with political characters, who like the characters of Julius Caesar, have all the problems of staying alive as well as the problems of their appropriate responsibilities within the state. Such people, as we saw amply demonstrated in Julius Caesar, have profound needs, needs to see deeply into things and to make good decisions based on that deep perception of truth. They need Apt ideas; they need to hit the nail on the head about things. And more, they should hope to have Assessing thoughts, thoughts that penetrate beneath the surface of things that Aptness covers, finding the deeper and hidden truths that need to be revealed. To that extent, Macbeth’s rhetoric should be a close analog to the rhetoric of Julius Caesar, rhetoric in which Aptness and Assessment prevail, a synthetic combination which in ISST (In Search of Shakespearean Tragedy) we called Forceful.
But if we treated Macbeth that way, we would be missing the obvious: Macbeth obviously exists on two planes of reality, the secular plane in which we would expect Aptness and Assessment to be emphasized and a supernatural plane of the Weird Sisters. Once we shift our focus to that supernatural plane, we can quickly recognize that lines from the witches are the remembered lines of the play. And in order to establish the abiding rhetorical feel of the play, we are looking at the rhetorical highlights, not the run-of-the-mill rhetoric of the play.
In fact, it is one of the Weird Sisters’ speeches that has gotten the world’s attention for 400 years, as well it should if we have ever wondered how to brew a potion to alter the history of nations. One starts, of course, with a brinded [brindled] cat and a whining hedge-pig. Thereafter:
“First Witch: Round about the cauldron go;
In the poisoned entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelt’red venom, sleeping got,
Boil thou first i’ the’ charmed pot.” (4, 1, 1 ff.)
We are into famous words, words that we all know are exactly what sorcery calls for and indeed demands, even though long-sleeping venomous toads can be hard to come by. This is aptness to the nth degree—admittedly imaginative aptness-- all the more for ending
“All: Double, double, toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.” (4, 1, 10-11)
No one since has been able to conjure without this reminder to the fire and cauldron.
It’s all amazingly Apt, this poison brewing, and we all know it is apt. And in that sense, this is rhetoric beyond compare, convincing the world of an aptness that is purely imaginary—unless of course someone does deal in sweltered venom of long-sleeping toad under rock.
At the same time, it is all amazingly Elegant, a beautifully in-depth perception of evil intent going to lengths for supernatural effect—all accomplished in the purely imaginative.
Aptness and Elegance are oozing from the caldron speeches. Yet from household phrases alone coming down through the ages and taken directly from the play, we also know what the other high points are by common estimation. (We note that as high points, they somehow manage without resort to high-flown elevated language).
“Things without all remedy
Should be without regard. What’s done is done.” (3, 2, 13-14) –Aptness
“If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well
It were done quickly.” (1, 7, 1-2)—Aptness
“Is this a dagger I see before me?” (2, 1, 33)—Aptness
“Out, out damn’d spot.” (5, 1, 26)—Aptness
“Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.” (4.1.79-81)—Elegance
“Macbeth shall never vanquished be until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinaine hill
Shall come against him.” (4.1.92-4)—Elegance
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.” (5, 3, 19-21)—Eloquence
Shakespeare has no trouble becoming Eloquent, and he does so at the crisis point of the play with Macbeth’s “Tomorrow” speech. But by and large, the play thrives on Aptness and moves to Elegance. And we’ve already seen that the Elegance of the Weird Sisters in their deviltry, easily becomes the most memorable rhetoric not just of this play but of all evil recipes in literature, making Aptness and Elegance quite easily argued to be emphasized rhetorical features of Macbeth.
What we can also say immediately from A2E2 theory developed in ISST is that if Macbeth’s lead rhetorical elements are Aptness and Elegance, then its synthetic rhetorical texture is Prophetic (see circle above). And just as immediately, we can say that Prophetic texture is not the texture already established for Julius Caesar in ISST, namely a Forceful texture. Texture is a matter primarily of feel, and short as our conclusion here is, it articulates a difference in feel between two of Shakespeare’s most produced tragedies, even though both contain a great deal of military fighting and assassination.
So what is the feel of the Prophetic? Prophetic means “forth-telling.” Biblical prophets are forth=tellers of God’s truth and judgments. A prophet does not speak in his or her own right; advocates speak in their own right. Prophets traditionally come in two basic forms: true prophets who are true to some original which they have been given to tell forth and false prophets who pretend to tell forth something given to them when in fact they are forging something of their own or something from a different source. Also, traditionally, prophets are not trivial. The truths they forth-tell are of great urgency.
Street parlance normally somewhat transforms these observations to focus on not forth-telling but on foretelling. Foretelling is possible within prophesy, but it is a specialized sub-area of prophesy in general. Generally speaking, most cultures have fairly strong taboos with respect to foretold futures: knowing the future is generally not given to humanity, and when it is given, it is subject both to being its own temptation and to being false as well as tempting.
It is, of course, true that these observations on the idea of the prophetic are in profound relationship to many of the themes of Macbeth. But it must be kept in mind that we are not dealing with the thematic here. Instead, we are discussing texture and feel. Macbeth has not only thematic material that is centrally connected to prophesy but also the feel of the prophetic generated by its special language. At a minimum, our observations about prophesy suggest that there is a gravitas associated with the prophetic and a sense of relevance, of urgency. There is a feel of higher authority and a feel that manipulation of the commonsense world is not sufficient to navigate human existence. A feel of the prophetic is also a sense that people are not finally in control; sometimes this is discussed as a sense of destiny.
There is no doubt more to say about the Prophetic. But with these basics in mind and a normal sense of what Forceful means when associated with rhetorical performance, there is much to learn simply from remembering Julius Caesar with its Forceful texture, remembering Macbeth with its Prophetic texture, and recognizing that their textures, their feels moment to moment, are not nearly as similar as we’d like to think.
from Ch. 5, Tragedic Spirit
At first glance, Fire seems to be a good choice for the Spirit of Macbeth, because as we all know, anyone, honest or dishonest, has to have a fire in the belly to go anywhere in politics. This kind of aphoristic thinking is, however, superficial, and Shakespeare is not a superficial playwright.
It is, of course, correct to say that illicit ambition is stirred up, like a smoldering fire, by the witches. Until their intervention, Macbeth has evidently pursued a life of simple but heroic allegiance to his liege lord, the king. His valor and prowess have gotten him where he is, which is now more than substantial with the addition of a second earldom (thaneship). Yet there is no direct evidence from the script that some previous smolder is being stirred by the witches.
Admittedly, like a smoldering fire, Macbeth seems to flare up enough to write his wife about new possibilities; but then he reverts to allegiance, and Lady Macbeth must seek to restoke ambition. And even with that restoking, Macbeth isn’t brightly burning, avowing that he can and will do all that is seemly to man. That seems to direct him entirely away from the mayhem that his wife intends, and her contemptuous response is the best evidence that Macbeth has not been a smoldering fire to begin with.
All of which leads to the murder of Duncan himself. The murder has none of the heat associated with fire. Instead, there is a repugnance felt by both Macbeths even as the deed is done. And after it is done, which is little better than a fifth way into the play, the fire has already burned out in any ambitious sense. That doesn’t, of course, mean that murder ends with Duncan. It has really only begun, and additional deaths can be seen as a spreading fire. But the fire is hardly a contagious conflagration. It moves by fits and starts, killing the grooms of the chamber first to cover the crime, killing Banquo next, and none too artfully at that, to eliminate a potential rival while he is still a faithful friend, killing Lady MacDuff and her children with little apparent reason at all.
Fire can be argued, but if argued, it must be admitted to be a strange sputtering and inconsistent fire.
That said, we move to the idea that the Spirit of Macbeth is Poison, and here everything immediately comes together. It comes together in the Weird Sisters first, who like Hamlet’s father’s murderers, prefer to introduce poison in the ear. Later in the play, we will see them again, and this time we will see them in the most famous poison brewing in literary history.
The poison of fake prophesy enters into Macbeth without effective opposition. It will be opposed by Macbeth’s conscience and by the conventions of his society, but these defenses have already been easily penetrated. One barrier after another will fall to the invading poison until it kills, which it does very early. And what it kills is the soul into eternal damnation. That death, for both Macbeths, is accomplished before the killing of the grooms. The death of Duncan has murdered sleep and murdered the restoration of the soul. The witches’ poison has penetrated quickly to the vital center. All the rest is a grim, inevitable journey into night, a tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow as a tale told by an idiot and signifying nothing because there is no life left for it to signify in. In earlier chapters, we have established that Macbeth emphasizes Opponents in the form of action, emphasizes Assessment in rhetorical expression, and emphasizes Poison in tragedic Spirit.
From Ch.7, Tragedic Dynamis
Also, we established that the dynamis for all Shakespeare’s tragedies is a cautionary admiration of man’s natural glory even in confrontation with great tragic processes, in Shakespeare’s case, tragic processes emblemized as poison, fire, rot, and malignant growth.
We are then in a position finally to establish the thought-feel variation within that general dynamis for particular plays, starting now with Macbeth.
Toward Thought within Dynamis: The world of Macbeth is a world of purposeful Ambiguity, ultimately the Ambiguities of the Weird Sisters. They say things; Macbeth takes them to mean what they say. But the words turn out to mean something entirely else as well. And in that other meaning, the words are deadly.
Opponents are an appropriate Form vehicle for the thought of Ambiguity. Opponents and a champion often have different datasets that they are working on. But the great fact is that Opponents and champion need not disagree on any of the facts. They just “see it differently.” In other words, the facts themselves are ambiguous. Opponents and Macbeth are presumably entirely in accord that forests stay in place. And, they’d have to agree that Birnham wood is never going to come to Dunsinane. But as Opponents, they both find, though find in different senses, that woods and forests can move and do move to Dunsinane.
Assessment is an appropriate rhetorical vehicle for the thought of Ambiguity. When things are Ambiguous, they often seem unambiguous in a given meaning. It is only deeper and careful thought that reveals the Ambiguity, the twoness rather than oneness in the assertion. Macbeth is an Assessing person (“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow . . .. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing” 5,5,19-28) as is his wife ([her husband’s nature] “is too full o’ the milk of human kindness . . ..” 1,5,18). Moreover, Duncan and Banquo have their share of stated assessments on which their lives depend. Unfortunately, in the crucial areas, all four characters assess ambiguities poorly and all four pay a mortal price for the error.
Poison as an agent of death is the lover of Ambiguity. Poison is insidious. Sane, healthy people do not choose to take poison. As intending to remain sane and healthy, they are instinctively set to flee from poison as soon as it is detected. Consequently, poison works best when it doesn’t look like itself, when it presents itself as just the opposite, something of intense benefit.
So, the technical emphases in construction of Macbeth on Opponents, Assessment, and Poison all act easily as pointers toward Ambiguity as one of the great thought variants within Shakespeare’s tragedic dynamis. If we’ve established an Ambiguity-centeredness in Macbeth’s dynamis, we need to move on to the feeling-centeredness of that dynamis.
Adding Feeling to Thought: Moving on, then, to the feel technically created in Macbeth, the feeling given by an emphasis on Opponents is most naturally a feeling of tension. If there are Opponents, who is winning, who is losing, what resources are available to reverse the seemingly likely outcome? Is Lady Macbeth really going to kill Duncan with her own bare hands? Are Lady MacDuff and children somehow going to have enough warning to escape and join Macduff in exile? These are the tense questions of Opponent-driven Form.
Assessment rhetorically goes with depth of thought, while Aptness stays at the surface levels of measuring and fitting. When careful distinctions have to be made between two possible diametrically opposed alternatives, deep penetrating Assessment is of superlative value in confronting such Ambiguities. Poison goes with a sense of penetration. Poisons don’t work if only superficial. They have to drive inward until they hit their vital target.
So, our feel is a combination of tension, depth, and penetration. It is hard to put a name on feelings, but the combination suggests we learn the feeling of the piercing if we want to feel in Macbeth what its technical script elements emphasize. And that allows us to conclude out of many possibilities that the thought-feeling of Macbeth is of Piercing Ambiguity.
Try it on your own personal dynamic response to the play as a whole. Try it on particularly for the Macbeths who had everything in the world—rank, power, fame, moral worth—until Macbeth was pierced by the witches’ words on the heath. The rest was a long day’s journey into eternal night.
We have already posited a short definition of the Shakespearean tragedic dynamis in general:
A cautionary admiration of man’s natural glory, encompassed by tragic processes of nature: poison, fire, rot, and cancerous growth.
Now we can customize that dynamic for any one of the Great Tragedies in particular.
And for Macbeth:
A cautionary admiration of man’s natural glory, encompassed by the tragic processes of nature, particularly the tensely penetrating processes of Poison. with an emphasis on Piercing Ambiguity.