“To Meet with Macbeth,” given by tutor Louis ... - St. John's College

A prosperous gentleman; and to be king
Stands not within the prospect of belief,
No more than to be Cawdor.
(I.iii.70-75)
But we know from what Duncan says in the previous battlefield scene that Cawdor will be executed as a
traitor:
Duncan.
No more that Thane of Cawdor shall deceive
Our bosom interest. Go, pronounce his present death,
And with his former title greet Macbeth.
(I.ii.63-65)
The repetitions of “more” and “no more” in these two speeches have ominous implications. Let us hear
these speeches again, reduced to their essences, in the proper order, first Duncan, then Macbeth (follow
the bold words): “No more Cawdor--death--Macbeth; me more, Cawdor? Cawdor--king--no more . . .
Cawdor.” In life, Cawdor is the obstacle to Macbeth’s belief that ultimate desires that lie in the
hereafter can be consummated in the present time. In death, that obstacle is “no more.” The rhymes
point the way to the achievement of desire. Recall St. James’s admonition to sinful man, altered
apropos of the action: “You want more and you do not have it, so let there be committed upon the
obstacle to your having the deed of no more.” In fact the greater difficulty for Macbeth to overcome (as
we shall see) is not the aversion to murdering the first man, but the lack of moderation of bloodlust
once he has begun to kill men.
Let me pause to say that it would not be worth a man’s time merely to trace the web of
ominously sounding words, as if Shakespeare were a spider-poet, like Poe, producing pretty patterns of
verbal filament to catch our attention and hold our admiration. It is worth our time, however, to hear
the insistent rhymes and patterns of Macbeth because, as in any ritual form of poetry, one senses
spiritual presences in the aural qualities of the words. Or to put this differently: the tightly interwoven
sounds of this play are themselves articulations of unspeakable things. When the Sisters vanish into the
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