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

eport they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burned in
desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they
vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the King,
who all-hailed me “Thane of Cawdor”; by which title, before, these weird sisters
saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with “Hail, King that shalt
be!” This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that
thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is
promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell.
(I.v.1-16)
A messenger soon arrives to announce the coming of “the King” that very night (I.v.32). For one ecstatic
moment she thinks the greatness is already accomplished—or the messenger is mad to report news to
this effect. We have to wonder what kind of a boy actor Shakespeare had in his company in 1606,
capable of making an audience believe what comes next. She calls on the spirits “That tend on mortal
thoughts”: “Come….unsex me here/And fill me…top-full/Of direst cruelty!” She calls on the “murd’ring
ministers” of nature’s “sightless substances” that tend on mischievous action: “Come to my woman’s
breasts,/And take my milk for gall”; and she calls on the protection of darkness: “Come, thick night,/And
pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell” (I.v.41-55). Three times she summons the sources of thought,
action, and perception with the word “come” to assist her to fulfill the felt promise of desire. Not even
the knife must witness her giving violent birth to what she has conceived by the potent “hails” of the
letter and now wishes to nurture. The physical act of lovemaking, no longer necessary for her to
function as a fertile woman, will be postponed by her in favor of the murder, as we shall now see.
Macbeth, the transporter of his Lady in body and soul to a state of ecstasy, enters her presence
precisely on the words that heaven, were it to witness her triple labors of birth under the “blanket of
dark,” would cry out: “Hold, hold!” 5
Enter Macbeth
Lady Macbeth.
Great Glamis! Worthy Cawdor!
5 Macbeth’s last words similarly reject from future utterance the cry of “Hold, enough!” to the hand that kills
(V.viii.34).
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