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

“as King” in III.i. But the nothingness of a crown without security, the fruitlessness of a crown without
lineage, prompts him to remove the crown from his head as he greets two men who enter his presence
as he calls on fate to come “into the list/And champion me to th’ utterance!” (III.i.72). These men are to
become his double instruments--of fate and against fate—for they are to impale of the heads of Banquo
and Fleance with the crown of murder:
Macbeth.
Who’s there?
. . . .
Was it not yesterday we spoke together?
Murderers.
It was, so please your Highness.
Macbeth.
Well then,
--here he takes off the crown to persuade them man-to-man, not command them Highness to subject--
now
--bare-headed and ready to “make love” to their manly “assistance,” he proceeds–
Have you considered of my speeches?
(III.i.71-76, 124)
The action thus interpreted is clear: Macbeth uncrowns himself and puts on murder as his source of
security and power over the question of “issue.” He uses the murderers as fate uses him, telling them
the precise time and place for an act predetermined by him, but intended by him to defeat the
predetermination of fate. If he succeeds, Macbeth would become stronger than fate. The ceremony of
kingship (which Henry V complains is not worth a good night’s sleep) is given up by Macbeth (along with
sleep) in favor of exercising the “bloody and invisible hand” of nature at night (III.ii.48). This exercise will
relieve his “filed mind” by removing the “rubs” and “botches” “who keep *Banquo+ company,” namely
Fleance and his prophetically crowned progeny (III.i.134, 135). He frees the “scorpions” that engender
in his mind by willing the “firstlings of *his+ heart” to be “the firstlings of *his+ hand” (III.ii.36; IV.i. 147,
148). Thus he “crowns” the “strange things” in his head with acts unmediated by scanning of them
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