âTo Meet with Macbeth,â given by tutor Louis ... - St. John's College

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married to a fiercely ambitious Lady, whom he loves. The time is late in the day, a day that should be his, because he won it in that battle “lost and won.” Yet the day is not his. It is King Duncan’s. The “hurly-burly” that is pronounced “done” by the Sisters is the attempt at political innovation by the rebels and foreign invaders who are defeated by Macbeth’s “personal venture” on the battlefield (I.iii.91). These political activities do not get honored with a name. But from among all humanity that toils and troubles in the hurly-burly, the Sisters name one man, “Macbeth,” whom they will meet and greet with the angel’s salutation of “hail.” But this heralded man is full--not of grace--but of the common human misery of wanting what he does not have. “Give me” is the common cry of the outstretched hand, which denied, becomes the cry, “I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.” Saint James puts this common condition most succinctly in his epistle: “You want something and do not have it, so you commit murder” (4.2). It is not only Hamlet’s vengefulness, Othello’s jealousy, or Lear’s anger that Shakespeare presents as our common tragic potential, but also Macbeth’s “black and deep desires” and bloodlust (I.iv.51). Shakespeare is not much interested in this play in the Machiavellian strategies of acquiring and maintaining dominion over others, but in what if feels like as a man or woman to want, to do, and to get as a criminal. It is hard to know Macbeth because we do not want to feel the criminal part of ourselves. Let us be brave and treat desire profoundly. It is most important to understand at the start that Macbeth becomes a tyrant by daring to treat his desires as promises that are made to him by profound sources that compel belief and assist action. What he desires is what man ultimately desires: to be at unity with himself and the world; to harmonize thought, speech, and action; to attain his source--which is his perfection--“whole as the marble, founded as the rock,/As broad and general as the casing air;” to wear “the golden round” as “the ornament of life” adorning the name, Macbeth, which means, “Son of life” (I.v.29; vii.42; III.iv.23-24). We call to desires that are promises to be kept by our sources with the word “Come,” as in: “Thy Kingdom come.” Likewise, we respond to the call of desire 4
from our sources with this same word of promise of ourselves, as in: “I come, Graymalkin. Paddock calls.” Anon, let us meet with Macbeth. That is all I propose to do in this essay—to meet him with risk in his world by letting him take us over somewhat in ours. As Lincoln said, who was himself taken by the pleasures of its temptations, “the play is unsurpassed.” The lecture thus seeks to illuminate and compel by means not restricted to objective argument. In Act I we shall meet Macbeth five times: (i) “the unseamer” of the battlefield; (ii) “the seer” on the heath; (iii) “the servant” of the King; (iv) “the transporter” of the Lady; and (v) “more the man” at the feast. In Act II we meet the murderer; in Act III the tyrant; and in Act IV the knower and doer of nameless things. We shall end by meeting the nihilist of Act V who still bears the name of note, “Macbeth,” to be pitied and feared. Act I. First Meeting. The Unseamer. The battlefield reports of Macbeth’s deeds in suppressing the opening rebellion and foreign invasion, though they come as “thick as tale,” still cannot keep pace with their incredible performance (I.iii.97). He fights against the “kerns and gallowglasses” in the west and the King of Norway five hundred miles to the east by “carv[ing] out his passage” through the bodies of human foes as masterfully as the mind and hand would measure these amplitudes of space and time with instruments of art (I.ii.13, 19). The first image we get of him comes from the Captain who witnesses his combat in the west against “the merciless MacDonwald”: Captain. For brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name-- Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel, Which smoked with bloody execution, Like valor’s minion carved out his passage Till he faced the slave; Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops, And fixed his head upon our battlements. Duncan. 5
Page 1 and 2: To Meet With Macbeth Louis Petrich
Page 3: world not yet formed. Rather, let u
Page 7 and 8: y “cancel[ling] and tear[ing] to
Page 9 and 10: Sisters had foreseen a meeting with
Page 11 and 12: air, Macbeth says, “What seemed c
Page 13 and 14: yearnings, as Macbeth believes what
Page 15 and 16: Conduct me to mine host: we love hi
Page 17 and 18: Greater than both, by the all-hail
Page 19 and 20: Macbeth, his immediate desires post
Page 21 and 22: He pauses: she says nothing but loo
Page 23 and 24: to his own wife and babes who cry o
Page 25 and 26: and colored by the poet’s design,
Page 27 and 28: amazement that he cannot pronounce
Page 29 and 30: and tongue are one seamless suit of
Page 31 and 32: Lady Macbeth. Macbeth. Now. Lady Ma
Page 33 and 34: not the voice she tuned, so she que
Page 35 and 36: that he sees and holds in his other
Page 37 and 38: “as King” in III.i. But the not
Page 39 and 40: This sense of incongruence is even
Page 41 and 42: Banquo’s ghost, seated and moving
Page 43 and 44: Lady Macduff. Sirrah, your father
Page 45 and 46: Let us rather Hold fast the mortal
Page 47 and 48: end). What can we say about how she
Page 49 and 50: that Shakespeare should have played
Page 51 and 52: First, Birnam Wood comes to Dunsina
Page 53 and 54: Ross. Ay, on the front. Siward. Why
Page 55 and 56:
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mot
Page 57 and 58:
Macduff fights to free the time. Hi
Page 59:
crowned. We are among the spectator
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