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

gestures of mortal human life? And of course there remains to Act V the question of Macbeth’s end. No
one calls him “King” anymore. How will he die? Under what name? To what end?
Thus does Shakespeare answer, through Seyton, Macbeth’s charge that his tale is told by an
idiot. The five acts that Seyton speaks in five lines have a ring structure. The Queen’s death in Act V is
present in the Lady’s murderous desire in Act I, as the word “come,” which invokes her death and
Duncan’s, signifies. The death cries of the women in Act IV are heard in Act II as the cry of “murder”
from the second chamber, as the cry “Macbeth doth murder sleep,” and as Macduff’s wake-up cry of
“Murder and treason!” Act III is the center of the ring. The banquet is the futile attempt by Macbeth
and his Lady to civilize their appetites: to keep their places reserved at the table while leaving the table
to kill the “not yet” guest and to return from his spilled blood to fill cups with wine and drink the health
of all—as if such behavior were suitable civility. To know how to suit action to the time and place seems
like an ordinary thing to know. But when power feels safe from any call to account, it wears what
conduct it wills.
Macbeth’s ambition to master time and place by acting seamlessly, without intermission or
boundaries, may deserve to be called “idiotic.” An idiot, after all, is someone who does not know how
to respect the differences between the inner and outer worlds. . Moliere’s Alceste (for example) is a
real comic idiot of honesty. Macbeth may be calling himself, as the consummate actor of murder, of
which the audiences of tomorrow never tire, a “real bloody idiot.” But “idiot” is the wrong name for
Macbeth, as it is for tale-teller Shakespeare. It beckons too much towards the laughter in which
Macbeth puts his hope (“Laugh to scorn/The power of man, for none of woman born/Shall harm
Macbeth”), and moreover it does not take account of the perfection of form of this tragedy, which one
can appreciate even on first encounter. The Queen is dead. That news is enough to inform the
theatrically-minded Macbeth that he is in Act V. How will his tale end?
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