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

First, Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane in the cut boughs carried by the soldiers. Macbeth,
hearing the report, begins “To doubt th’ equivocation of the fiend” (V.v.43). The words of promise on
which the highest hopes of mankind are founded are essentially double: equivocal if the fiend “lies like
truth” (44), or poetic if the prophet, poet, or philosopher tells truth like a lie. The wood of Birnam
moves to signify that words do not stay still in one fixed meaning, though they are grounded in
something not of woman born, for words are not of human origin and manipulation only. Seyton speaks
doubly to Macbeth, telling him the form of his own tale (the five act structure of the stage play) and the
truth of its content (the meaning of each act). You have to live at peace with doubleness to hear Seyton
properly and more so the Weird Sisters. Macbeth does not live at peace that way. Shakespeare revels
in the double quality of dramatic speech as partaking of both art and nature. The drums, owls, crickets,
bells, and thunder remind us continually that words are both signs and sounds, and sounds speak
powerfully without logos to embodied souls that move, breathe, and have (even when old) “so much
blood in them” (V.i.43).
Next, the soldiers throw down their “leafy screens” and show their separate faces (V.vi.1).
Macbeth, like a bear tied to the stake, prepares to kill every last one of them that comes within his
reach. The succession of “tomorrows” is time enough for that. Enter within reach the young Siward,
son of an old professional soldier of whom “Christendom” affords none better (IV.iii.192). We hear from
Young Siward something we have heard before:
Young Siward.
What is thy name?
Macbeth.
Thou’lt be afraid to hear it.
Young Siward.
No; though thou call’st thyself a hotter name
Than any is in hell.
Macbeth.
My name’s Macbeth.
Young Siward.
The devil himself could not pronounce a title
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