Nothing Succeeds
Dear Daniel,
So I came across this(https://onezero.medium.com/how-data-science-pinpointed-the-creepiest-word-in-macbeth-3150995d3808) essay on Hacker News, and I thought that it would be a good jumping off point for a discussion about Macbeth.
I'm always interested in applying ideas from CS to literature -- in college I worked on a program to see if you could narrow down actors appearing in multiple roles based on stage entrances and exits.
The technique in this essay is interesting. Essentially, they argue that the log-likelihood of the word "the" suggests that the word appears in the play more often than it should, and then argue that it is used in unusual ways. This, they argue, contributes to a tone of unease and menace in the play.
I think that the word that I would use to describe Macbeth is not "creepy," though it may be that in part, but rather "eldritch." The play is ghostly, weird, sinister. It also, as I'd like to demonstrate, exists in a place that is literally beyond human knowledge, or the ability to know.
The essay I linked also talks about repetition in language -- as with my discussion of "matter" in Hamlet, I'm very interested in how recurring ideas contribute to the fabric of Macbeth.
I agree that there is a tone of menace and unease in Macbeth. It is a very dark play. There are lots of rooks, ravens, and crows (In fact, there are lots of birds in general, just as, following its major inspiration, the Book of Job, there are lots of various animals mentioned in the "nature"-obsessed King Lear. When Macduff's son is stabbed, the assassin says 'How now, egg!,' which also goes to show that every time you think that an expression in Shakespeare is odd, there's usually some reason for it). There are also a few other big motifs in the play -- "work" and "labor" are ideas that shows up a lot ("double double toil and trouble"). This gory play is also drenched in "blood." And, to return to the idea of darkness, "dun" or "blackness" is something that shows up a lot, too (Booth thought that this was Shakespeare riffing on Duncan and Dunsinane in the play's source materials).
"Dun" also ties into a big idea that recurs in play: that of finality -- nothing stays "done" or complete in Macbeth*. I'll return to this speech in a bit, but when Macbeth ponders whether
If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly... (1.7.2)
he also leaves open the implied possibility that "it" -- the murder of Duncan -- will not be done when it is done, which is, of course, exactly what happens in the plot. A little water will not clear us of this deed. Similarly, Banquo's ghost reappears at a banquet, and Fleance's issue stretch out to the crack of doom. And, more technically, as in several of Shakespeare's plays but especially this one and Lear, scenes that appear to complete will also tend to extend; Macbeth has a habit of implying limits and then casually breaking out of these. Think, for instance, of 1.2, with its constant parade of couriers bearing information that forestall the ending of the scene.
*(Varying conceptions of time are also a running idea in the play and would probably occasion an entire essay by themselves. Critics have long talked about "double time" in Othello, which is to say that the ways that its characters talk about time-consuming events in the recent past are in conflict with the brisk pace of the plot. In Macbeth, there is significantly more variation in how time is conceived and presented; Frank Kermode talks about this some in Shakespeare's Language.)
More so than "the," however, I believe that paradox and 'equivocation'** are really the dominant rhetoric of the play, and ultimately are what contribute most to its tone. One way to think about paradox, following our discussion of points of view in Hamlet, is as two contexts joined together that seem contradictory but in fact might be reconciled (but may not). Most of the weird sisters' language -- "when the battle's lost and won," "foul is fair and fair is foul," "lesser than Macbeth and greater," etc. are prime examples of this; each has a through-line that generally, if eventually, makes the paradox comprehensible, however.
**(here I am sparing you a lengthy discussion on what "equivocation" would have meant, both linguistically and politically, to Shakespeare's audience, but it's also an interesting topic and one highly germane to the background of Macbeth).
There are some paradoxical elements of the play itself, however, that resist this kind of resolution (similarly to some of the contradictions in Hamlet and the "To be or not to be" speech that I raised in my previous emails).
The most straightforward of these is the example of the weird sisters -- as Macbeth comments, their gender is indeterminate***, and they are not of the earth and yet appear on it. As Horatio does when he cannot make sense of the Ghost in Hamlet 1.1 ("In what particular thought to work I know not..."), Macbeth and Banquo directly comment on their own incomprehensibility of the sisters, potentially speaking for the audience of the play; Macbeth's letter later describes them as having "made themselves air, / into which they vanished" which is a physical impossibility.
***(As you might imagine this is something of a conceptual minefield. In Macbeth, you would have the additional dimension of young lady actors playing women with beards; I'll also step over some of the meanings here to a then-contemporary audience. I will add, however, that conceptions of gender roles are another major theme of the play, from Lady Macbeth's unsexing, to her equation of the murder of Duncan with a show of manliness by Macbeth, to Macduff's insistence that he must "feel {the news of the murder of his wife and children} as a man" after being told to dispute it "as a man," etc.)
Other characterizations of the play are equally paradoxical but less obviously so -- take Macbeth, for instance. Hamlet and Iago are similar characterizations in some ways -- they both have overdetermined motives and can be seen as author surrogates (very, very roughly: Hamlet : Polonius :: Iago : Othello :: Shakespeare : audience). Hamlet and Macbeth are also similar, insofar as both are balanced between reflection and action (this is a simplification, but let's go with it for the moment). Consider the art by which Shakespeare has you believe both that Macbeth is brutal enough to literally cut Macdonwald in half in the second scene of the play and put his head on a pike and also, as Lady Macbeth puts it, too "full of the milk of human kindness" to murder Duncan. I think that what's happening here is in fact extremely, extremely impressive writing -- Shakespeare gives us a description of Macbeth as a brutal warrior as a first impression, but then introduces his actual character as possessing some doubt about the murder of Duncan and a capacity for thoughtfulness, which is then recast by Lady Macbeth as being a defining character flaw. We as an audience, midwifed by Shakespeare, effortlessly reconcile paradoxical conceptions of his characterization that should be obviously in conflict, and we do it entirely without noticing.
Another paradoxical element of Macbeth's character also has to do with the systems of evaluation that we use to define him. Shakespeare had long experimented with the idea of hero-villains or antiheroes before Macbeth -- think of Richard III, Brutus, even Shylock or Iago. But what's interesting about Macbeth is that we are on his side for the duration of the play. Morally, he is obviously among the worst figures of the play, but dramatically, an audience cannot find a better character to sympathize with. Malcolm might be a candidate, but he is a participant in a long scene with Macduff which drags -- I think deliberately -- in which he 1. taunts Macduff for insufficient manliness after the news of his family's death, 2. tells Macduff repeatedly that his own character is, in fact, worse than Macbeth's and then 3. reveals that this was all a lie as a way of testing Macduff. The main effect narratively is to bind Macduff and Malcolm for the remainder of the play, but the main effect dramatically here is to repulse Malcolm to an audience. Similarly, Macduff should be one of the major heroes of the play, but he is not only depicted as a coward who abandons his family, but also, even worse, as not possessing interiority or much characterological color. He is too thin for us to care much about. By contrast, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth pull us into their conspiracy as surely as do Brutus and Cassius or Iago, and they are constantly telling us in vivid terms who they are and what they think in a way that binds us to them, no matter what evil they do.
This same kind of tension also manifests in the language of Macbeth itself. Similarly to how the "To be or not to be" speech creates tension by conflating opposites, the experience of Macbeth is to be positioned between irreconcilable ideas. I have two examples. One, consider the same speech by Macbeth that I referenced above:
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success... (1.7.9)
There is a lot going on in this speech -- much more than I want to discuss in this email -- but consider the use of "success" here. In the same way that "borne" is daring in the "To be or not to be speech" ("Death... from whose borne..."), "success" is exactly the wrong word and exactly the right word at the same time. "Success" meaning "completion" or "accomplishment" of the murder and the kingship, but also introducing a faint but real idea of "succession," exactly the wrong thing for Macbeth to be thinking about when he is ruminating on his reward for killing Duncan, per the witches' prophecy.
Another example involves the play's use of stars. Consider this exchange in 1.4:
DUNCAN
My plenteous joys,
Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves
In drops of sorrow. Sons, kinsmen, thanes,
And you whose places are the nearest, know
We will establish our estate upon
Our eldest, Malcolm, whom we name hereafter
The Prince of Cumberland; which honour must
Not unaccompanied invest him only,
But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine
On all deservers. From hence to Inverness,
And bind us further to you.
MACBETH
The rest is labour, which is not used for you:
I'll be myself the harbinger and make joyful
The hearing of my wife with your approach;
So humbly take my leave.
DUNCAN
My worthy Cawdor!
MACBETH
{Aside} The Prince of Cumberland! that is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires:
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.
Exit
There is a surprising amount going on in these few lines (among other things, there is a silent pun on "labour" connecting ideas of work and of children contained within them; Booth also notes the relationship between "cumberland" and "in my way"). Here I mostly want to note that, after Duncan compares them to the nobleness that will reflect upon all those worthy, Macbeth ironically apostrophizes these stars and tells them to vanish lest they see his intents.
Later, in 2.1, Banquo and Fleance are talking, and the idea of these stars recurs:
BANQUO
How goes the night, boy?
FLEANCE
The moon is down; I have not heard the clock.
BANQUO
And she goes down at twelve.
FLEANCE
I take't, 'tis later, sir.
BANQUO
Hold, take my sword. There's husbandry in heaven;
Their candles are all out.
This is among my favorite lines in Shakespeare. Much like "you are men of stones" in
Lear, it is a phrase that means its own opposite. Because the word "out" can take on two meanings and because "husbandry" in the time of Shakspeare referred both to snuffing out candles before bedtime and also keeping a well-lit house, the sentence can mean two different things at the same time. Compare:
1. "There's husbandry in heaven, the stars are all out on display."
2. "There's husbandry in heaven, the stars are all snuffed out."
This means that an extremely minor point -- do the stars actually disappear after Macbeth's command? -- is literally unknowable; the paradox in Banquo's lines is at the level of language itself. This, again, is a very small idea raised by the play, but this same unknowable-ness telescopes outwords and stands as a synecdoche for what the play is up to generally.
Another, brief example of this sort of thing involves the prophecies of the weird sisters. Because the prophecies are known to all of those for whom the prophecies are about, there is an open question about causality, agency and choice, another major theme in the play****. Certainly Macbeth considers that the prophecies may operate without his action but also believes that he may act to alter their outcome.
****(I may write another essay on the power of the first and final few lines in Shakespeare. In Macbeth, the play opens on a question that concludes an encounter ("When shall we three meet again?") and the implied answer is "in thunder, lightning, or in rain" -- an apparent choice that is in fact no choice at all.)
I believe that the tone of the play owes a lot to the irresolution that works throughout the play, and that it creates a slightly dissociative effect that also operates in other plays, including Hamlet, but that is particularly intense in Macbeth. I believe, but don't really have a way to prove, that the steady breaking of comprehension that is a major feature of the play is a sort of salt on its tone and is really, more than anything else, what gives it its unique feel and flavor. I adore this play. It is easily my favorite thing in all of English literature, and its eldritch feel is a large part of what makes it so special. I also have focused on a few topics here to make a somewhat narrow point about tone, but I have barely scratched the surface of all its strange mechanics.
One final note about its peculiar irresolution is that the play concludes as unresolved as it starts -- Malcolm is to be crowned, but it is somehow Fleance and his issue who are supposed to become kings... dun dun dun.
I hope you are well,
agm