The Fine Line Between 

"Insane" and "in a Valiant Fury"

        It's interesting how many of these Macbeth blog posts, looking back, pertain to evaluations of the sanity of various characters. Is Macbeth or Banquo more sane? (answer: Banquo) Is Macbeth a good man? (answer: he used to be...) Is Lady Macbeth sane? (answer: far, far, far from it) Who's the sane one now? (answer: neither Macbeth nor Lady Macbeth, nor anyone voluntarily staying in their kingdom, for that matter) How did Macbeth lose his former, sane self? (answer: by compromising his moral values). I find myself inclined to venture that one theme of this play, other than “appearances are deceiving”, may be that murder drives the murderer and everyone around him (or her, as Lady Macbeth had originally intended, though she didn't) utterly insane. Now we are drawing nigh to the conclusion of Macbeth, and ***SPOILER ALERT*** to his dramatic defeat and downfall and the mounting of his head on Malcolm's battlements (an ironic twist paying pointed homage to Macbeth's mounting of the former rebellion leader's head on Duncan's battlements) (yes, I have read again now. I just can't not. It doesn't feel right not knowing in advance what will happen...). I had to mark this spoiler alert because it just annoys me when people don’t properly mark spoiler alerts. Anyways--END SPOILER ALERT you can read safely again now.
        We have come to Macbeth’s sixth soliloquy, having heard the musings of several of the thanes who have jumped off of his cruel and sinking ship to the safe shore of Malcolm's English army. One of these, Caithness, informed us that, "some say [Macbeth]'s mad; others that lesser hate him do call it valiant fury."And so we once more turn to a debate of Macbeth's sanity. I do not believe Macbeth is sane in any way, shape, or form. This said, I do think that it's a combination of the two that's driving him. In his 6th soliloquy, he does sort of sound more towards valiant fury. He would even sound sane if the soliloquy were taken on its own. He sounds like a saddened but noble king watching his kingdom slip from his grasp when he says, "I am sick at heart... my way of life is fall'n into the sere (from side-notes: "the (condition of being) dry and withered")". He sounds bitter and spiteful but not crazy when he says, "that which should accompany old age, as honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have, but in their stead, curses... [and] mouth-honor [lip service]". He sounds most like he's in a valiant fury when he says shortly after his soliloquy, "I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hacked. Give me my armor." This makes him sound brave and fierce, like a good warrior ready to go out swinging. These all seem to become a noble and valiant king whose kingdom is being prised from his grasp by rebellions. In some measure, he is motivated by this brave anger.
        Yet when we look at the context surrounding them, we see how unwound Macbeth really is. Just before his soliloquy, he creatively and repeatedly insults a servant, who has only come to deliver news, for no apparent reason. He comes up with some colorful insults, calling the servant "whey-face", "cream-faced loon", "villain", "lily-livered boy", and "patch", asking him "where got'st thou that goose-look?", telling him to "go prick thy face", and informing him, "those linen cheeks of thine are counsellors to fear." The very moment the poor message-bearer enters Macbeth greets him, "the devil damn thee", a very polite greeting sane people often give their servants (not), and when the servant is attempting to report to Macbeth, he gets as far as "there is ten thousand--" when Macbeth extreemley impatiently cuts him off and sneers at him "geese?" (which is even more insulting considering what it can mean in Shakespearean) like a hyperactive and inattentive, rude young child, throwing in another insult in addition to rudely interrupting important news the unlucky boy is bringing what is supposed to be his venerable king. Finally, Macbeth thanks him for delivering the report by wishing him, “death of thy soul” and dismissing him, “take thy face hence.” Macbeth seems very cheery (not)! Macbeth insults the servant all these times and still more in the space of a mere eleven lines, including those lines in which the servant attempts to speak. Macbeth is clearly revealing how stressed, disturbed, angry, destroyed, and totally off his rocker he truly is. I could understand classifying Macbeth as sane were it only based upon his 6th soliloquy, but one cannot look at this flat-out ridiculous and over-the-top, completely unprovoked and purposeless bullying of a humble and polite servant and think of Macbeth as anything but either filled “from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty” as Lady Macbeth previously asked to be, or else entirely and utterly consumed with insanity and irreprievably psychotic. He is lost in hatred and overtaken by madness.
        Throughout his soliloquy, Macbeth is calling wildly for his servant, Seyton (the pronunciation of which I wonder about, and if it is pronounced how I think it might be--that is, say-ten--then I wonder if there is some subtle meaning behind it), as if he can’t even focus on what he’s saying to himself. So whilst he’s saying those things that make him sound like a noble and poignant king, a righteously bitter man, and a warrior in a valiant fury, all the while he’s not focusing on what he’s saying and he’s calling belligerently for his servant to demand news and then to neither listen to nor pay attention to the servant for whom he bade. Macbeth has learned to be a good actor since his murder of Duncan, but as more things are falling apart in his life, so too his ruse is disintegrating about him, and his inner madness is shining through. There may well be some motivation of valiant fury, but it is a minisculely marginal degree. Beyond the violet mist, we are watching one after another fall to the all-consuming grasp of insanity as the tragedy we are so intently regarding draws nigh to its close.

The Fifth Soliloquy

Macbeth's Fifth Soliloquy:

how has he changed?

        Macbeth's world is falling apart. He is king of Scotland and seems to have all he desired, but threats to his rule are everywhere--or at least, he sees them everywhere. His position as king is doing him no good, and he is miserable and "in blood stepped...so far", and "full of scorpions is [his] mind". He used to be a better man, happy even; what changed? Macbeth did. In his first soliloquy, that moment when he first conceived of Duncan's murder and saw only the beginning of the dark path before him, he said that the mere thought of murdering his king, "shakes so my single state of man that function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is but what is not." He could not move under the burdenous weight of the thought, and his world had turned on end. He told us that the thought, "doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs against the use of nature." He even said that the idea was "yet fantastical"and still he had a huge physical reaction to it. This was a man appalled by the mere inkling of slaying his noble king. He fought against even the thought.

         Fastforward a bit, to when Macbeth has returned home to his castle in Glamis, having hardly spoken with his wife, and he has another soliloquy that already shows a drastic change. Instead of fighting off the thought out of horror, he is now wishing he could kill Duncan, if only there were no problems. He states at the beginning of the soliloquy that "if it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly." If only I could murder and get away clean, I'd do it right away! He's no longer concerned by the moral wrongness of it. He doesn't care that he'd be murdering someone. He's changed much in a short trip. All that stops him now is that "we have judgement here" and that "bloody instructions... return to plague th' inventor." It would come back to get him, and he'd always have to be on the look-out. In this soliloquy, he does decide against murder, but only just, and later Lady Macbeth easily pushes him over the edge--but he put himself on that edge first. He has already abandoned his morals with hardly a passing glance. 

        Now we are at his fifth soliloquy, months after the murder. Macbeth is king, and has everything he was going for. But he's also had Banquo, a former colleague and perhaps friend, murdered to secure his seat on the throne, and now Macduff seems to be posing a potential threat. Macbeth resolves in his fifth soliloquy that "from this moment, the very firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my hand."He is going to act without thinking, going straight from his emotions to his actions with no contemplation in between. He is going to have "no boasting like a fool" and he says "this deed I'll do before this purpose cool." What deed is he plotting? We can probably predict that he plans to murder Macduff, but that's not all. He says, "the castle of Macduff I will surprise... give to th' edge o' the' sword his wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in his line. " He wants to kill everyone now. He has come all the way from being appalled at the thought of a single murder to resolving to commit mass murder with hardly any hesitation. Macbeth "violated his moral code" and now he is falling apart at the seams. He is no longer happy. He has no hope. He is thoughtless and cruel where once he was noble and good. He is rude to his wife who he once honored and valued. He is truly destroying himself. 

        This gets to the heart of the play, or a heart of it. Part of the point of this play is that Shakespeare is trying to show us that when you sacrifice right, when you do something you know to your core is evil, when you know that it's the most horrible thing that you should never, never do and you do it anyway, when you begin good and yet you knowingly choose evil, it will destroy you completely and utterly. Macbeth has brought about his own destruction. He once was a noble and honored warrior with a good life and good standing with the king. Now he is a broken and hollow man with darkness consuming his soul and evil filling his heart and mind and actions. He has gone from noble warrior to mass murderer. He has destroyed everything he once cared about. He has ruined his life. "Ye shall not eat of it...lest ye die." Genisis 3:3 Macbeth chose to live in sin and never leave it, and he is surely losing his life.  

         From beyond the violet mist today, we witnessed the beginnings of the culmination of the destruction brought on by turning to evil. 

Reacting to the murder in Macbeth:

Reacting to the murder in Macbeth:

Who’s the sane one now?

            King Duncan clearly did not take my advice to watch his back. However, I must admit that in some capacity I underestimated the goodness of Macbeth’s character, but I did not underestimate what he would do. He seemed as if he wouldn't, earlier on,  but whether by the convincing of others or by his own ambition overwhelming his originally mostly good nature, he did murder the king on that dark night, and now he will have to deal with the consequences. 

            Already he is swallowed by his own guilt; because of his guilt about his sin, "'Amen' stuck in [his] throat" even though he "had most need of blessing", and he even imagines that he "heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep'" repeatedly, for he feels he will never be able to sleep again, partly because of guilt and even partly because he will always fear being found out. Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, brushes the matter off like a spot of lint on her shoulder. In response to Macbeth's guilty moaning, she simply says, "these deeds must not be thought after these ways; [if] so, it will make us mad."

            But truly, which of them is the mad one now? Lady Macbeth is unnaturally without emotion, as if something is missing from her humanity. She should be even more distraught than her husband, because she thought that King Duncan "resembled [her] father as he slept" and so she could not stab him herself. Yet despite this, she is even confused when Macbeth expresses his guilt. When he tells her he can sleep no more for he has murdered sleep, she asks him, "what do you mean?". She just doesn't get it. Here is her husband, distraught at the murder he has just committed, and she is just looking at him and going, 'what's wrong with you?'. Really, he should be looking at her and going, 'what's wrong with you?'. She is insanely guiltless. Something in her mind, something in her moral conscience, is simply missing, and she is entirely too cool. 

            Macbeth is so distracted by his guilt and his horror at what he has done that he accidentally brings the murder weapons with him rather than planting them on the guards at the crime scene like he was supposed to, and when Lady Macbeth points out that he still has them and tells him to take them back and "smear the sleepy grooms with blood", he replies, "I'll go no more. I am afraid to think what I have done. Look on 't again I dare not." He is too guilty to go back and look at the bloody scene he has made. His wife, on the other hand, has no issues with going to a murder scene of a man who reminds her of her dad and dipping her hands in his bloody wounds to get some blood to smear on the guards she already drugged. She is entirely too unperturbed by the entire business. She chides Macbeth that he is “infirm of purpose!” when he refuses to go back and do this, and so she says she’ll go do it. She even tells Macbeth that “the sleeping and dead are as but pictures. ‘Tis the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil.” Stop being childish. He’s only dead. In this moment, she seems almost completely heartless. Macbeth is at least decent enough to regret what he has done; when they hear a knocking, he quietly tells it, “wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst.” But Macbeth has made his bed; murder is irreversible and inexcusable, and now he will have to face what he has brought on himself. We are glad today to be in our land beyond the violet mist and far removed from these horrific happenings.