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MacBeth 2021, Act 2, Nov 20
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Candy
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Nov 11, 2021 10:48AM
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And then Lady MacBeth seems full of energy. She is like the Schadenfreude...getting pleasure from others suffering.
This is really amazing...
"Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep', the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast"
Ldy MacBeth is going to change gender and how fascinating she is almost able to see with gender fluidity....
to homoeroticize the dead...
"The sleepy grooms with blood" (when its female virgins who bleed at weddings)
Now MacBeth is in full loss. Lost. Here is a way "navigation" is a haunting motif for this play: ost his way morally. And here is Neptune referenced...developing "direction" (prediction) as a moral idea....
"Whence is that knocking?
How is't with me, when every noise appals me?
What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas in incarnadine,
Making the green one red."
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Kind of a surprise.
Oh I still am disturbed by this terrible act, by Lady MacBeth and her verbal abuse....which might be part of why I feel a little sorry for MacBeth this morning. LOL
Candy wrote: "I like how this Act opens with Banquo and MacBeth...unrete. MacBeth seems to be hallucinating with lack of sleep and seeing a dagger...for real or in a vision..."Yes, and the lack of sleep, the seed of which Shakespeare planted with the curse of weird sisters in Act I, is further developed by Macbeth in Act II. But it wasn't until I re-read your post that I realized Macbeth's (Shakespeare's) metaphor of seas, sees and eyes :
What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas in incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
So his eyes are no longer the agents of the ocean's green god, Neptune, but reddened oceans of blood - as if he'd plucked them from his own head!
The horror in Macbeth works - and really depends - on the imagination of the audience for full effect. It would seem almost impossible to convey in filmic terms, which is probably why so many movies fail to capture it fully. Shakespeare only had his wooden O of a theater and some props to work with so his words had to provide most of the enchantment. The closest movie equivalent to the above passage I can think of is the moment in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining when Shelly Winters is so at her wits end with the havoc of Jack Nicholson's insanity that she too begins to see "gouts of blood" where the sea of humanity (people who were alive at one time, going back and forth on a hotel elevator) used to be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RigIp...
Like Jack (and, for our purposes, Macbeth) Shelly (and the audience) suddenly sees what he (Jack/Macbeth) sees and this revelation is one of the most horrific in the narrative!
Candy wrote: "I dreamed a little about what I read last night. The poetry and I slept on the confusion...the lack of sleepand MacBeth's confusion. I actually felt some compassion for him! I'm not sure any time I..."Yes Candy I too was struck by the lines about sleep. I found Shakespeare's descriptions of what sleep means to human life to be beautiful and comprehensively true.:
"The innocent sleep,
sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,
the death of each day's life,
sore labour's bath,
balm of hurt minds,
chief nourisher in life's feast."
Macbeth's terror at the line "Sleep no more, Macbeth doth nmurder sleep" is fed by this understanding (that Macbeth speaks) of the value of sleep in a human life. He is not yet sleepless but he fears a future of sleeplessness (due to the act of killing a king in his sleep - ironic?) Could anything be worse than a life without sleep as Macbeth (Shakespeare) describes sleep? I think not, like Macbeth.
Those sleep description lines resonate with me - not because I have difficulty in sleeping but because on the contrary sleep is definitely the chief nourisher in my life's feast and I would be lost without it.
So maybe I put too much import on these lines?
Knock knock. Who's there? The gate keeper brings some comic relief to all the ominous knocking. His humour's dark with allusions to equivocation though.So is Macbeth the original source of all the 'knock knock who's there?' jokes we've known since we were children?
Or have knock knock jokes been around since the invention of wooden doors?
Candy wrote: "I like how this Act opens with Banquo and MacBeth...unrete. MacBeth seems to be hallucinating with lack of sleep and seeing a dagger...for real or in a vision. He is like the murderer who says :I d..."Female virgins who bleed at weddings? I've not heard of that before. Tell us more. Is this some lore from Tudor times?
Act 2 finishing on yet another ambiguous line from a (wise) old man (first one to appear in the play)His wee speech: "God's benison go with you, and with those
that would make good of bad, and friends of foes".
All the histrionics of the Macbeths about killing Duncan who is king and no apparent concern about implicating Duncan's 'sleepy grooms' and ending their lives as a consequence. Theirs (the Macbeths) is a limited moral compass me thinks. Is this a subversive note on the part of Shakespeare - pointing out that the ruling class have no respect for the workers? Duncan won't be needing grooms for his horses anymore and Macbeth probably has his own already. Just the same, a good reliable horse groom was hard to find in Shakespeare's day or in Macbeth's day for tht matter. (extrapolating)
(Act 2 Scene 1) Banquo in his night watch meets Macbeth. He passes bountiful gifts to Macbeth and a diamond to Lady Macbeth from King Duncan.BANQUO.
What Sir, not yet at rest? the King's abed.
He hath been in unusual Pleasure,
And sent forth great Largess to your Offices.
This Diamond he greets your Wife withal,
By the name of most kind Hostess,
And shut up in measureless content.
your Offices: Macbeth's absence from receiving Duncan and leaving early the banquet give "unusual Pleasure" to Duncan.
shut up: to end. The "most kind Hostess" ends Duncan with "measureless content."
Duncan sleeps Macbeth's wife, which can explain Macbeth's line, "With Tarquin's ravishing 'sides." Macbeth is a coward in this murder.
Mod
Just quickly...the idea of lack of sleep and I have had troubles sleeping many times in my life...is poignant.
I have more to say but tomorow...
Just wanted to say fantastic stuff here!!!!
Jim thak you for pointing out the infidelity. I did not notice that before. This is brilliant!
James, lucky you for easy sleep!
I've postd this before...but I'll repeat. Insomnia is at root..fear of death. To "fall" asleep is to let go and "sink" into unconsciouness...and...
The link to "fall" in love.
We say fall asleep and fall in love...and both demand a "letting go" and free fall. Which tugs on our sense of security because when we climbed into trees 100.000 years ago to avoid predators...it was a serious situation to fall out of the tree. A broken arm or leg could be a death sentance.
So people who are commitment phobe are acting out an unconscious fear of death. The physiology of either falling asleep or falling in love...is a trigger for fear for them.
Marlin...yes we are finding there might be a cohesive motif here with oceans/water...navigation. I love the jealous eyes...green turning to red...anger!
JamesD wrote: "Knock knock. Who's there? The gate keeper brings some comic relief to all the ominous knocking. His humour's dark with allusions to equivocation though.So is Macbeth the original source of all the 'knock knock who's there?' jokes we've known since we were children?"
Looks like it, James! Though, obviously, castle guards calling back and forth (upon which the porter's riffing is based) predates Shakespeare by centuries.
Candy wrote: "Marlin...yes we are finding there might be a cohesive motif here with oceans/water...navigation. I love the jealous eyes...green turning to red...anger!"Or seeing nothing BUT red cause they've been "plucked out"!
JamesD wrote: "Knock knock. Who's there? The gate keeper brings some comic relief to all the ominous knocking. His humour's dark with allusions to equivocation though..."Quite. And though much of his speech is cut in film versions of the play what it alludes to (as you suggest) lies at the very heart of the play:
MACDUFF
What three things does drink especially provoke?
Porter
Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and
urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes;
it provokes the desire, but it takes
away the performance: therefore, much drink
may be said to be an equivocator with lechery:
it makes him, and it mars him; it sets
him on, and it takes him off; it persuades him,
and disheartens him; makes him stand to, and
not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him
in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him.
Like lechery and drink the weird stster's words (prophecies, to Macbeth) are the chief equivocators that undo him in the end. They suggest the greatest possibilities which end up being the most deceptive of illusions.
Aren'tvthe 'waywerd sisters' the equivicators not their words. The words are their tools.
Mod
EEEEKKK is that the common meaning/interpretation? Is that why he imagines a knife...or can not see in Act 1? Has MacBeth been blinded?
Assuming Shakespeare is an intelligent author who wastes no words, then suspicious plots or seemingly tedious lines should be checked deeper.The dialogue of Macbeth and his wife outside Duncan's chamber with "owl" and "crickets" and "noise" seems superfluous, or can be a hint.
In Aesop's fable, an owl was disturbed by the noise of a cricket (grasshopper, cicada, or locust in various translations), and asked the cricket to stop, but was rejected. The owl then killed or ate the cricket.
In the murder scene, Macbeth is mixing the reality and vision as with "a Dagger of the Mind." Following lines show that Duncan's two sons do see Macbeth killing their father.
Macbeth's "sorry sight" indicates the two sons' reaction: the "one did laugh" is Malcolm (for he will be the king sooner); the "one cried Murther" is Donalbaine. If they (crickets) make a noise, Macbeth (owl) will kill them.
MACBETH.
I have done the deed:
Did'st thou not hear a noise?
LADY MACBETH.
I heard the Owl scream, and the Crickets cry.
Did not you speak?
MACBETH.
When?
LADY MACBETH.
Now. //[the complaining of "a noise"]
MACBETH.
As I descended? //[to hell after the murder]
LADY MACBETH.
I.
MACBETH.
Hark, who lies in the second Chamber? //[cheats]
LADY MACBETH.
Donalbaine.
MACBETH.
This is a sorry sight.
LADY MACBETH.
A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight. //[not a foolish thought for the two sons to keep quiet]
MACBETH.
There is one did laugh in his sleep,
And one cried Murther, that they did wake each other:
I stood, and heard them: But they did say their Prayers,
And addressed them again to sleep. //[Prayers::for their father's death]
LADY MACBETH.
There are two lodged together. //[lodged::stayed in a safe place]
Mod
This is how I aprproach any written or filmed story. Things are contained on purpose.
Very much am glad to see some activity here in discussion as I myself am not quite finished either LOL
Another Aesop fable in Macbeth, a play full of omens.A captain reports to Duncan about Macbeth and Banquo and rebels. He compares them with some creatures. The determiner allows "the Hare" to indicate Banquo who lacks "claws and teeth" as Macbeth.
DUNCAN.Sparrows: rebels.
Dismayed not this our Captains, Macbeth and Banquo?
CAPTAIN.
Yes, as Sparrows, Eagles;
Or the Hare, the Lion:
Eagles: Macbeth and Banquo.
the Hare: Banquo, who will be dismayed.
the Lion: Macbeth.
Version of Hares and Lions translated by Townsend:
The Hares harangued the assembly, and argued that all should be on an equality. The Lions made this reply: "Your words, O Hares! are good; but they lack both claws and teeth such as we have."
Mod
