Macduff. Awake, awake!
Ring the alarum
bell.--Murder and treason!
Banquo and Donalbain, Malcolm, awake!
Shake off
this downy sleep, death's counterfeit,
And look on death itself. Up, up, and
see
The great doom's image. Malcolm, Banquo,
As from your graves rise up
and walk like sprites
To countenance this horror.--Ring the bell.
(2.3.85-92)
After Macduff's discovery of the body of the murdered King
Duncan, Shakespeare obviously intended to create a powerful visual
effect on the stage: He wanted to make it look as if the whole castle were
peopled by ghosts. By "countenance this horror," Macduff does not mean he wants
those he is awakening with cries and ringing of the alarm bell to be witnesses;
he is asking them--or rather expecting them--to present an appearance in keeping
with the horror and the outrage of the atrocity he has just seen. Because no one
would respond to his prolonged knocking at the gate, he has already had a
premonition that everyone in the castle is dead.
Lady Macbeth
enters first and cries,
What's the business,
That such a hideous
trumpet calls to parley
The sleepers of the house? Speak, speak!
(93-95)
She is, of course, wearing her nightgown because she wants to
look as if she has just been awakened. Banquo enters, also wearing a nightgown,
since none of those who respond to Macduff's urgent summons would have had time
to find their clothes and put them on. Then Macbeth reappears in his nightgown,
having entered the king's chamber where he murdered the two hapless attendants.
Macbeth is accompanied by Lennox and Ross, and Ross is also wearing a
nightgown.
Shakespeare is packing the stage with people who look
to the audience like ghosts, especially since Macduff has planted the suggestion
that they will rise up as from their graves and walk like spirits of the dead.
Not only are their faces white with fear and their hair in disarray, but they
are attired in white, shroudlike garments usually associated with ghosts. They
are probably all walking in their bare feet, not having had time to look for
their shoes in their unfamiliar, pitch-dark bed chambers. This would add a
ghostly silence to their movements, in contrast to the usual clomping heard on
stages when actors cross the boards. Shortly afterwards, Duncan's sons hurry on
stage. Malcolm and Donalbain, too, are dressed in nightgowns and may even appear
to be floating like ghosts because they are wearing borrowed nightgowns too long
for their young bodies. The Porter has just said, "But this place is too cold
for hell" (16-17). The combination of cold and terror might be causing all who
are inadequately clad to tremble, making their nightgowns shake and enhancing
the illusion that they are spirits.
So except for Macduff and Lennox, the
stage is filled with people who resemble ghosts and who--turning around and
about in confusion, uttering inarticulate exclamations, each frightening and
being frightened by the other "ghosts"--fulfill Macduff's command to walk like
sprites to countenance the horror of the king's assassination. The scene is like
a ghostly ballet intermezzo. The appearance of so many "ghosts" on the stage in
such a short time would be expected to frighten and confuse the members of the
audience too, so that their emotions would be similar to those experienced by
the characters on stage.
The fact that Shakespeare intended all
six of these characters--Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Banquo, Ross, Malcolm, and
Donalbain--to be dressed in nightgowns is shown by subsequent
dialogue:
Banquo. And when we have our naked frailties hid,
That
suffer in exposure, let us meet
And question this most bloody piece of
work
To know it further. (148-51)
And:
Macbeth. Let's briefly put
on manly readiness And meet i' th' hall together. (157-58)
Shakespeare
wanted to get the maximum visual and emotional effect from this scene. Instead
of having all these ghostlike figures enter at the same time, he spaced out
their entrances and presumably intended to have them rush in from different
directions. First Lady Macbeth appears. After the space of time
required for seven lines of dialogue (about twenty seconds), Banquo enters. Then
after another seven lines, Macbeth re-enters in his nightgown, accompanied by
Ross similarly clad. Ross is a minor character and his appearance at this
juncture seems intended only to add one more figure to the ghostly ensemble.
(There might, in fact, have been other unidentified characters, such as
servants, who also appeared in nightgowns. Banquo's son Fleance was staying
overnight, and he too may have appeared in a nightgown in the original
productions.) And after another six lines of Macbeth's sotto voce
soliloquy, Malcolm and Donalbain fly onto the stage, probably from opposite
sides. Presumably the king's two sons arrive last because, being young, they
slept the most soundly.
The viewers could easily get the impression that
at least some of them have been murdered and really are ghosts. This would be
especially true with regard to Malcolm and Donalbain. Both the king's sons are
among the first to be summoned by Macduff when he cries "Awake, awake!" and
orders the alarm bell to be rung, yet they are the last to appear. Shakespeare
had a reason for holding them back. It would be easy for viewers to form the
suspicion that Macbeth has murdered them in their beds, since the viewers know
that Macbeth will have to get rid of those two obstacles to his ambition sooner
or later and would never have had a better opportunity than on this dreadful
night. The viewers may be wondering why Malcolm and Donalbain do not appear.
Then when the two boys dash onto the stage, frightened and confused by the
clanging bell and this weird spectacle in the unfamiliar environment, the
audience could get at least the momentary impression that they are seeing
Malcolm's and Donalbain's ghosts.
Shakespeare knew the
effectiveness of presenting ghosts on the Elizabethan stage. He had used ghosts
memorably in Julius Caesar (1599) and Hamlet (1601-02), both
of which were written before Macbeth (1606). Modern moviegoers are far
too familiar with such effects, having become inured to appearances of the
living dead from the days of Frankenstein and Dracula up to the latest,
increasingly spectacular cinematic bloodfests. For Shakespeare's audience,
however, the sight of so many "ghosts" would have been a novel and uncanny
experience. In this climactic scene, Shakespeare used the device of suddenly
crowding the stage with ghostlike figures to elicit the mixed emotions of
confusion, foreboding, dismay, and horror being experienced by Macduff, Lennox,
Banquo, Ross, Malcolm, Donalbain, and perhaps most of all by the guilt-ridden
Macbeth himself.
WORK CITED
Shakespeare, William.
Macbeth. Folger Shakespeare Library Edition. New York: Washington
Square, 1992.
criticism: Shakespeare’s Macbeth -- Bill Delaney
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