Hello Beautiful People,
This blog is Assignment writing on Paper 101(Literature of the Elizabethan & Restoration Age Period)assigned by Prof. Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Head of the English Department of Maharaja Krishnkumarsinhji Bhavsinhji Bhavangar University (MKBU).
Shakespeare's Workmanship:
Crafting a Sympathetic Macbeth
J Introduction of Macbeth:
Macbeth was written by
Shakespeare between 1603 and 1606, between Caesar and Hamlet. It is the story
of a murderer and usurper, like Richard III or Claudius (Hamlet) from crime to
crime to achieve security. Macbeth is a villain but a more humanized character
compared to Richard. Macbeth is a noble and gifted man. He chooses treachery
and crime, knows them for what they are and is totally aware he is doing evil.
Evil is concentrated in Macbeth and Lady Macbeth who are influenced by the
Weird Sisters.
The play examines the
possibilities of evil and centres on the villain-hero. We find good only in
secondary characters like Duncan or Malcolm. Macduff is the righteous
character. Macbeth is a tyrant (Cf Richard III) and Malcolm will be the good
king (Cf Richmond). The supernatural powers are represented by the Weird
Sisters and Hecate, standing for the side of evil (disorder) and by the King of
England, standing for the side of good (order). The symbolism is obvious: it is
light versus darkness, angels Vs devils and heaven Vs hell. The character of
Macbeth is interesting because he is fully conscious of the horror of his
deeds. Indeed, we learn in the beginning of his soliloquies that he knows very
well what is good: in Act I, sc2, l.13, there is an enumeration of all reasons
why he should not kill Duncan. Macbeth is tortured between his erected wit and
his infected will.
Macbeth is the story of
the temptation of a good man by witches. It is comparable to Adam and Eve with
the Serpent. Lady Macbeth is the one who is really tempted Shakespeare decided
to show the steps by which a noble man is made to his damnation, to depict a
man lured by evil. The eviller Macbeth is, the more isolated he becomes.
Shakespeare could not show a devil at the time of the Renaissance (for it was
considered as comical at that time) so he showed witches instead, who were
human beings that had given their souls to the Devil).
Witches are not naturally
evil. They have to become evil, just like Macbeth. Like Paracel, the three
sisters are weaving human destiny. They represent fate and humans who have
become evil. They know the past, govern the present and can foresee the future.
They appear at the beginning, announce Macbeth’s rise and finally his fall:
mainly at strategic moments. They only tempt Macbeth because he is ambitious
and responsible. Ambition and his wife’s influence will lead him to murder
Duncan. Everything is motivated by fear.
The ultimate evil is always a child murderer. Banquo is killed because he represented a living reproach for Macbeth: Banquo did not yield to temptation and remained loyal. It is a vicious circle for Macbeth: after murdering Duncan, he has to murder Banquo. Macbeth’s solitude increases with the number of crimes. The recurrent idea in Macbeth is that the more you fall into evil, the less free you are. Indeed, Macbeth has less and less choice. He has to do evil and he feels less and less guilty by doing so. Guilt was good because it showed him the difference between good and evil. Macbeth’s will be infected.
Lady Macbeth is less
aware of this difference between good and evil. At the end, when consciousness
comes back to her, she tries to wash her hands during her sleep, just like
Pontius Pilate. It is interesting to notice that sleepwalking was a sign of
possession by the Devil in Shakespeare’s times.
J Biography of Shakespeare:
William Shakespeare was
born in 1564 to a prosperous leather merchant in the village of
Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickshire England. He is not only regarded as the
father of English drama, but also known as the greatest English poet, and
actor. He is also famous as England’s national poet and the Bard of Avon.
During his childhood, he attended a grammar school and when his father’s
financial condition degraded, he left the school. At the age of eighteen, he
got married to an older woman Anne Hathaway. From her, he became the father of
three children, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith.
He left Stratford for
London to pursue a career in theater. He started his career holding the reins
of horses for the theater audiences. Gradually he made ways to the theater and
began getting success. By the early seventeenth century, he had contributed
some great plays to the world literature.
He wrote most of his masterpieces between 1589 and 1613.
His early works
especially the plays were comedies and histories which still remain as the best
comedies and histories in this genre. His later works focused on the tragedies
because of which he is still known as the Tragedy king. His greatest tragedies
are Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. In his last phase of life, he
wrote tragicomedy, which are also known as romances. Altogether he produced 38
plays, 154 sonnets, and two long narrative poems. His most of the plays have
been translated into many major languages and they have been staged in
different parts of the world.
He owned his own theatre,
the Glob, and amassed enough wealth from his venture to retire to Stratford as
a wealthy gentleman. He died in 1616, and was hailed by Jonson and others as
the apogee of theatre during the Renaissance of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
In poetry, Shakespeare
changed the rhyming scheme to abab; cdcd; efef; gg. He used the iambic
pentameter. He used three quatrains and a couplet. The concluding couplet is
usually an unusual twist given to the argument of the body of the argument in
three quatrains. So, the Shakespearian sonnet can also be divided into two
parts; statement-cum-argument, and conclusion.
J Women in Shakespeare’s play:
The women in
Shakespeare's plays are equally vivid creations, though in Shakespeare's time
boy actors played the female parts; and Shakespeare could create such a rich
array of fascinating women characters. He was fond of portraying aggressive,
witty heroines, but he was also adept at creating gentle and innocent women.
His female characters also include the treacherous, the iron-willed Lady
Macbeth, the witty and resourceful Portia in Merchant of Venice, the tender and
loyal Juliet, and the alluring Cleopatra. Shakespeare's comic figures are also
highly varied.
They include bumbling
rustics, tireless punsters, pompous grotesques, cynical realists, and fools who
utter nonsense that often conceals wisdom. Shakespeare drew his characters with
remarkable insight into human character. Even the wicked characters, such as
Iago in Othello, have human traits that can elicit understanding if not
compassion. The characters achieve uniqueness through their brilliantly
individualized styles of speech. Shakespeare's understanding of the human soul
and his mastery of language enabled him to write dialogue that makes the
characters in his plays always intelligible, vital, and memorable.
Shakespeare wrote many of
his plays in blank verse, unrhymed poetry in iambic pentameter, a verse form in
which unaccented and accented syllables alternate in lines of ten syllables.
Shakespeare sometimes used rhymed verse, particularly in his early plays.
Rhymed couplets occur frequently at the end of a scene, punctuating the
dramatic rhythm and perhaps serving as a cue to the offstage actors to enter
for the next scene. As Shakespeare's dramatic skill developed, he began to make
greater use of prose. In earlier plays, prose is almost always reserved for
characters from the lower classes. Shakespeare, however, soon abandoned this
rigid assignment of prose or verse on the basis of social rank. Many plays use
prose for different important effects. Examples include Ophelia's mad scenes in
Hamlet, and Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene in Macbeth.
J Shakespeare's Workmanship: Crafting
a Sympathetic Macbeth:
Before we follow his
genius in coming to grips with it, let us realize the importance as well as the
magnitude of that difficulty. "Tragedy [says Aristotle] is the imitation
of an action: and an action implies personal agents, who necessarily possess
certain qualities both of character and thought. It is these that determine the
qualities of actions themselves: these — thought and character — are the two
natural causes from which actions spring: on these causes, again, all success
or failure depends."
But it comes to this: The
success or failure of a tragedy depends on what sort of person we represent,
and principally, of course, on what sort of person we make our chief tragic
figure, our protagonist. Everything depends really on our protagonist: and it
was his true critical insight that directed Dr. Bradley, examining the
substance of Shakespearian tragedy, to lead off with these words:
Such a tragedy brings
before us a considerable number of persons (many more than the persons in a
Greek play, unless the members of the Chorus are reckoned among them); but it
is pre-eminently the story of one person, the 'hero,' or at most of two, the
'hero' and 'heroine.' Moreover, it is only in the love-tragedies, Romeo and
Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, that the heroine is as much the centre of the
action as the hero. The rest, including Macbeth, are single stars. So that,
having noticed the peculiarity of these two dramas, we may henceforth, for the
sake of brevity, ignore it, and may speak of the tragic story as being
concerned primarily with one person.
So, it makes no
difference to this essential of tragedy whether we write our play for an
audience of Athenians or of Londoners gathered in the Globe Theatre, Southwark:
whether we crowd our dramatis personae or are content with a cast of three or
four. There must be one central figure (or at most two), and on this figure, as
the story unfolds itself, we must concentrate the spectators' emotions of pity
or terror, or both.
Now, I must, for
handiness, quote Aristotle again, because he lays down very succinctly some
rules concerning this 'hero' or protagonist, or central figure (call him what
we will — I shall use the word 'hero' merely because it is the shortest). But
let us understand that though these so-called 'rules' of Aristotle are
marvellously enforced — though their wisdom is marvellously confirmed — by Dr.
Bradley's examination of the 'rules' which Shakespeare, consciously or
unconsciously, obeyed, they do no more than turn into precept, with reasons
given, certain inductions drawn by Aristotle from the approved masterpieces of
his time. There is no reason to suppose that Shakespeare had ever heard of
them; rather, there is good reason to suppose that he had not.
But Aristotle says this
concerning the hero, or protagonist, of tragic drama, and Shakespeare's
practice at every point supports him: —
(1) A Tragedy must not be the
spectacle of a perfectly good man brought from prosperity to adversity. For
this merely shocks us.
(2) Nor, of course, must it be that
of a bad man passing from adversity to prosperity: for that is not tragedy at
all, but the perversion of tragedy, and revolts the moral sense.
(3) Nor, again, should it exhibit the
downfall of an utter villain: since pity is aroused by undeserved misfortunes,
terror by misfortunes befalling a man like ourselves.
(4) There remains, then, as the only
proper subject for Tragedy, the spectacle of a man not absolutely or eminently
good or wise who is brought to disaster not by sheer depravity but by some
error or frailty.
(5) Lastly, this man must be highly
renowned and prosperous — an Oedipus, a Thyestes, or some other illustrious
person.
Before dealing with the
others, let us get this last rule out of the way; for, to begin with, it
presents no difficulty in Macbeth, since in the original — in Holinshed's Chronicles
— Macbeth is an illustrious warrior who makes himself a king; and moreover, the
rule is patently a secondary one, of artistic expediency rather than of
artistic right or wrong. It amounts but to this, that the more eminent we make
our persons in Tragedy, the more evident we make the disaster — the dizzier the
height, the longer way to fall, and the greater shock on our audience's mind.
Dr. Bradley goes further,
and remarks, "The pangs of despised love and the anguish of remorse, we
say, are the same in a peasant and a prince: but (not to insist that they
cannot be so when the prince is really a prince) the story of the prince, the
triumvir, or the general, has a greatness and dignity of its own. His fate
affects the welfare of a whole; and when he falls suddenly from the height of
earthly greatness to the dust, his fall produces a sense of contrast, of the
powerlessness of man, and of the omnipotence — perhaps the caprice — of Fortune
or Fate, which no tale of private life can possibly rival."
In this wider view Dr.
Bradley may be right, though some modern dramatists would disagree with him.
But we are dealing more humbly with Shakespeare as a workman; and for our
purpose it is more economical, as well as sufficient, to say that downfall from
a high eminence is more spectacular than downfall from a low one; that
Shakespeare, who knew most of the tricks of his art, knew this as well as ever
did Aristotle, and that those who adduce to us Shakespeare's constant selection
of kings and princes for his dramatis personae as evidence of his having been a
'snob,' might as triumphantly prove it snobbish in a Greek tragedian to write
of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, or of Cadmus and Harmonia, because
The gods had to their marriage come,
And at the banquet all the Muses
sang.
But, touching the other
and more essential rules laid down by Aristotle, let me, — very fearfully,
knowing how temerarious it is, how impudent, to offer to condense so great and
close a thinker, — suggest that, after all, they work down into one: — that a
hero of Tragic Drama must, whatever else he miss, engage our sympathy; that,
however gross his error or grievous his frailty, it must not exclude our
feeling that he is a man like ourselves; that, sitting in the audience, we must
know in our hearts that what is befalling him might conceivably in the
circumstances have befallen us, and say in our hearts, "There, but for the
grace of God, go I."
I think, anticipating a
little, I can drive this point home by a single illustration. When the ghost of
Banquo seats itself at that dreadful supper, who sees it? It is not the
company. Not even Lady Macbeth. Whom does it accuse? Not the company, and,
again, not even Lady Macbeth. Those who see it are Macbeth and you and I. Those
into whom it strikes terror are Macbeth and you and I. Those whom it accuses
are Macbeth and you and I. And what it accuses is what, of Macbeth, you and I
are hiding in our own breasts.
So, if this be granted, I
come back upon the capital difficulty that faced Shakespeare as an artist.
(1) It was not to make Macbeth a
grandiose or a conspicuous figure. He was already that in the Chronicle.
(2) It was not to clothe him in
something to illude us with the appearance of real greatness. Shakespeare, with
his command of majestic poetical speech, had that in his work-bag surely
enough, and knew it. When a writer can make an imaginary person talk like this:
—
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such
a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and
to-morrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to
day
To the last syllable of recorded
time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted
fools
The way to dusty death —
I say, when a man knows
he can make his Macbeth talk like that, he needs not distrust his power to
drape his Macbeth in an illusion of greatness. Moreover, Shakespeare — artist
that he was — had other tricks up his sleeve to convince us of Macbeth's
greatness. One of these I hope to discuss in a subsequent chapter.
But (here lies the crux)
how could he make us sympathize with him — make us, sitting or standing in the
Globe Theatre some time (say) in the year 1610, feel that Macbeth was even such
a man as you or I? He was a murderer, and a murderer for his private profit — a
combination which does not appeal to most of us, to unlock the flood-gates of
sympathy, or indeed (I hope) as striking home upon any private and pardonable
frailty. The Chronicle does, indeed, allow just one loop-hole for pardon. It
hints that Duncan, nominating his boy to succeed him, thereby cut off Macbeth
from a reasonable hope of the crown, which he thereupon (and not until then) by
process of murder usurped, "having," says Holinshed, "a just
quarrel so to do (as he took the mater)."
He made this man, a host,
murder Duncan, a guest within his gates. He made this man, strong and hale,
murder Duncan, old, weak, asleep and defenceless. He made this man commit
murder for nothing but his own advancement. He made this man murder Duncan, who
had steadily advanced him hitherto, who had never been aught but trustful, and
who (that no detail of reproach might be wanting) had that very night, as he
retired, sent, in most kindly thought, the gift of a diamond to his hostess.
There was once another
man, called John Milton, a Cambridge man of Christ's College; and, as most of
us know, he once thought of rewriting this very story of Macbeth. The evidence
that he thought of it — the entry in Milton's handwriting — may be examined in
the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. Milton did not eventually write a
play on the story of Macbeth. Eventually he preferred to write an epic upon the
Fall of Man, and of that poem critics have been found to say that Satan,
"enemy of mankind," is in fact the hero and the personage that most
claims our sympathy.
Now (still bearing in
mind how the subject of Macbeth attracted Milton) let us open Paradise Lost at
Book IV upon the soliloquy of Satan, which between lines 32-113 admittedly
holds the clou of the poem:
O! thou that, with surpassing glory crown’s
—
Still thinking of Shakespeare and of
Milton — of Satan and of Macbeth — let us ponder every line: but especially
these: —
Lifted up so high,
I 'sdain'd subjection, and thought
one step higher
Would set me highest, and in a moment
quit
The debt immense of endless
gratitude.
So burdensome, still paying, still to
owe:
Forgetful what from him I still received;
And understood not that a grateful
mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at
once
Indebted and discharged. . . .
And yet more especially this: —
Farewell, remorse! All good to me is
lost:
Evil, be thou my good.
J References:
(1) Arthur Thomas, Sir. Notes on Shakespeare's
workmanship. New York, H. Holt and Company, 1917. Shakespeare Online. 10 Aug.
2013. < http://www.shakespear online.com/plays/Macbeth/macbethworkmanship.html >.
(2) Braun Muller, Albert R., ed. (1997).
Macbeth. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 978-0-521-29455-
(3) Ribner, Irving (2005). The English
History Play in the Age of Shakespeare. London: Routledge. ISBN
978-0-415-35314-4.
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