Conclusion on "Function of Language in Macbeth"

Conclusion 5 pages (1820 words) Sources: 1 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Macbeth's Desire For Kingship: Conclusion

This paper uses a Lacanian hermeneutic to argue that Macbeth enters into the discourse of the witches in a manner which explains his moral trajectory over the course of Shakespeare's tragedy. Macbeth begins the play a loyal subject of Duncan, which is explicit when he says to his wife: "We will proceed no further in this business:/He hath honour'd me of late; and I have bought/Golden opinions from all sorts of people" (1.7). Lady Macbeth reinvigorates his resolve by challenging her husband's masculinity by saying "When you durst do it, then you were a man" (1.7). This has caused some scholars to see Lady Macbeth as a kind of quasi-Oedipal maternal figure, using her power to kill the fatherly Duncan, but this is problematic given the degree to which the witches influence Macbeth writing to Lady Macbeth about his destiny to become king in the first place. After all, even Lady Macbeth's own language reflects the witches when she says in her famous monologue: "Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be/What thou art promised" (1.5).

A more accurate reading, which allows for the dual influence of both the witches and Lady Macbeth, is to offer a Lacanian psychoanalytic interpretation of Macbeth's psychological journey. Macbeth's shift in character is exhibited by a fundamental discursive shift: his language changes as it is infected by that of the witches. He then passes on this infection or 'possession' reflected in language to Lady Macbeth (who significantly, when first plotting murder, is actually reading the witches' words, as expressed in her husband's letter). Macbeth's possession with the witch's language is immediately demonstrated when he mourns the witches' departure, after his first encounter with them: "Into the air; and what seem'd corporal melted/As breath into the wind. Would they had stay'd!" (I.3).

Before this rapt attention on the part of Macbeth, there is no evidence he ever harbored traitorous thoughts. In fact, Shakespeare deliberately orchestrates events so that the first impression the audience receives of Macbeth is of a 'bloody man' telling King Duncan of Macbeth's valor in battle, which is in stark contrast to that of the original Thane of Cawdor, a traitor. The unnamed soldier's vivid depiction of Macbeth in service of the king is calculated for the audience to swiftly gain a sense of Macbeth as a loyal subject and a good warrior, not a man who is inherently evil by nature. Ironically, after becoming the next Thane of Cawdor, Macbeth will likewise become a traitor and betray Duncan, and the epitaph of the Thane would be fitting for Macbeth as well: "nothing in his life/Became him like the leaving it" (I.4).

Yet as Macbeth once fought savagely and loyally for the king, he will, within a few acts, fight equally savagely for his own self-preservation as a threatened ruler. As Duncan says upon gazing at Macbeth after executing Cawdor: "There's no art/To find the mind's construction in the face:/He was a gentleman on whom I built/An absolute trust" (I.4). Duncan is unable to 'read' the change that has taken place within Macbeth even as he mourns Cawdor's treachery: Macbeth's outward appearance is the same, even though the audience is well aware that Macbeth's language has become infused with that of the witches' words.

The audience knows that because Macbeth's first words "So foul and fair a day I have not seen," echo the witches' incantation, "fair is foul, and foul is fair," Macbeth is no longer the same man who fought so loyally for the king (1.3.38, 1.1.11). Macbeth has already entered into the Lacanian symbolic order of language personified by the witches even before he is aware of the fact that he is now Thane of Cawdor. Fundamental to the Lacanian view is that language creates desire; desire is not preexistent to language. Macbeth may be a ruthless warrior, but until the language of the witches parallels his own, there is no indication in his actions that he is a traitor by natural inclination. The words 'Thane of Cawdor' when spoken causes him to credit the witches prophesy and set of the swift, bloody chain of events that result in his death. "The thane of Cawdor lives: why do you dress me/In borrow'd robes?" (I.3).

Of course, it could be argued that Macbeth knows that the witches are 'imperfect speakers' -- he senses that in the incomplete nature of their speech that there is something lacking. They do not say how he will become king, or how Banquo's issue will become king, and Banquo's language and mistrust of the witches indicates that he is not welcomed into their symbolic order. (His inability to speak the language of murder and kinship is underlined when his ghost appears and is utterly silent during the banquet scene, unlike the other specters conjured up by the witches in the play). Macbeth is infected -- his very language even before he meets the witches suggests he has a predisposition to being infected -- and once he is welcomed into the witches' Lacanian schema, he is, in fact, doomed.

For Macbeth the symbolic center, the sense of 'lacking' that stimulates desire and enters his character into the economy of the witch's language is the desire to be king. Theirs is a hermetically-sealed system of belief, where only violence can triumph and inversion (fair is foul; foul is fair) reigns, versus the conventional moral schemas embraced by Banquo, Macduff, and the other characters of the play.

For Macbeth, the lost crown and the 'lacking' stimulated by entering into the language of the witches governs his entire language from his first meeting with the witches onward. After he commits murder, his sense of alienation from his true self becomes so extreme that he says, quite directly: "To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself" (II.2). The man who was loyal to the king and so humble he viewed being made Thane of Cawdor as borrowed robes becomes irate at Malcolm being named second in succession and is willing to turn heaven and earth to be made king: Macbeth entirely loses his moral compass and feels utterly empty inside. By the end of the play, having become estranged from his beloved wife, killed his friend Banquo, and lost the loyalty of all of his subjects, all he can say is this: "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,/

Creeps in this petty pace from day-to-day" (V.5). For Macbeth, life is utterly meaningless, a shadow signifying nothing, indicating that the central signifier in his life is utterly hollow.

Lady Macbeth, too, rather than the instigator of this symbolic system, similarly falls prey to her sense of nothingness and makes kingship have ultimate, central importance in the lives of her husband and herself. She is open about the fact that she has lost children -- noting that she has "given suck" even though the Macbeths have no children (I.7). Shakespeare suggests that the witches' language replaces conventional womanly desire for children, and instead Lady Macbeth desires power through her husband. She too becomes stuck in an unfruitful symbolic system, eternally washing her hands to free herself from guilt.

It should be noted, however, that although Lady Macbeth echoes the language of the witches like her husband, their trajectories in the play are quite different. Lady Macbeth correctly fears her husband will lack sufficient resolve, urges him to commit murder -- and then becomes more and more squeamish as the play goes on. Macbeth abhors the deed, but once it is committed, he realizes there is no going back. Macbeth has a stronger sense of a social self and self-concept of how others regard him: initially he shies away from murder for that reason, but once his social self has become that of a usurping ruler, he realizes he has no choice to put aside all formal moral qualms.

Lady Macbeth is both a recipient of the witches' language as well as a catalyst. She sees to "pour my spirits in thine ear," regarding inciting Macbeth to murder, but she admits those 'spirits' are not her own, but are rather external to herself and her womanly nature as she asks to be 'unsexed' (I.5). "Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/Of direst cruelty!" (I.5). Lady Macbeth is not 'the other,' rather she is deep in the discourse of 'the other' and uses it to influence Macbeth.

Such a Lacanian analysis of the language of the play is particularly important because it helps to answer the question of whether Macbeth is a willing agent in his murder of Duncan. The text suggests something other than an either/or dichotomy. Macbeth's embrace of the witches' language and his willingness to resort to murder suggests he is not a mere plaything of fate. However, the extent to which his language increasingly becomes dominated by that of the supernatural entities suggests that his original nature has been… READ MORE

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