Macbeth and the Floating Dagger in his Mind

by Christopher Barr

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

 

All hail, Macbeth!

The Tragedy of Macbeth has been tackled a number of times in film and television but most notably are Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971) as well as Orson Welles’ Macbeth (1948), for television, Patrick Stewart played a fine Macbeth also.  The course of Macbeth is set by three witches; they plant a seed in the young warrior’s mind that he shall be king.  Macbeth is a political thriller about a psychopathic killer, a man that falls to the depths of madness to get what he wants.  He kills the current king and all those that could get in the way of him conquering the thrown and keeping it.

There’s certainly a debate as to whether the witches were real or not, or were they Macbeth’s ego at play, igniting his Id.  Were they a form of rationalization and exemption for what he’d have to do….murder?  Do we have those little voices in our convoluted minds that talk us into things like killing another human being for our own superficial gain?  I would argue that they are not real and Macbeth started in a dormant state of madness and the mythical witches’ prophecy simply stirred the psychopathic pot. 

At the time William Shakespeare wrote the play in the 17^th century, witchcraft was a very believable real phenomenon.  It was practiced by some and feared by others.  The workings of the devil were quite present in those days, a spiritual war between Satan and the God pushed and pulled the minds of the people and Shakespeare knew that.  So did he use them as metaphorical tools or were they, in his mind, actual devices to move his vicious murder plot forward?

Magic and witches were everywhere at that time so writing about witches and sorcery was a political thing to do.  The play was edgy for its time; it’s still edgy today for that matter.  Shakespeare is asking his audience, where do these dark forces come from, is it the witches or the man that are evil?  

Speaking of evil, who was Lady Macbeth, Macbeth’s partner in crime?  Was she a bully, pushing Macbeth into murderous villainy?  Would have Macbeth committed the atrocities that he did without her at his ear?  Was Macbeth a sheep in wolves clothing?  Was he simply a man falling victim to his environment and the circumstances of his relationship with Lady Macbeth?

Does she make him into a killer?  When he states; ‘We will proceed no further with this business,’ of killing the king.  Macbeth at this point is clearly ambivalent but she argues that he must take what is promised to him.  She essentially used the, ‘are you man enough to take it’ speech, throwing it in his face.  She tells him that if he goes through with it, he’ll be more than a man but if he doesn’t, he’ll shame her for life.  She clearly had her own selfish reasons and motivations for pushing him as in her own desire for power.

It’s likely that Macbeth wasn’t so naive that he could be easily led, so one can interrupt Macbeth as being a man that welcomed the manipulation.  Macbeth could not do this on his own so his mind opened itself up to falsification and deceit.  He wanted to be King, listening to his wife’s persuasive mind and her scheming voice but he also had a conversation within his own mind, he had to make his own choice.  He had to contend with the postmodern nature of reality.  He had to understand the bridge that separates his dream world and his imagination, a possible false creation of a fevered brain, with that of the world outside and beyond his eye.  He was clearly conflicted between killing for advancement and morality, as well as his fear of guilt, that this murder would bring unbearable guilt and damnation.

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand

Come, let me clutchthee.

The dark brooding atmosphere lent itself to supernatural uneasiness and foreboding.  Macbeth holds his hand out for a dagger suspended it in front of him that he clearly sees but can’t clasp.  The dagger appears as if it is leading him to the murder; that he is being willed by an agent of fate.  The violence in his mind was manifesting itself before him, hovering in the form of a bloody dagger.  Then of course, the bell rings and frees him of his mind’s images of fear and horror, inviting him to do his business and kill the king.

We all like to feel important and for others have a high opinion of us.  Some of us develop an over-inflated view of ourselves.  As a result, we have a tendency to get wrapped in a form of denial about ourselves; we create a false perception and have an inability to accept the truth.  It then becomes painful to accept that mistakes are possible and when we make them the first reaction is to point the finger elsewhere.  We refuse to think objectively and accept any involvement for our actions.  The inability to accept responsibility for our actions and behavior is a result of insecurity and arrogance.  By taking responsibility one feels they are admitting to being weak, powerless, that they may feel they will lose their own sense of value and importance.

I think that is what’s at the heart of Macbeth; a man torn between his narcissistic desire to rule others and his responsibility as a human being to share the world with others.  Most people struggle with this their entire lives because most people deep down think that life would be better if they controlled the world.

 

Bloody hands and the deed is done, Macbeth is now a murderer, never to return.  He has killed in battle but that was different so we’re told, first degree murder is more selfish.  The king is dead and Macbeth meets up with his wife, bloody daggers in hand, his language has abandoned him, portrayed him, as any Forensic Physiatrist would say, the mind loses its grip on reality while blood drips from the shaken hands of the murderer.  There is no turning back for Macbeth, he’s done it but he’s not alone.  His wife, Lady Macbeth stands with him, consoles him, washes blood from him.

Macbeth is now the king and must have his rivals killed.  As a result he dreams of his victims while awake, seeing them as ghosts, he is losing his mind more and more and Lady Macbeth is tasked to hold him together before he confesses to the world what they have done.

The natural guilt of the man is surfacing, begging to be exposed and this becomes troublesome for Macbeth for he is King, he became ‘more than a man’ for his wife so instead of admission, Macbeth continues his blood bath.

Lady Macbeth suffers a mental turn of events and begins to sleep walk and hallucinate, rubbing her hands, desperately attempting to wash the reality of what they did away, while in the company of very concerned onlookers.  She breaks down; she loses the strength she possessed that pushed Macbeth to action in the first place.

Macbeth at this point has lost it, becoming numb with a psychopathic temperament, beyond even his wife’s reach.  As a result she kills herself, no longer able to live with herself and her insane husband.  In the beginning she thought of the path they took as a simple means to an ends, little did she know that she would be the one with the empathetic warm heart while her husband becomes the maniac.  Now after the deed and many to follow, it’s Macbeth who’s now become cold with malice and who has a dead wife that couldn’t bare his viciousness.

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.  Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more.  It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

Macbeth’s nihilistic ‘Tomorrow’ soliloquy in Act. 5 are his words to die by.  This existential look at life can only leave one, feeling sadness for a man that has let himself fall so far, a man that sees the banality of everyday life as no more than a walking shadow, empty and filled with aloneness.

This soliloquy was about the meaninglessness of life, but it’s also about his wife’s death before her time.  A time Macbeth wished to have happen much later, affording him proper time to mourn for her.  But also, with her death, she never produced an heir to the throne, leaves Macbeth’s royal line cut.

Macbeth gained his crown but at an overwhelming cost to everything true and right with his life.  He mourns at what fools we all are, how we will kill friends and make enemies all for nothing.

He feels nothing and has nothing more to live for, his enemies have all come for him and in one last fight to maintain his meaningless power, Macbeth is killed in battle.  His dominion has come to an end.  What set it on such a destructive path in the first place?  Was it the three witches or was it madness resulting from his crazed ambitions?

Shakespeare wants us to know that we could be Macbeth, we could take his path.  Macbeth is not some insane figure for us all to point and judge.  This tale is a tragedy but it’s also a cautionary tale because none of us are free from insanity.  What we should be taking from this play is the honesty we must offer ourselves and to those around us in our lives.  Being responsible for our actions and taking that responsibly is how we gain respect from those in our lives but it’s also how we respect ourselves.  I think that was what Shakespeare wanted for us all.

The magic and what is wonderful about the psychology of Shakespeare’s play is the depth Macbeth is willing to go to define his life.  This story plays like a huge allegory for hardship of living itself; it shows that the human mind is open to manipulation when knowledgeable guidance and understanding is absent.

The lies we tell ourselves and the many lies we are told by our rulers, that being the governments, corporations and the bankers that run it all, have all got to stop if we are to survive this civilization project.  Religions and their insane superstitions have got to be seen for what they are; cons perpetuated by con-men.  The organization is the largest in the world and its selling thin air as its product; it’s an empty corporation that has no products warehoused in massive buildings.  Its buildings are empty, beautifully designed to fulfill a fantasy to the millions that believe in it.

People from the ground up have got to stop allowing those around them to spread what is not backed up by facts and evidence.  If we continue to ‘feel-bad’ for some people and allow them to continue lying to themselves then the very virus of belief without evidence will spread, as it has for thousands of years, pouring it’s tale of hope to the meek while the rich maintain their power and control.

The tragedy of Macbeth is a contemporary story about corruption, greed and power for a narcissistic need to fulfill a fantasy of self-glorification.  To not believe in god means that it falls to us to make the world a better place.  To do this the fairy tales don’t necessarily need to stop but they need to stay in the fictional sections at the local book store.  We as a species have to grow up and recognize that if we don’t do this, we are in support of ignorance and this support will lend itself to the extinction of humanity as a global community.

Today in our corporate and political climate there is always a desire for advancement for the sake of money and praise and these are often fuelled by greed and a will for power.  So the possibility of exploiting all the angles and stepping on the faces of weaker people to ascend to CEO or President, could and likely result in moral and ethical rationalizations.  Like the plight of Macbeth, we can’t stop the devastating path we are slicing into this planet.  If research shows that cell phones are unequivocally cancerous to the brain, the corporations that manufacture them can’t do a recall because they are part of what we identify ourselves with.  The spread of cell phones on this planet can’t stop in spite of dangers, physically, psychologically and socially.  This is a clear sign of a psychopath whose rush for power outweighs its empathy for human life.  Like Macbeth, our focus on a lust for power as well as being possessed by raging ambition could lead to our own demise.

Shakespeare will not make us better, and he will not make us worse, but he may teach us how to overhear ourselves when we talk to ourselves... he may teach us how to accept change in ourselves as in others, and perhaps even the final form of change. 

– Harold Bloom