Little Phrases; Uncertainty

Bill Long 7/17/05

An Overview of 1.3

More than one commentator mentions that 1.3 is a crucial scene in the play because it presents the issue (the tension between the promise to Macbeth and his present reality) that will drive the remainder of the play. But what is not mentioned as frequently is the way that little phrases vivify or move the action in 1.3. In this essay I will introduce several of those phrases as I try to show that the major purpose of the scene seems to be to create a kind of uncertainty in Macbeth's mind that will destabilize his thoughts and lead him to the precipitate action of murder.

Phrases

I have long thought that Shakespeare is eminently memorizable and useful in large measure because he uses small clusters of words to stimulate our thought. Let's mention a few.

(1) When Banquo describes the Weird Sisters that greet both him and Macbeth, he feels they understand him, "by each at once her choppy finger laying/ Upon her skinny lips" (1.3.44-45). We see in our mind's eye the small fingers, chapped and knotted at the knuckle, placed over thin lips. Ever since this image filled my mind I have wondered if the portrait of the Wicked Witch of the West, who places her bony finger over her lips on at least one occasion in the Wizard of Oz, was indebted to this passage.

(2) A few lines later Banquo wants to know about his fated course, and so he asks the Sisters if they can "look into the seeds of time," to limn his future (1.3.58). 'Time's seeds' has an intuitive appeal, stressing as it does the "germs" of things today that will grow into larger things later. In one of his last plays, Tempest, Shakespeare speaks of the past as the "dark backward and abysm of time." Now, when planning for the future, he speaks of the "seeds" of time. Both are fine images.

(3) When the Sisters suddenly disappear, when Macbeth desired their clarification of the prophecy, Banquo observes, "the earth has bubbles, as the water has,/ And these are of them" (1.3.79-80). What an interesting picture of solid or substantial creatures, fixed on the earth, that disappear. They are "earth's bubbles." I wonder if it is any accident that Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, is portrayed in the Wizard of Oz as appearing to the Munchkins in a bubble.

(4) After the Sisters disappear, Banquo wonders whether they have gone and if he and Macbeth really saw them after all. He asks, "Have we eaten on the insane root/ That takes the reason prisoner?" (1.3.84-85). The "insane root" causes insanity. Rather than trying to worry about which precise root Shakespeare might have in mind, why don't we try to think of people in American public life who might have been eating the "insane root." It is better than wondering if they have been "smoking something."

(5) "Deepest consequence" (1.3.126) means "the very important events that follow." Banquo warns Macbeth to be skeptical about the words of the Sisters, for the "instruments of darkness" often give misleading prophecies. They often betray people in "deepest consequence," meaning that they lure people in and then, when people have put their confidence in them, they mislead. Are there people who come to mind who have betrayed us "in deepest consequence"?

(6) We are used to using the word "surmise" (1.3.141) as synonymous with "guess." "I surmise that the jury will probably find him guilty." Yet in this passage it means "an imagined action," just as "fantastical" means something imaginary. After thinking about the possibility of killing the king, Macbeth talks about his "function" (mind or ability to act) is "smother'd in surmise" (preoccupied with an imagined action). I wonder if this use of "surmise" or perhaps this precise pasage was in John Keats' mind when he penned "When First Looking into Chapman's Homer," in which he likened the reading of Homer in Chapman's translation to that of Balboa's men seeing the Pacific for the first time and looking at each other "in wild surmise." The imaginations ran wild at that time, as Macbeth's is doing in 1.3

A Few Words on Overview

The scene can most profitably be divided into three sections: (1) Lines 1-38 describe the way that the Weird Sisters create havoc; then (2) Lines 39-88 present the way that their prophecies create doubt; and (3) Lines 89-156 are about the resultant uncertainty of Macbeth in the face of the prophecies. They create havoc by acting in spite. A woman won't share her chestnuts with one of the witches; as a result the witch will cause her husband's boat to run into problems. The husband will "dwindle, peak, and pine" while his bark is "tempest-tos'd." Though their powers are limited, so that the "bark cannot be lost," they can and do make life miserable for people.

The cultivation of doubt in Macbeth is the burden of the middle section of the scene. The Sisters come and go at will; their appearance and disappearance highlights the theme of appearance vs. reality which runs through the play. Finally, the last section reveals the beginnings of inner torment for Macbeth as he tries to decide whether he will try to hasten Duncan's demise or let nature take its course with him. Despite the tension that arises in his breast, Macbeth finishes with a seemingly philosophical point: "Come what come may/ Time and the hour runs through the roughest day" (1.3.145-146). In other words, time goes on. Deaths happen; births occur, but time keeps marching. Maybe there is some false bravado in Macbeth's statement, but life will catch up to him, and to the reader, very soon.

[Next]

1151