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Macbeth themes: the supernatural part I

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Macbeth Themes: The Supernatural Part I

This article continues on from the first article in this series of articles on the themes of Macbeth.

To read the first article please click on this link, Macbeth: The Themes.

In the first article we touched upon two of the most fundamental themes of the play namely

  1. Power and Ambition
  2. Struggle between morality and immorality / Strength


This will be covered in more depth in following articles including with direct quotes from the play. However in today’s article we will talk about the theme of the supernatural in the play.

THE SUPERNATURAL

Spirit, Woman, Ghost, White Lady, Female Ghost, Creepy

The importance of the supernatural in Macbeth cannot be dismissed and to understand its significance we need to have a wider and deeper understanding of English society at the time of Shakespeare. We use the word English because Scotland was still a different country back then and it was only a century later that England and Scotland merged to become part of the same state. We need to be more acquainted with England at the time the play was written even though it it set in Scotland.

Elizabeth I, the queen of England at the beginning of Shakespeare’s life died in 1603 and with the absence of any direct heir, as Elizabeth had no children, king James VI of Scotland was chosen to come down from Scotland and go to London to become the king of England, he was then called James I of England as he was the first king of England to bear the name James. James I was a man who was a firm believer in the existence of the supernatural and in particular witchcraft in its deeply evil nature in his eyes. In the modern world this may be not be taken seriously by some but at that time society was far more conservative including being far more religious and the widespread belief in the supernatural.

James I patronized Shakespeare’s theatre company, i.e. he supported it. Shakespeare like any other Englishman at that time had to be in the good books of the king and Macbeth can be said to be heavily influenced by Shakespeare’s desire to please the king and this includes the depiction of witchcraft as something extremely dark and disturbing.

This has an importance far greater than that of a writer trying to impress the king but also takes on a political significance as James I needed support to convince people in England to support his very strong anti-witchcraft policies including the Witchcraft of 1604 which made witchcraft punishable by death even if no one had been killed as a result of the alleged witchcraft.

Thus James I may have been totally delighted by someone as influential as Shakespeare depicting witchcraft  as totally evil and malevolent to the English publish, with the resultant increase in support for James’ anti-witchcraft campaign. James a few years earlier whilst in Scotland has written a work on witches called ‘Daemonologie’ which contained details of their dark arts and would have been no doubt pleased to see Shakespeare’s play reinforcing his message.

Fantasy, City, Tree, Sculpture, Gloomy, Surreal

Act I, the first scene.

So imagine the king at the time of the play and the English elite coming to watch the performance and the first scene that they see is of the three witches with the scene culminating in the words:

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair Hover through the fog and filthy air.“

(Macbeth Act I, Scene I)
 

These words are interesting because the deeply Christian audience at the time would clearly have seen that the witches did not believe in normal morality or in morality at all. ‘Foul’ means bad, and ‘fair’ means good or just. To say ‘Evil is good and good is evil’ would mean essentially there is no such thing as morality and a person who has no morality cannot be said to be a good person, we use the term ‘amoral’ to describe a person with no morals or sense of right and wrong. Thus in the audience’s eyes the amoral nature of the witches is established from the very beginning. 

Shakespeare also uses the word ‘fog’. ‘Fog’ is something which is unclear and that reflects the nature of the witches and black magic. It is shrouded in mystery, nothing surrounding it is clear. Also the word ‘filthy’ is not all indicative of the air but also of their character and the nature of the witches and the supernatural in general. They are associated with mystery and filth from the beginning. They ‘hover’ through the air. They are not easy to pin down and to capture. They are elusive. Thus when they are finally caught they should be ‘dealt with’ as James I wanted them to as per his law of 1604 which instituted the death sentence for all acts of witchcraft.

 
The play continues and we hear of Macbeth’s bravery on the battlefield and the king deciding to make him the new Thane of Cawdor. The audience thus are informed of this reward for Macbeth but he himself is not aware until in the next scene he finds out from the witches.
 
Act I, the third scene.


In the third scene we see the first witch refer to a woman who refuses to give her food i.e. chestnuts. In return the first witch plans on a revenge which is totally disproportionate to this denial of chestnuts but to inflict a severe punishment not on the lady but her husband who has absolutely nothing to do with the act. The first witch utters the word.

“Her husband has sailed off to Aleppo as master of a ship called the Tiger. I’ll sail there in a kitchen strainer, turn myself into a tailless rat, and do things to him—“

Storm, Sea, Ship, Ocean, Sky, Weather, Nature, Rain

Shakespeare taps in to the belief in the supernatural then and the idea that witches possess the ability to transform their bodies in to that of animals. The reference to the sailor and the ship once again connects with the life of James I who himself in 1589 was sailing in a ship to go and collect his new wife Anne from Denmark. He himself had to go there in person to Denmark as his wife had tried to sail to Scotland to be with him but failed due to very severe storms which were attributed to witchcraft.

Various women accused of being witches were executed later on in Scotland in relation to this event. Thus when James sees witches talking of the harm they will inflict on a sailor he may well have felt that Shakespeare is referring to this rather traumatic and important event in his life and this would endear the playwright, Shakespeare, even more to the king which of course would result in continued support and patronage.

The other two witches in this scene have control of various winds, that is another allusion to Anne’s (James’ wife) failed initial attempts to sail to Scotland due to very strong storms, these powerful winds and storms it being said later on being the work of witches. They, the other two witches, tell the first witch they will supply her with winds.

The witch later on goes to say of this sailor:

“I’ll drain him dry as hay. Sleep shall neither night nor day”
 
She talks of how she will make life agony for this sailor. So the audience can see the clearly malevolent nature of witches even more so, the same sort of witches that James I felt he and his family were victims of and whom he had written a book on as well as pass a law against.
 
If anyone ever dared to doubt James I and his fervour against witchcraft then watching Macbeth would have subdued them in to voicing disagreement with James on this issue.
Act I, scene 3, arrival of Macbeth.
 
Thus with the witches cruel and malicious nature established even more so in the minds of the audience in contrast to the brave and heroic nature of Macbeth we then get to see an encounter with this noble warrior and these evil and unpleasant witches.
 
This represents the interaction between the world of normal humans and that of semi-human witches, who though human in origin are in contact with a world beyond that of normal humanity and inhabit both realms that of the natural, the ordinary and the supernatural.
 
Macbeth, a relatively simple man susceptible to psychological manipulation as we shall see later, has as his first words in the entire play,

‘So foul and fair a day I have not seen.’
 
These words are ironic, ‘foul’ meaning bad and ‘fair’ meaning good, because on that day he receives recognition for his valiant feats as a warrior by hearing that he will be Thane of Cawdor, which is something good, but he also hears prophesies which  poison him and set him on a path of continuous bloodshed spiralling more and more until the destruction of his wife and ultimately himself.
 
This existence of two opposing sides, this duality is representative of the play on a deeper level. Because just as one day can have both good and evil, so can one man. Macbeth has both good in him, a brave and loyal soldier, however he has within him a latent evil which if aroused or manipulated can lead to great suffering and that evil is the one of greed for power as well as his weakness in being unable to withstand the taunts of his wife who bids him to murder Duncan, the king.
 
However whilst Macbeth has both good and bad in him, Shakespeare squarely puts the witches as forces of evil.
 
Upon seeing the witches Macbeth says:
 
What are these
So withered and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th’ inhabitants o’ th’ Earth,
And yet are on ’t?
 
The witches are mysterious beings, not ordinary and as mentioned before creatures of two worlds. They look like beings not from this world but are in it. The witches and their art, the dark arts, are beyond the understanding of ordinary men and the laws of ordinary nature. However they are very much  as Macbeth says ‘on ‘t’  meaning what they do very much impacts, and impacts negatively, this physical world that we live in.
 

Macbeth then says:

Live you? Or are you aught
That man may question? You seem to understand me,
 
Are these witches alive or are they dead?
 
Life and death are also part of a duality, just like ‘fair and foul’ good and bad.
 
These are mysterious creatures which Macbeth is not sure if they are alive or if they can actually speak. Once again this reinforces the very different world of the supernatural which lies beyond the understanding of ordinary people. A bit later Macbeth says:
 
You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so.
 
Are they of this earth or not?
Are they dead or alive?
Are they men or women?
 
These are three pairs of dualities i.e. the world and beyond, life and death, men and women, Macbeth is not sure where to place these strange creatures such is their mysterious nature.
 
After telling them to speak the witches tell Macbeth that he is the Thane of Glamis, but will be Thane of Cawdor and then King. Macbeth is startled by this as we know from Banquo asking him ‘Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear things that do sound so fair?’
 

This is very ironic since far from being ‘fair’ (good) the witches are evil creatures from whom no good will come as the audience already knows. Banquo then asks the witches to inform him about his future, which may be the greatest act of folly he ever committed. For it is in this questioning of the witches that they plant the ultimate seeds of his death at the hands of his, at the time of the scene, friend Macbeth. The witches after each hailing Banquo say:

1st WITCH – Lesser than Macbeth and greater.

2nd WITCH – Not so happy, yet much happier.

3rd  WITCH – Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none. So all hail, Macbeth and Banquo!

How can one be greater and lower (‘lesser’) than someone at the same time? How can someone be less happier but happier than someone at the same time?
 
How can these oxymorons work? These strange and seemingly oxymoronic statements from these strange creatures who it is hard to tell whether they are of this world or not of it, or if they are dead or alive, or male or female rather than clarify in fact confuse. These cryptic and enigmatic  statements of the witches are in total conformity with their engimatic and mysterious nature. These are not agents of spreading knowledge and guidance, helping people to understand better but agents of confusion and division.

The audience are intrigued as they watch this play with the esoteric words of the witches.. Shakespeare’s genius is at work as the witches have uttered statements which seem to talk of things which are mutually exclusive, but we know that witches as portrayed in folklore are creatures that have knowledge we do not, and by the fact that, unbeknown to both Macbeth and Banquo, Macbeth has already been declared Thane of Cawdor by the king.
 
Macbeth surprised by all this tells the witches to stay but they mysteriously vanish upon which Banquo and Macbeth say:
 
Banquo

The earth hath bubbles, as the water has,
And these are of them. Whither are they vanished?

Macbeth

Into the air, and what seemed corporal melted,
As breath into the wind. Would they had stayed!

These lines are very significant and have not been given their due by many writers. Banquo uses the analogy of the earth being akin to a body of water which produces bubbles which come suddenly and also disappear suddenly and inexplicably. Once again these strange creatures are beyond the understanding of normal men, their nature, and also when they come and go.  Also this mental image of bubbles can also cause us to think of a witch’s cauldron or their potions.
Magic, Potion, Smoke, Wine Glass, Light Painting
Macbeth talks of how they have disappeared ‘into the air’.
 
He says what seemed ‘corporal melted‘ and ‘As breath into the wind. Would they had stayed.
 
Here once again we can see the genius of Shakespeare, because in these short lines we see the three states of matter being alluded to that is gas, liquid and solid. Liquid can be seen in the reference to water, gas in the reference to air and ‘breath into the wind’ and ‘corporal’ means of the body. The old French word from which it orginated meant ‘of the body’ and we can see it also in the word ‘corpse’ a dead body.
 
Wishes, aspirations, hopes, dreams are not material and have no solid tangible form to them but are emotions or feelings. So are memories. These can be likened to gas forms which are not visible to the naked eye.
 
Bubbles can be likened to attempts to see certain wishes being realised and they are an intermediate form between a gas and a solid, between a mere ambition and an ambition realised.
 
A body is something solid, thus if a warrior dreams of being a king but does nothing to realise that it is akin to a gas, not visible. If the warrior works to becoming king and carries out various actions or is in the process of promotion or even bestowed a line in succession we can compare it to the liquid state, not fully realised but in the process of being so. Finally when the warrior finally becomes a king then this is a solid realisation of what was once a mere dream.
 
However just as the witches vanished and what seemed solid, bodily or ‘corporal’ i.e. real disappeared so did Banquo and Macbeth’s friendship. For ironically whilst Macbeth utters those words his friendship with Banquo is to end and to ‘vanish’ into non-existence, in to ‘air’.
 
Not only his friendship with Banquo, but his life as normal upright man with him being transformed to an insecure and bloody murderer who keeps on killing to maintain his power. Not only his life as a normal Scottish nobleman will go but ultimately so will his wife who will die from succeed. All of these things, his friendship, his normal life, his wife are all to go and ironically unbeknown to Macbeth the very words that come forth from his tongue could be applied to these.
 
‘Into the air, and what seemed corporal melted,
As breath into the wind. Would they had stayed!
 
Would his friendship with Banquo have continued, would his wife had stayed alive, would his life as a normal guilt-free person continued? Alas what seemed real and ‘corporal’, his friendships, his wife, his way of living all melt.
 
Nothing is permanent. Things fluctuate between different states from being wishes and internal thoughts and then in to fruition as realised goals or achievements and then beyond that once achieved they may perish ‘into the air’. The air known as non-existence or mere memories or  obscurity or oblivion, forgotten by the world. A great building may once have been merely the idea of an architect, then realised in physical form as a building. That building may then may be destroyed or go in to ruin as many of the buildings of the ancient world and be consigned merely to memory.
 
Alas, Macbeth himself at the end of the play may have not had much to enjoy besides memories of earlier, good times. Of times with friends and his wife. They have vanished in to memory. ‘As breath into the wind. Would they had stayed!’
 
Had the witches stayed away from Macbeth and not told him of Banquo begetting a line of kings, then perhaps Macbeth’s friendships and wife would have stayed?
 
The witches are clearly malevolent, dark forces causing destruction and should be avoided. Their prophecies should not be solicited. If Banquo had refrained from doing so, he may not have become the target of Macbeth’s deadly plans to keep being king of Scotland, to keep his crown.
King, Crown, History, Romania
 
James I, king of England, would have been very happy to see:

– The witches being portrayed as evil.
– The witches portrayed as causing harm to ships and sailors as they did, in his belief, to his wife Anne in her failed sea voyage from Denmark to Scotland.
– The witches prophecies as causing harm and pain.
 
In the next article we will read of the theme of the supernatural in Macbeth in relation to Lady Macbeth soliciting the forces of evil, to ‘unsex’ her,  the ghost of Banquo and other things.

Useful vocabulary for students.

1. Solicit – to seek the help of or ask questions e.g. Banquo solicits the witches for their prophecy of his future.

2. Duality – when something exists in two e.g. life and death, good and bad.

3. Latent – Something existing inside something and maybe not active, but could be activated. For example someone may generally be peaceful  but there is a ‘latent violent streak’ within him if he is provoked. Macbeth may have been a ‘good person’ in general but his lust for power existed inside him and was brought out by his wife.

4. Analogy – A comparison between two different things e.g. Banquo uses the analogy of the earth producing bubbles and the witches.

5. Patronage – When someone supports e.g. provides money or other assistance, James I patronised Shakespeare’s theatre company.

6. Oxymoron – Something which is a contradiction e.g. ‘a dead alive man’ as it is impossible to be both.

7. Intermediate – In the middle of two things, so a building being constructed is in an intermediate stage between just being an idea and being an actual fully completed building.

8. Valiant – brave, especially in a military context.

9. Feat – a great achievement or action e.g. ‘The knight carried out great feats of bravery’.

10. Oblivion – a state of being totally forgotten, unremembered.

11. Esoteric – not understood clearly, mysterious, only known by a few, sometimes in connection to the supernatural.

12. Cryptic – Unclear, mysterious, puzzling words.

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