Role of Language in Shakespeare’s Macbeth How does it add to the Gothic effect?

1. Role of Language in Shakespeare’s MacbethHow does it add to the Gothic effect?

2. Task: pick out a favourite quote from either Macbeth, Banquo, the Witches or Lady M • Analyse the quote for meaning.

3. Purpose of His Language • For the stage, not for the page. • Dramatic effect • To be heard, not just to be read. • To be acted out in front of a live audience, not just visualized in the mind. • Shakespeare never wrote to be published; he wrote for the stage. His actors later assembled their lines and published his collected works after he died.

4. Shakespeare’s Sentences • Interruptionsdramatic effects • Intentionally Vague Language • Wordplay • How Shakespeare reveals his characters • Language is Power: “The pen is mightier than the sword.” • Types of speeches • Poetry • Equivocation, ambiguity • Imagery

5. Shakespeare’s Sentences • Today, sentence structure follows a sequence of subject first, verb second, and an optional object third. • Shakespeare, however, often places the verb before the subject, which reads, “Speaks he” rather than “He speaks.” • Inversions like these are not troublesome, but when Shakespeare positions the predicate adjective or the object before the subject and verb, we are sometimes surprised. • Lady Macbeth demonstrates this inversion as she speaks of her husband: “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be/What thou art promised” (I.v.14-15). • In current English word order, this quote would begin, “You are Glamis, Cawdor, and will be what you are promised.”

6. Interruptionsdramatic effects • Look at how the Captain first introduces Macbeth: For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name— Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish’d steel, Which smoked with bloody execution, Like valor’s minion carved out his passage Till he faced the slave; (I.ii.18-22) • The delay between subject “Macbeth” and verb “carved” is separated by 5 phrases (19 words). What is the effect of these phrases upon the listener of Macbeth’s exploits?

7. Intentionally Vague LanguageWhy? • Shakespeare often uses intentionally vague language for ambiguity, double meaning, and to spare syllables. • Of course, the witches: Something wicked this way comes. (IV.i.45) • Notice Macbeth’s first soliloquy: If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well It could be done quickly. (I.vii.1-2) • What is “it”? Why can’t Macbeth bring himself to say what “it” is?

8. Wordplay • Shakespeare’s most frequently used types of wordplay are common: metaphors, similes, personification, allusion, and puns. • Most common: metaphor, simile. • After trying to kill a father and son, Macbeth describes the son, who escaped as: There the grown serpent lies, the worm that’s fled Hath nature that in time will venom breed, No teeth for the present. (III.iv.29-31)

9. How Shakespeare reveals his characters: • What characters say to each other • What characters say about other characters • What characters say to themselves • What characters do (actions). Notice: 3 of the 4 deal with Language…

10. Language is Power: “The pen is mightier than the sword.” • He who controls language, controls others • Language (argument) is used to attain and maintain position by royalty, between nations, by clergy in the church. • “The pen is mightier than the sword.” • Macbeth rises to power through the Captain’s monologue. Duncan doesn’t see him in battle; he hears of him in battle. • Macbeth seeks to become King after hearing the witches’ prophecies, writing a letter to his wife, and through her convincing speech “screw your courage to the sticking place…”

11. Macbeth is won over by language from women • The Witches provide Macbeth the nouns: “All hail, Macbeth, Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, That shalt be King hereafter.” (I.iii.50-53) • Lady Macbeth provides Macbeth the verbs: • “Look like the time.” • “Bear welcome…” • “Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t.” • “Leave all the rest to me.” (I.v.66-76)

12. Types of speeches • Long Ones Monologue: one actor to other actors on stage Soliloquy: one actor to audience, alone on stage • Short Ones: Aside: one actor to another, under one’s breath Monosyllabic: one syllable sentences

13. Blank Verse: Unrhymed Iambic Pentameter • Shakespeare saves poetry (blank verse) for his characters of noble birth. (5:5:9-10) • Prose is used to represent the speech habits of the common people (though still imaginative, poetic) Bourgeoisie (nobles) = iambic pentameter (poetry) Proletariat (commoners) = prose

14. Types of Language in Macbeth Poetry (Blank Verse) Poetry (Rhyming Couplets) Witches: short, choppy iambic tetrameter 4 measures) Prose Porter (servant): dark, bawdy common language; paragraphs (II.iii) pg. 86 • Macbeth: thoughtful, poetic iambic pentameter (elevates him above rest) • Lady Macbeth: plain, unimaginative iambic pentameter • Bleeding Captain: strong, harsh, war-like iambic pentameter

15. Equivocation, ambiguity • Language of confusion; ambiguity; double meanings; half-truths; paradoxes; riddles • “Foul is fair and fair is foul” • “nothing is but what is not” • “Lesser than Macbeth and greater.” • Equivocal Morality: How do you know what’s good, or who’s good, if there’s overlap between good and evil? • “These solicitings cannot be evil, cannot be good…”

16. Act I, Scene 2 Blood Imagery: • until Macbeth “brandished his steel, which smoked with bloody execution.” Macbeth carved his way through Macdonwald’s men until “he came face-to-face with the slave (Macdonwald)...” • …at which point Macbeth “unseamed him (Macdonwald) from the nave to the chops and stuck his head upon the battlements.”

17. Dramatic Irony • We know what characters don’t. • Suggests supernatural control (god-like author mimicked by witches) • 1.3.38: Macbeth (Echoes the witches): • So foul and fair a day I have not seen • More equivocation, Foreshadowing

18. Major Forms of Imagery • Animal: “The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan”; horses eating each other • Light / Dark: murder first done at night, then during the day; “Let not light see my dark and deep desires” • Clothing: “Why do you dress me in borrowed robes.”; “Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould But with the aid of use”

19. Major Forms of Imagery • Weather: “When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain?” • Gender: “Unsex me here”; “If you were a man…” • Sickness: If thou couldst, Doctor, cast The water of my land, find her disease And purge it to a sound and pristine health” • Appearance vs. Reality: “Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under’t

20. Clothing and baby images • Macbeth (1.3.108): The Thane of Cawdor lives. Why do you dress me in borrowed robes? (prose) • Macbeth (1.3.108): [Aside to Banquo]: Do you not hope your children shall be kings?

21. Time (tomorrow and tomorrow) • Macbeth struggles with predestination, restlessness. • Ignores Banquo’s garment image and completes either Banquo’s verse line or his own! (1.3.145-149) If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me Without my stir. Banquo: New honors come upon him Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mold But with the aid of use. Macbeth [aside]: Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

22. Now look at your quote again and add further interpretation.