Hello and welcome to classical stuff. You should know a podcast about an hour long As always by wack-a-wack himself and Donaldson hi and We've called you walk away the wiggle fart for himself say again and burn part wiggle that's for sure For the fart sir, all right. We are here to We're here to study a little bit of Shakespeare so we have we found ourselves a theater We are all sitting on stage right now, and that is the one place I want to be well while we discuss Macbeth I was supposed to say that over and over in the theater. I was gonna say that's not something you should ever say What okay, maybe we should do a whole other episode on the history of that because people I've always grown up saying like you do See me better theater, but what is it?
Where did it come from? That's your episode? I wasn't planning on talking about that. Okay, but we are talking about potato It's traced back to the place original 1606 performance.
Okay, what tales of the actor playing lady Macbeth dying on opening night Whoa other supposed mishaps include real daggers being used for props actors falling off stages and mysterious deaths or accidents during production It's a pretty dark place. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me if you know some spooky things happen around it I love Macbeth. So we're talking about Macbeth. This is a patreon requested episode I said hey, I've got a couple episodes ideas that I could do and I gave a list of two More but I was unanimously everybody wanted Macbeth and they poo poo to the other one not sure We'll do that one later later, but we're gonna be talking about Macbeth and not just like we're not just gonna run through the play I'm pretty sure we've done in that episode on Macbeth.
We have a long time ago So we're gonna talk a little bit about like sort of one of the one of the big themes in the play or also How you can if you're teaching me Beth or if you're reading it how you can kind of take a lot of the lines or a lot of kind of these What seem like these desperate things these like sort of one-off little phrases But are actually working together to create kind of like interpretive lens to understand what's happening on the play kind of symbolically or maybe Thematically if that makes any sense We talked about doing this kind of thing when we I did an episode on Romeo and Juliet and how some of the big metaphors about plants and poison and medicine Is kind of like this this this big Interpretive lens that you can take to the play itself that Romeo and Juliet are like these ingredients to a medicine that when combined heal the families But destroy the ingredients, you know this kind of stuff and there's something similar that's happening Macbeth in regards to Medieval cosmology, which is where all good pie cash should start Do a sphere is like a new version of my old old one of the first ten episodes We probably let's do a recap So AJ if you were if someone was saying like what is medieval cosmology because I know you teach it to your ninth graders Like what is it in a nutshell the cause like the way the system of thought that the people in the middle ages used to like understand Nature and the cosmos and the heavens and the spheres and then that translated to understand themselves and governments and all that stuff Man, that's like a whole I do a whole like hour and a half long lecture for my students on this But I'll give you the short version, so please it's geocentric so earth in the middle But that wasn't it wasn't they were like stupid it was that they did some observations and tried to do the best They could and it seemed like earth was in the center Around the earth are several concentrics big crystal spheres big crystal balls and each of those is lodged one of the planetary things so The one just outside of the earth is a sphere of fire I think and then the moon and then is mercury Venus and then the Sun so the Sun is its own sphere like it's they thought it was a planet Just a really bright one He goes all the way out until the outermost sphere called the premium mobile So we see the stars and then beyond that is where pure logic lives that the realm of God a throne of timelessness of life entire and Logos the like functioning of math was basically like when you learned it you were in the mind of God So the more you learned math the more you learned about how God worked and functioned So when they say in the beginning was the word logos and the word was with God logos They're basically saying Jesus is the foundational functioning principle of the universe In each of those areas there are beings that are that live in those spaces so each of the planets has its own little intelligence that runs the planet I wouldn't say necessarily a soul But it's like a thing its job is to move the planet it tries to get as close to God as it can and the most perfect movement can imitate is like circular motion then there are Angels that live in those arenas and they're different like levels and hierarchies of angels some of them are concerned with us only the bottom Third or so and then the two top thirds are concerned with God some are really close and are like on fire when they're praising Comes all the way down to our personal genius who is a spirit that is attended to us And then in the air you have these things called Damons there are things that live in the air and then on the earth You have you know creatures humans and then you also have an extra species called the long jedi or fairies if you want to call them fairies They're dark fairies which are bad and steal your kids It's not very clear what they are they could be the dead or special class of the dead or another species entirely You also have the high fairies which are regal and usually meet you for Amher's adventures and then you have the Low wood fairies who are like love to dance and generally avoid people if they can They're basically the big so you have the spheres and maybe the big takeaway is that there are Like the way that man is built with reason spirit and appetite is a reflection of the universe which which is like at the bottom where we are Was not it's a big mistake to think that we put ourselves in the middle because we thought we're the most awesome most important Generally the view is that we are where everything that is mutable lives we fall apart. We are not eternal We're like the worst part. We're all you know what's left over We died we died as well. Exactly.
It's not that we're like the absolute best and then you have the enforcers the spirit That's the angels and then you have God so there's reason which is like reason and then that also reflects the Godhead So there's this beautiful symmetry between God the universe the state and man And then they also assumed and this is actually true This one piece that I think we've lost is that the universe is full of light so the Sun is constantly filling the whole thing with light We just are in shadow at nighttime. That's actually true of the universe Yeah, it looks like a black background But we can see stars and that we can see the means that basically the whole universe is just chock full of light everywhere Which is kind of changes my feel of the universe instead of thinking of a dark expanse. It's a brightly lit So this is this is good. So this is yes, that's perfect And if there's sort of one way to sort of crystallize that the system of Interpretation of the universe that the mind of the Middle Ages made up was one that Was trying to take all of the components together and fit it into an understanding that Was true for them as human beings which was true for the universe So it's a phrase that's gotten co-opted in sort of like modern woo woo a new age stuff But the idea of like as above so below which is you hear that a lot in like a new age wackiness But that was very much true of the Middle Ages like the way that the universe was ordered was the way that man was ordered God at the head he's got his angels who carry out his commands and then he's got the the world of the appetites And that was true So like God was was the creator and his creation he had authority over and this idea that there was there was this relationship of authority a relationship of of order is throughout Macbeth because what Macbeth does when he kills Duncan is that he is inverting the The way that the world is supposed to be and it has all of these effects on all of these different facets of human order So obviously the big one is that God is the authority over all that he's created and this mimics itself mimics itself in a bunch of different relationships of authority and and I guess subjects one being sort of like nature and Creatures is another one of these pairings nature is kind of this governing authority It has its rules it has its way of being and then we as creatures are sort of subjects to almost to mother nature So the animals horses birds the plants they are the subjects of their queen which would be nature herself That's that's one of these these pairings another pairing would be reason to the soul So like reason is like the god of the soul.
We use our reason to govern our soul This is an old platonic idea health is like the thing that governs our bodies So we have there is this the principle of human health harmony is the governor of music and and then you also have that fathers are the govern the family and How would this place itself out in government is that the king is supposed to govern his people and his people are subject to the king and So when you have an ordained king like Duncan who has been poured over with this sort of holy oil It's not just that it's kind of helpful to have somebody in charge It's that he is almost his life is almost like a metaphor of the universe his ruling of the kingdom is kind of like God ruling over everything It's like health ruling over the body. It's like reason ruling over the soul. It's like a father ruling over the family It's like nature ruling over creation Everything in the heart or everything in the system of understanding maybe the worldview of the Middle Ages was this relationship between authority and subject and not in a heavy-handed Kind of like exploited of way whereas we as modern people tend to think of authority as primarily exploitative and subjects as mainly like the exploited In the Middle Ages it was sort of this harmonious back and forth now of course in practice There was terrible kings and there's revolutions and but the system the ideal this sort of not so much a classical ideal but the sort of medieval ideal was one that the order of everything if Everything the kingdom would be healthy if things were in order and if things were running the way they ought to run Okay, and just to speak in like defensive King's not that I want a king but a king in his ideal was somebody that cares for the people and takes risks and like Risks that the people don't want to take and most of antiquity knew that being a king was a really hard job And a lot of people didn't want it Yeah And so the king like a good king was something to be cherished now I didn't always work out that way kings were often terrible But good kings were something that the people really loved and yearn for and when it was working as it should the king cared for and Like rewarded his subjects and the subject in turn serve their king well, right? So it's not it's like a relationship that could be really good, right?
Yes, and so there's a scene where Duncan even talks about like him dispensing his his goodies to the people as a As a reflection of this I'll see if I can find that because I didn't pull it right at the beginning right after those beginning but I can find it if you want and also the the image that they had of the king if the if in the Christian West if they think of like What is the image that we have of what the good king is and what is the most important coronation that has ever happened is what? What's the most important coronation maybe that's ever happened? Yeah, who is who has been raised up to be our king and who is crowned for our for us? Christ what exactly exactly so like the image that the medieval's had of like the ultimate king was a man sacrificing himself for his people was a man dying for his people so even the image that the medieval's had the king wasn't like a Cyrus the great who's gonna stop on everybody or Now is that the great who's gonna run over the earth or a Caesar?
It was a a person who was going to give up and pour himself out for his people so now Did that ever did that always happen? Of course not but at least the ideal was of this sort of sacrificial king, right? Let's see where is I'm just trying to see so here's a part where Duncan is like rewarding the Beth He's so one guy turned traitor so he says go and pronounce his death and with this more time Green Macbeth so Duncan is just greeting me Beth and he says welcome hither I have begun to play the end will labor to make thee full-growing noble bank Well, that has no less deserved nor must be known no less to have done so let me unfold the and hold the to my heart As there if I grow the harvest is your own so you got this idea that like the king's job is to take care of his subjects and Give them the things that they need so that they can flourish And so not only do we have this vision of the king that is supposed to bring it bring life and flourishing to his people It's also playing into this metaphor that nature does this for us nature takes care of us and And and brings forth like the fruits and the flourishing of all this the reason why I'm laboring this point to bring this all up Is that if you go and read through Macbeth and you have those pairs in your mind nature to the creation father to family health to body Reason to soul and king to people you see that the that the treason and the murder that Macbeth and lady Macbeth crave Ends up inverting and destroying all of those all of those relationships and they get expressed sort of symbolically through it So I'll give the example the maybe the most The one of the the example that I that tipped me on to this as I was reading this is that when Duncan gets killed when Macbeth kills Duncan There's a couple of characters who are talking about what happened that night So you had Duncan gets murdered and we'll look at the scene where Duncan's murdered in a second But you have these two characters who are talking about that there was a crazy storm that happened the night before And so there so when Duncan is murdered nature seems to go into a revolt itself and it gets sort of inverted The old man says that three score and ten I can remember well within the volume of which time I have seen hours dreadful and things strange But this sort night has trifled former knowing and Ross the guy who's talking to us like yeah, man It was wild last night. I've never seen nature be so destructive in her force and the man says tis unnatural That's probably a great word for Macbeth this inversion That happens with their murder of Duncan and their alliance with the witches is an unnaturing an unnatural thing going against the natural order Even like the deed that's done on Tuesday last a falcon towering in her pride of place was by a mousing owl Hocked at and killed so it's guys like I saw this like tiny bird eat a falcon And Ross says and Duncan's horses a thing most strange and certain Beauty is and swift the minions of their race turned wild in nature broke their stalls flung out Contending against obedience as they would make war with mankind and the old man says tis said they eat each other So Duncan's noble horses Sort of go mad and break out their stalls and hate human beings and they end up eating each other these horses You know, I can just I was for whatever reason when I remember reading this as a kid I have this image in my mind of like the red muzzle of a horse like eating another horse and I was so horrifying It's so unnatural.
It's such an inversion of the way that we think of things and this is what the murder of Duncan was like And so the Macbeth takes on the play takes on a view or it is a a good example of the Christian understanding of sin That sin is not an opposite of good sin is an inverting of good a twisting of good taking that which is natural taking that which is orderly Taking that which is the way things ought to be and just slightly changing them Just twisting them a little bit inverting them making them not be adding a little note of discord to a harmony Adding a little bit of a of a twisting to the story Or to take what the witches say as soon as they in the very first scene when they're introduced fair is foul and foul is fair Right that famous phrase that this is what? This is that element that is going to exist into our harmonious whole is you we're gonna take that which is fair We're gonna make a little foul. We're gonna take that which is foul and we're gonna promote that thing is fair and And the witches really kind of are these agents of inversion Even when Banquo sees the witches for the first time you remember what he says about them He doesn't know if they're men or women He's like you have a you're a weird woman, but you're beard would hit that you are not exactly so you even have these characters that they're not men They're not women. They are they are they are their appearance is such To confuse the world into this and even their language is is presented in order to confuse so The witches in verd language They take they they flatter Macbeth and they give they say like hail Thean of glamis hail thean of cawdor and hail king hereafter and Macbeth is already thean of glamis And then he becomes thean of cawdor and he's like well I must become king like they sort of give him this prophecy and maybe that's what I want to talk about in the in-between about this idea of Prophecy like when when we're given prophecies like does that run away, right?
Huh? No, I was gonna say more like When the oracles give us a prophecy does it end up becoming fulfilled because we now believe it as prophecy and we like subconsciously Work to make it happen we can talk about that in between because that's not really what we're talking about in this episode But how prophecies kind of work, but these witches come in and they are these agents of inversion and so they say fairs foul and fouls fair They're not really women. They're not really men. They're not really physical or corporeal We don't know because they kind of vanish and they're and they are clearly in league with darkness They're clearly in league with evil hecatee is the they sing songs to hecatee the queen the head witch And you've kind of got this element that is coming in to to sort of unseat Nat nature to sort of like to sort of break up the natural thing and and it's in the murder the Macbeth does so let's see This if you if you go into reading this play with having eyes open for that For the disruption of natural things you'll see it everywhere even a little little line so like when Let's see When Macbeth kills Duncan when sorry when Malcolm who has seen the dead body of Duncan so Malcolm is one of the characters who is he's like the noble He ends up killing Macbeth at the end.
He is the true believer. He is the good. He's like the anti Macbeth He is like the the virtuous man When he sees the but the dead body of Duncan he brings into this theme so he says alright McDuff says oh my god has seen the dead body of Duncan. He says oh horror horror horror He comes in he says confusion now hath made his masterpiece most sac religious murder hath broke open the Lords of an anointed temple and stole events the life of the building and everyone's like what are you talking about and This idea that the king is The king is like the Lords anointed temple and the killing of the king is like the sacrilege of the temple And now all the holy relics have been ransacked and now we are gonna have pestilence and death because we have you know We've we've done this impious thing just as if you destroyed a temple You are now gonna have the gods are going to bring curses or bring plagues or all sorts of things the killing of the king is now Going to bring these terrible things Macbeth kind of echoes this when he pretends to be upset about the death of of Duncan he says this here lay Duncan his silver skin laced with his golden blood and his gash stabs looked like a breach in nature For ruins wasteful entrance Again this like phrase that has to do with the killing of the king is like somebody coming and just like tearing into a landscape Just making a breach into plants or into a natural scene And when you do that when you disturb the soil or when you rip the bark of plants you bring in the capacity for disease and pestilence, right?
and so Mcmick the killing of Duncan has kind of is bringing about this Capacity for the death of nature or for disease to come in and what has and the whole thing that has sparked this is Been Macbeth sin Macbeth's pride Macbeth ambition to be king himself Um One where lady McDuff's husband has just run off and she says wisdom to leave his wife to leave his babes his mansion His titles in a place from whence himself does fly he loves us not here's the important bit He wants the natural touch for the poor ran the most diminutive of birds will fight her young ones in her nest against the owl Against the owl all his fear and nothing is love as little as the wisdom where the flight so runs against all reasons So basically he's he is left and that is something against nature and doesn't doesn't Duncan show up and when he shows up He's like all nature announces my entrance something like that. It's everywhere Yes, now Lady McDuff she the thing is now this is coming to the sort of the second layer of the play that I want to talk about a Little bit later is that people are also wrong Right like so Lady McDuff is saying this and she's saying like oh man my husband I can't believe he abandoned us and she says it's unnatural a bird even a little even a wren the tiniest of birds stays in the nest To fight off people going after his chicks and the reality is that McDuff has actually gone off to find an army to bring back to protect Scotland now Of course when he's gone he doesn't take into account how evil Macbeth is because Macbeth does come and kill Lady McDuff and her chicks And so in that sense Lady McDuff is right McDuff didn't stay behind to protect her He's gone off and they are open up to the to the destruction of the tyrant and so they are killed but But everyone like she sort of reads a situation like this and her son and I think it's either Ross or Angus say to her like You're wrong lady like McDuff's gone off. He's actually a noble guy. He's gone off to do this thing She's like doesn't seem so noble to me he's abandoned me and then she ends up getting killed so The reading of people is also another sort of theme in this play which we can come back to because Duncan Can't really read people very well either So let's see what other inversions that we have in here Lady Macbeth is probably another great one You have the inversion in the character of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth You have great examples of taking the masculine and taking the feminine and inverting them into into their like dark and evil manifestations Macbeth So Lady Macbeth when we first introduced to her she's got this big long speech where she basically asks all of hell to take away her femininity So that she can be more ambitious She asks all of the minions of darkness to to take away all of the graces of her feminine Her feminine ways so that she can become more wicked.
I mean it's one of my favorite speeches in the whole place I'll read it. So let's see so she gets a note from her husband saying that the witches told me that I'm gonna be king And the first thing that I think that says is my husband doesn't have what it takes to be king He's too nice, which is really funny because the whole beginning of the play is Macbeth Them talking about how bloodthirsty Macbeth has been in battle cutting dudes in half with his sword when you see Macbeth For the first time he's probably covered head to toe in bloody gore and then Lady Macbeth says that he's too He's too nice But this is our introduction to Lady Macbeth. I'll read it Glamis thou art and cawdor and shelt be what thou art promised yet I do fear thy nature It is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way Now what's to be great art not without ambition but without the illness should attend it What thou wouldest highly thou wouldest holily wouldest not play fault and yet wouldest wrongly win Thouest have great Glamis that which cries thou thus thou must do if thou have it and that which rather thou doest fear to do Then wishes should be undone High the hither that I may pour my spirits in thine ear and chastise with the valor of my tongue all that impedes the from the golden round which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem to have the crown with all and then someone comes in and Says like hey the king is on his way and then he exits and then Lady Macbeth says the raven himself is horse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements come You spirits that tend on mortal thoughts unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe top full of Diarist cruelty make thick my blood stop up the access and passage to remorse that no Compunctious visitings of nature shake my fill purpose nor keep peace between the effect and it Come to my women's breasts and take my milk for gall you murdering ministers wherever in your sightless substances you wait on Nature's mischief come thick night and Paul the in the done most smoke of hell that my keen knife See not the wound makes nor having peep through the blanket of the dark to cry hold hold Such a good speech man. She's been hard on that one in that speech think of if you're just reading that speech with your antenna up for like inversion of nature It's almost in every line.
Yeah, she wants to be on sex She wants her milk of humankind is to be gone. She wants literally her milk to be gall She wants her blood to be thick make think my blood stop up the access and passage to remorse So if there's if there's something natural in a human person to feel pity I want to be unnatural so I no longer feel that pity She even says and this is I think if you were skeptical about the idea of inversion think about this Fill me from the crown to the toe top full of diarist cruelty So fill me from the crown to the toe of diarist cruelty well if you're filling from the crown To the toe like doesn't that sound like she's upside down like if you're being filled from the crown to the toe Maybe I'm wrong, but I even think that when she's saying that she's almost like thinking of herself being inverted Right being turned upside down and filled from the crown to her toe Anyway, maybe not but feeling from the crown to the toe top full of diarist cruelty So she has got this big long speech where she's basically asking the minions of hell to take away her femininity So that she cannot have any kind of mercy and be totally filled with with cruelty So she can take this in unholy way because Mcbeth isn't Yes, and where's it gonna happen? It's going to happen in her home It's going to happen in the place where she is the matron the mistress of she should be hospitable She should be hospitable, but her home is gonna be a place of death She should be this place where when you come you are welcome and you are safe But you are now going to be murdered in your bed So the really funny thing to me is that it seems like did Duncan have a kid or was it two boys? He has two boys There are people that are like in the running for kingship.
Okay, that makes sense I was gonna say it seems like Mcbeth would have gotten some sort of a reward near there But you've got Malcolm and Donald Bain who they basically when the murder happens are like we gotta get out of here And they flee now so if you so in the If we want if we think about masculinity and femininity in an archetypal way like what is that when we mean that which is feminine? the capacity for culture the the creation of life the taking of Like the baser materials and elevating them into higher materials like this is this is sort of the archetypal feminine We've talked about this on on episodes on paradise lost before that kind of in in this the Christian conception of Femaleness of femininity is is that in Eve? It is that in Mary? It is that which is sort of ordering of things It is it is the creation of home.
It is the creation of a place where life can happen both in the womb and also in the community If masculinity is is the sort of the outward action if the masculine is about like wonder and reason and Exploring and expanding the borders of Eden Eve is all about taking those expanded borders and elevating them into a Place of culture taking and turning the world into a home turning four walls into a hearth right like this is the combining of male and female together is this is this element of elevating and and life-giving this is kind of the This great vision of the Christian marriage that has existed in Western literature are we tracking and then people are like What are you talking about? We go into a lot more detail on previous episodes on this kind of thing What I wanted to get out in this episode is that both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth by aligning themselves with the print with like the forces of darkness to sort of Satiate their own ambitions end up having to invert those things themselves Lady Macbeth no longer wants to be a place of of of life and her home is no longer a place of welcoming in a king and welcoming in people and serving them and and being a place of feasting and Marry minton warmth in a cold cruel world it ends up being a place of where you're going to be murdered in your foot but you're in your sleep and she's not going to have any sort of Compassion for it. It's very funny later on she pretends the faint so that she can like cast suspicion away from Macbeth and And I think one of the characters is like oh Lady Macbeth Oh, you don't want to hear what we're talking about this is no place for a lady Which is very funny because she like was the one that basically like egged her husband on to doing this like Lady Macbeth is no no No dainty lady So you have this sort of like Lady Macbeth inverts yourself so that her very femininity becomes some sort of dark version of it this sort of like devouring a woman who wants to sort of kill and destroy and then Macbeth himself ends up being a version of this Later on in the play He is filled with anxiety and he is filled with nervousness He can no longer sleep with it which is his own inversion We'll talk about in a second and he goes back to the witches and they give him more prophecies to mess with his head And these are the famous ones of that burnum wood You're gonna be cool until the until Burnham wood comes to your castle No one born of a woman is ever going to kill you and you should be aware of Macduff and when Macbeth here's these prophecies He says that like you know this is he no longer has to worry, but he's got don't see if we can find it he has this This speech where he says that He no longer is going to care about measured action and he says the first things of my head The first things of my heart should be the first things of my hand or something like that where he says as soon as I feel something I'm now going to go and do it. I am now no longer gonna have like measured rational discourse of my actions Whatever I feel I'm going to lash out and do no matter how violent and this is sort of the inversion of the masculine Macbeth No longer is Macbeth He is he's not gonna be someone who is going to be a reasoned and measured in his violence One of the good things about masculinity is that it can be forceful and violent for good And for justice but now Macbeth is saying like I'm no longer gonna be reasoned and measured in my violence I'm no longer gonna be my soul is now no longer gonna be ruled by my reason It is going to be ruled by my appetites It's gonna be ruled by my inclinations by my instinct The first thing I think is gonna be the first thing that I do and this is sort of Macbeth giving himself over to this inversion Whereas Lady Macbeth is saying like I'm gonna turn my home into a place of death Macbeth is now saying I'm gonna turn my ability to be powerful to have force no longer for good I'm gonna use it now for evil or I'm gonna use it for my own desires And then it's at this point that Macbeth is now just like the bloodthirsty cruel tyrant There's no there's no room for him to debate earlier in the play.
He's like should I do this? I shouldn't do this. I know it's wrong But I really want to be king and gosh darn those witches told me I should be and I should listen to them And he kind of has almost like a hamlet nature to him where he's kind of going back and forth over this But by the end of the play he is just He's fully corrupt. He's fully corrupted bloodthirsty madman who thinks nothing of dressing down a person He basically is like the third world tyrant who like when the person comes and says Your wife is sick.
He's like you cure her I'll kill you right like he he gets full sort of turns into this full tyrant So yeah, the course of the play you get this inversion of Macbeth is masculine this inversion of lady Macbeth is feminine You get the destruction of nature courses reading each other Birds that are eating each other that shouldn't be eating each other And then you get a couple of other inversions that happen The famous thing that happens to Macbeth is that when he kills Duncan He wakes up the guards who are drunk and frightens them because he's covered in blood and they see him and they think they're seeing a ghost But they're so drunk they don't really know what's going on and they whisper they say the Lord's prayer to and they Go back to sleep and they both say amen and Macbeth realizes that he himself can no longer say amen And the amen sticks in his throat and then Macbeth is convinced that he has heard That he heard a voice saying that he is never going to sleep again, so here we go So this is what Macbeth and the name of Beth are having this conversation and after the murder has happened Macbeth said one tried God bless us and amen the other as they had seen me with these hang man's hands listening to their fear I could not say I'm in when they did say God bless us. I mean best says consider it not so deeply Macbeth, but wherefore could I not pronounce amen? I had most need of blessing and amen stuck in my throat and then Macbeth said these These must must not be thought after these ways, so it will make us mad which is some fun for showing I'm thinking about it. It's gonna drive you crazy crazy.
Macbeth says me thought I heard a voice cry sleep no more Macbeth does murder sleep the innocent sleep sleep that knits up the rabbled sleeve of care the death of each day's life Soar labors bath bomb of hurt minds great nature's second course chief nourisher in life's feast Maybe that's what do you mean still it cried sleep no more to all the house glamest half-merded sleep and therefore coddle or shall sleep no more Macbeth shall sleep no more and then Macbeth is like stop being such a big giant baby Now Macbeth so here's another thing that gets inverted Macbeth kills Duncan and Macbeth now has his guilty conscience It's going to keep him from sleep and this happens to the rest of the play Macbeth no longer gets to sleep He murders Macbeth Duncan, but he now no longer gets to sleep and he talks about the good thing that sleep is sleep is a natural thing When we can't sleep something unnatural has happened to us right it is not it is it is a you know It is a bad thing when if someone doesn't sleep like you'll die if you don't sleep right if you don't sleep and you haven't saw me You will go crazy you will get take a leave of your senses Macbeth has those wonderful lines of what sleep is it knits up the rabbled sleeve of care I'm actually wearing a shirt that has a big hole in the arm I could have my sleeve of care being being knit up The death of each day's life sore labors bath right like after a good day of doing like good work in the world And you go to bed you're a little bit sore in your line your bed. You're like oh this is so nice Macbeth doesn't get to have that anymore. Yeah, I remember when our walk in England this song like sleeping was was glorious Bab you come home with a clap of shoes. You have a shower you lay in the hotel bed and like sore labors bath It was awesome.
It was wonderful. Yeah by Macbeth giving in to his ambition. He no longer has this He's relationship to this natural thing his relationship to nature So think of maybe sleep is bestow to us by nature herself as a thing to Secure us to knit us back up after a day nature bestows wonderful sleep on us Well, nature's great nature's second course is what it was called Chief nourisher in life's feast and now the back is cut off from that because he's gone off And he's decided to align himself with the forces of the witches He is now no longer going to be able to partake in some of the great things like sleep So there's another broken another inverted thing Macbeth is now someone who is going to be awake when everybody else is asleep He is going to be sort of his mind is going to be overrun by cares when all the innocent get to sleep Lady me bath also has another fate befall her. What's who remembers?
What's the famous fate that befalls lady Macbeth? Oh, she got bananas. She she does she sleep box So at the beginning of the book when the murder has done lay my best says don't think about it Just stop thinking about it Just put it from your mind if you keep thinking about it It's gonna make you go crazy later on Macbeth is going to see a ghost of Benquo and he is going to be very He's gonna make his guests feel real weird because he's gonna be shouting out all sorts of things like get away from you bloody thing And I thought you were dead. I thought I did away with you and lady He does this for time Yeah, he this was a malady.
He's had since he was a kid don't think about it. Just ignore it. Let's just keep eating Let's just put it from our mind. Just move forward and all the guests are like Maybe we should leave and they actually do leave and let me about this furious Just like the dory of the just keep swimming just Now this is like me best sort of like her way of dealing with it is sort of this this just move forward She wants to master she wants to have dominion over her guilty conscience But you can drive nature out with the pitchfork, but she keeps coming back.
Isn't that the proverb? So how does it how does it come back with lady me Beth? Well, she it goes into her mind, right like she is She goes she goes mad. She can no longer sleep and she sleeps walk she sleep walks So when when the doctor and the gentle woman are discussing this the doctor comes in He's like so you've seen her walking around the gentleman was like yeah, and she says the most terrible things and The doctor says hmm a great perturbation in nature to receive it once the benefit of sleep and do the effects of watching in this Slumberi agitation besides her waking and other actual performances what at any other times have you heard her say and the gentleman says I'm not telling you what she says because it's so terrible and then maybe Beth comes in she says things like who would have known that the old man was so full of blood and I have so much blood in there and the doctor says unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles Infected minds to their death pillows will discharge their secrets more needs she the divine than the physician God God forgive us all Look after her remove her from the means of all annoyance So make sure she's not near sharp objects who says the doctor?
The doctor does know his stuff and then later on Macbeth says when the doctor says your wife is sick and Macbeth says cure her of that Can't without not minister to a mind diseased pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow raise out the written troubles of the brain And with some sweet oblivious antidote cleans the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart and the doctor replies No, they're in the patient must minister to himself I mean that says ah throw a visit to the dogs I'll none of it And then he's then he basically says travel the countryside and find some kind of drug that you can give my wife to make her normal again And the doctor says I am getting out of this country this place is falling apart So my bed is basically like give her a drug give her some white wine should be fine just give her something and in other words like fix it through some sort of my natural means or whatever and the doctors like This can only be done you can only do this the right way and in this case the right way is like confession And so there's this sort of linking of that this inversion that comes with this grand sin this sin that would basically It's not just the killing of Duncan It's like it's taking this whole vision of the ordered universe the way that AJ described at the beginning and basically saying to that thing No, like screw that. I want to destroy it or I want to be in a different place I want to be higher up than my than my allotted position in this world is I'm adding an element of discord to this harmony and when you do the system falls apart your body falls apart Lady my bath goes crazy your mind falls apart and the Beth and Lady Macbeth can no longer sleep or their sleep is troubled nature falls apart You got horses eating each other his country falls apart every leaves like and he's not ruling anything well the government falls apart and everyone is in Rebellion against McBeth yeah Reason falls apart McBeth no longer like can see the obvious thing which every tenth grader who's ever read this can see which is like the witches are not For your good. They are not like giving you good things his reason falls apart and McBeth places his like hope in the in like his interpretation of the Of the prophecies of the witches is that he's gonna die old man because he's like oh If no one born of women's gonna kill me so that means that natural death will kill me and I'm not gonna die until Burnham wood reaches my gates Well, it takes trees a long time to grow so I'm gonna be on the man This is perfect and the reality is is that he's killed by someone from c-section and people are dressed up like trees The other the other thing that like if you are still feeling weird about the whole natural order thing And if you like get out of your position everything goes wrong Well, I mean this is what they believe about the universe and and for the the in like the bounds of the play He is a bad king like he doesn't rule kindly right Duncan when he he rewards people who serve him well He is kind he like takes away traitors he helps people who are good maybe Don't keep going. This is how I wanted to end the podcast with with throwing a shade of doubt upon Duncan But we'll come to that okay, but in any case like we know McBeth is not a good ruler dude consorts wishes He kills people that disagree with him.
He is like not as caring for his wife everything kind of goes Hey, why yeah, and nature writing itself like I think it does at the end right nature comes back and says like this ain't gonna happen You don't get to stay this way almost literally it's almost literally the forest itself comes to attack exactly like nature itself comes back and says no You can't be this and the answer coming yeah, so what is the shade on? Later so but so if you another element on this is that lady McBeth and McBeth are have a fruitless marriage They don't have any children and they can't seem to have children or if they do It's not really sort of talked about their kind of this like power couple She's obviously prey to the devil to take away her womenly ways, so you know, that's got to do a number on child rearing And so there's like that symbolically right there. They also don't have the natural family that you know of husband and wife produces child like there is there is they There is that element going on there as well now. There's another side of that whole story which we talked about in our AMA earlier So we're not saying that that fruit the marriages without children are unnatural But in this play it clearly is is geared towards that is that there's a couple of references to this And so you get all sorts of these inversions and it also plays itself out in the relationship between the king and his people everybody hates McBeth Everybody is scared of him later on his I think it says that the troops are fighting for him because of command not because of love and it's like oh, you know, so McBeth is is This is what sin does like it promises the crown and you get it, but you lose everything else right like hell is getting what you want McBeth is So there's this play that fairs foul and fouls fair this inversion of everything Is kind of this like thematic lens that you can use to read the play and when you have that sort of theme bouncing around your mind You see it pops up.
It is it is everywhere. Um nature health music family king people that sort of inversion is everywhere And it's embodied in these witches. Do you do any research of the like when this book is written in who was performed for? No, not really.
So this kind of I did a quick google and it was performed for James the first who had just sent it to the throne and was from Scotland So this it puts a little bit into context like this was when um Shakespeare was patronized by king At least I would assume so so this was performed for a king and saying like hey when the king dies everything goes screwy would have been Something totally acceptable to a king and you can easily explain the play away that way But this is a thing that also shows up in other books like in julius Caesar which was written not necessarily it was written for the opening of the globe Not necessarily for a specific monarch. It shows up again, right when Shakespeare is going or when Caesar is going to die All of nature goes topsy turvy the night before and basically they try to say like ah, it's just nature doing things like no It's not this is these are omens something's going screwy and then cesars wife says the heavens themselves blade for it blaze for the death of princes Like this is not okay. And there when we kill the the monarch everything goes bananas Like it's not it's not that it was just shakespeare trying to appeal to a new king This was something that if as you read ancient literature that hierarchy where the king is supposed to care for and serve his people The people are supposed to protect their king and serve him but it's supposed to be this wonderful back and forth relationship And that goes wrong is relation hierarchy. It's harmonious hierarchy when it goes wrong nature itself is broken Um, it's kind of everywhere and it's not just that shakespeare was appealing to a new king or at least in my opinion Like it's the more you read of that old stuff the more it is just kind of all over I have thought about that line that the heavens blazed the death of princes the very fact that we have like this giant comment that's been Flying over us this past two months the biggest comment we've ever seen anyway whatever So which print sometimes Um now he's he's a man of the people Oh gosh, um Anyway, I've had a good run um so yeah, so harmony and health are destroyed and and it's in the character of these witches Now the witches are really interesting because what is the power that they have if they have magic that works We don't really see it work.
They talk about like making their witches brew and they're gonna like shipwreck a boat and all this kind of stuff so they they they um Encinuate that they have magical powers because of their potions, but the real power that they have is in their words They take things and they imply something but they mean something else so you have this twisting of word Uh that is the power of darkness You know the power of the witches is to take a thing a word that stands for something or to take sentences to take grammar um that stand for things and Trick you with them to assume something to flatter you to go into your passions to it to to appeal to your base or desires And to trick you and they're not actually straight up lying to you They are telling you true things, but they're just not the truth that you think is true There's something to be said there about That when you are using language not in good faith and you are purposefully obfuscating yourself in order to catch somebody up You are doing that same thing you are like aligning yourself with this inversion of the witches Um, so think about that before you tweet everybody Um that there's something about like yeah the the purposeful obfuscation of language that is also evil We could even go real metaphysical on this and if we said that in the you know The word was with god and the word was god that if christ is the word of god We are doing something High christ when we are using words in the wrong way or we are using words to purposefully Misconstrued ourselves to the pain and detriment of somebody else that I think has a that's a that's a thought that I think has a lot of legs Uh that is that is worth turning over in your mind. Um, and this is this is the thing that destroys me beth It's not that they like pour a potion on him. He's like I can't help myself. I have to kill It's that they they plant in him they sort of nudge him towards his base desires through um Misusing words and mcbeth even makes some sort of reference to this.
Um, let's see if I can find it Um, but isn't it largely lady mcbeth that pushes him there like you're going to do anything That's right and a lady mcbeth seems to also be seems to sort of implicitly know this. Um, I've seen mcbeth staged where like there are little hints that lady mcbeth has had some sort of like past interactions with the witches It's never indicated in the play but it makes a lot of sense So like you have the witches maybe like have little necklaces or little trinkets or little like little doodads And maybe like lady mcbeth has one of those things on her on her like dresser Like someone gifted her this witchy object And it's kind of been infecting her because she clearly at the beginning of the play is like already evil And she's like sort of pulls her husband into it But in regards to words even bankwell says this about what the witches say um Um, but to strange and oftentimes to win us to our harm the instruments of darkness tell us truth Win us with honest trifles to betray us in deepest consequence And we're just like nah, surely not This is the idea that like the inversion even so I don't know maybe that's where it starts Maybe the inversion of all these terrible things the inversion of our health the inversion of our reason the inversion of our government the inversion of our family The inversion of nature the inversion of our relationship with god all begins with the inversion of words I don't know um the play sort of like has that it's it's it's the the subtle Prophecy that says seems to be saying two things at the same time that begins this infection Into the rest of the play if you read the play with this idea of sickness and infection you will see that that pops everywhere else Um now it's not so cut and drive that dunkin was amazing and this will end that dunkin was some sort of amazing guy and uh, How because the whole play begins with with a revolt people are rebelling against dunkin and no one ever really says why? Um and in fact the the person who rebelled against dunkin when he gets captured this is what they say about him Um, so they they capture the guy who was invaded who was betraying against dunkin Um and it doesn't seem to be for his ambition and it doesn't seem to be for anything else just he says this um Um, but I have spoke with one that saw him this unnamed or who maybe he was named as like unseen character who rebelled against dunkin I have spoke with one that saw him die who did report that very frankly he confessed his reasons Employed your highness as pardon and set forth a deep repentance Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it He died as one that hath been studied in his death to throw away the dearest thing he owed as to her a careless trifle So melton's kind of says like he kind of had this like calm Death where he confessed that he rebelled against his king and that he lost that he was cool with it So to me as a reader that leaves me with sort of like two readings either one the guy was um Sort of careless and just cared not for his life or he thought his cause was just and now that he's been caught by dunkin He's confessed that he has rebelled against him and he's gonna own it and everyone's kind of is like That's actually kind of honorable. He said nothing in his life became him like leaving him Malcolm was like if you saw him die you would have thought that like he died the right way He didn't scream he didn't growl he didn't cry he kind of like manned up and did it But it sounded like there's a third reading the third reading is that he did a wrong thing like and he knew it was wrong And when they caught him he confessed and says like yeah, I pretty much did that and then the reason his death became him like nothing Else in his life is because the rest of his life was garbage right so he did all these bad things and we finally got caught He he like flipped he owned up.
He said yep. I've done it. I deserved this death Semi-out right so I think there's a third reading there where the guy is actually bad But yes, like a remorse like helpful remorse at the end I guess the other reasons why I always have a little bit of suspicion cast on dunkin is that both of his sons don't care that he's dead um and they they just sort of like And later on when they have caught when when Malcolm and I'm a duff Malcolm the son of Duncan talk about it. Malcolm doesn't seem to like have any Midaf says like let's come and weep.
Let's cry about these things and Malcolm doesn't seem to have much remorse over it I don't know There's always just a little if you were the character if you were playing Malcolm the son of Duncan you need to make a decision Because it's unclear in the play if you are sad your dad has died or if you're kind of like now It's my turn um and maybe you're kind of happy that your dad is dead Regardless when when the traders killed Duncan says there's no art to find the mind's construction in the face Duncan's like yeah, thank you no a guy and it turns out that his rebellious against you So I don't know I I don't even think it's even as cut and dry shakespeare himself is um Obvious skating the language a little bit um there are there are I mean it's clear that mcbeth is evil and bad But there's also there's always rooms for interpretation about this rebellion at the beginning is it just was it just a power grab? Or was it that Duncan wasn't a great king? I mean um he definitely has people in rebellion against him this guy and then and then Big Beth and mcbeth has a person in rebellion against him because he's terrible. I don't know.
Why do we rebel again? Yeah, so but I mean clearly mcbeth rebellion wasn't founded on anything that Duncan had done wrong strip except for being Desire but malcom sorry mcdough's rebellion is founded on mcbeth being wrong. Oh for sure So there's like in other words Malcolm ends up being sorry mcdough ends up being an agent of justice and a cleansing agent of nature and like coming in and when he Cuts mcbeth's head off like and kills him it's a good thing like mcbeth has gone so far that there's no redeeming him And it's one of the coolest scenes it's such a good line when he says like what is that i mcdough was from his mother's womb untimely ripped Yeah, I did sort of joke in class that like um like saying I was born of c-section is kind of like a weird mic drop It is a weird mic drop, but I mean it put instant fear into mcbeth's true. Oh for sure like i've just cowers I from my mother's womb was untimely ripped mcbeth's like my crap So cool.
I love that ending scene. Yeah, anyway, that's the that's sort of if you Lots of Shakespeare plays have this whereas there are um if you sort of start reading in the these sort of symbolic elements forces eating each other um, duncan looks like a landscape that has been torn and now disease enters into it and when you sort of combine this with the sort of knowledge of This medieval cosmology you get this whole reading of the play. It's not just about one man's ambition It's about like we as individual people in our desires and like all of ordered reality Like if we want to fight against ordered reality like we could win we could get what we want, but we're not gonna like it um and so there's lots of lessons there for this sort of disembodied age we live in or or in a culture that really champions like smashing norms and um and self actualization self creation and don't do what people tell you and break out of the place and Forged your own path like there are virtuous lessons there But there's all that because that sets a lot of people up for a lot of heartbreak And like the witches like things that can be promised to you Um could also have this meaning that you aren't you don't have your ears open for that could be your own destruction. So anyway, that's it Thank you all for listening.
This has been classical stuff You should know you can find us online at classical stuff.net You can find us on patreon patreon.com slash classical stuff where we have in between episodes after each episode We're gonna record one right now to go into some more ideas from from the book from the play And then we also do monthly amas so where our patrons can ask us questions and we answer those and it's uh, it's like a full Additional episode every month. So you can find us on twitter x whatever at classical stuff clssca Stuff and you can email us at the guys at classical stuff.net. Thank you all for listening Bye-bye