TEXT:
MACDUFF
Wherefore did you so?
MACBETH
Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.
The expedition my violent love
Outrun the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood;
And his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature
For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,
Steeped in the colours of their trade, their daggers
Unmannerly breeched with gore: who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make’s love known?
LADY MACBETH
Help me hence, ho!
MACDUFF
Look to the lady.
MALCOLM [Aside to DONALBAIN]
Why do we hold our tongues, that most may claim
This argument for ours?
DONALBAIN [Aside to MALCOLM]
What should be spoken
Here, where our fate, hid in an auger-hole,
May rush, and seize us? Let’s away;
Our tears are not yet brewed.
MALCOLM [Aside to DONALBAIN]
Nor our strong sorrow
Upon the foot of motion.
BANQUO
Look to the lady!
LADY MACBETH is carried out
NOTES
Antithesis
Antithesis is one of the central keys to unlocking Shakespeare’s language. Simply put, it’s a word or group of words set against its opposite. The contrast between the two juxtaposed ideas - the antithesis - enriches the imagery and depth of thought. The actor must play the antithesis in order to highlight the meaning of the text. Some recognisable examples of antithesis in Shakespeare are:
To be, or not to be. . .
Fair is foul, and foul is fair. . .
What he has lost, noble Macbeth has won. . .
For more information on antithesis, click here to visit The Basics, and scroll down to Episode 04.
Messenger
Most particularly a feature of Greek tragedy, and some Roman remixes of the genre by the likes of Seneca, Messenger speeches were a major element of classical drama. So many grisly or shocking things take place offstage that it became a key element of any performance to have a Messenger come on and report what had happened. Here Macbeth himself is assuming the role, giving the on-stage audience (and the theatrical audience) an account of Duncan’s murder scene. The play with how theatre works within Macbeth is quite fascinating - as it tends to be in so many of Shakespeare’s plays.
Funeral Oration (Julius Caesar)
As mentioned within the episode, Shakespeare was quite an expert in describing stab wounds and assassination victims. The most extraordinary of these is the funeral speech given by Mark Antony in Julius Caesar. It begins with “Friends, Romans, Countrymen…” and contains several justly famous phrases. Antony is shown to be a spectacularly clever orator, and ends his speech by showing the dead Caesar’s mutilated corpse to the crowd and effectively fomenting a civil war in Rome. He describes the wound left by Brutus as “the unkindest cut of all”.
Discoverie of Witchcraft
Reginald Scot wrote The Discoverie of Witchcraft in the early 1580s. This fascinating volume was written in part to try to stop the continued persecution, torture and execution of women who were declared witches. Scot held that such prosecutions were thoroughly un-Christian. Less than a century earlier, Europe had been utterly taken in by Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum - aka The Hammer of Witches - which caused massive prejudice and hysteria against women across the continent. THAT book spread in no small part thanks to the invention of the printing press, making publishing a remarkably more accessible medium.
Scot’s book is also a significant compilation of contemporary beliefs and superstitions about witchcraft, magic and the occult, and remains the basis for many studies today. When James became king of England, the rumour has it that all accessible copies of it were destroyed. James himself would eventually write his own attack on witches in Daemonologie, a three-book screed written in 1597.
Auger
An auger is a kind of drill-bit, used to make small and precise holes. The image works because Donalbain is suggesting that trouble could sneak in and lurk even via a hole that small.
An auger - it’s a very precise kind of drill.