Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth

Author(s): D. F. RAUBER
Source: Criticism, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Winter 1969), pp. 59-67
Published by: Wayne State University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23099051
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RAUBER*

Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth

Coleridge once remarked of Sir Thomas Browne's The Garden of
"
in earth below,
in heaven above, quincunxes
Quincunxes
Cyrus,
in
in
mind
in
the
of
tones,
man,
quincunxes
optic nerves, in
quincunxes
roots of trees, in leaves, in every thing."1 Browne's numerological
disease, if indeed it be a disease, is highly contagious, for one can find
three's everywhere in Macbeth.
These curious number patterns offer
an interesting way of examining the manner in which the tragedy
operates, though obviously one must be very cautious in pressing such
an interpretation.
The path that can legitimately be traced out is
narrow, and the abysses of inanity which border it bottomless. To
wander into the mazes of number mysticism" O horror, horror,
horror!

nor

Tongue

conceive

heart/Cannot

nor

thee!"

name

(II. iii. 69)2

It is convenient first to establish the existence of the pattern of
three's and to distinguish the various uses made of it. These uses turn
out (perhaps unfortunately)
to be three in number: the structural,
the relational, and the magical. Structural here refers to those broad
patterns that sweep across the play and in some instances beyond it.
Taking Macbeth himself as a center, we note first a clear division of
the play into three parts, each marked by a murder: jMacbeth's rise
to kingship, his uneasy holding of regal power, and finally his fall.
An even broader structural division, again tripartite, can be formulated
in

terms

of

political

stability

and

the

right

ordering

of

the

state:

the

benign and just rule of Duncan, the terrible irruption of JMacbeth's

tyranny which shakes both the state and its inhabitants almost to
destruction, and then the restoration of peace and trust with the hailing
Another structure (dare I point out it is the third?) is
of Malcolm.
the all-enfolding ordering of the universe into the realms of heaven,
represented by "most pious" Edward and idealized England; earth,
figured by bleeding Scotland, the stage of turmoil and suffering upon
which the drama is played; and hell, whose fearful representatives the
weird sisters and Hecate
*
1

D.

F. Rauber

Quoted

in The

teaches

are. This macrocosm

State College.
Diego
Brovme,
of Sir Thomas
cited in text as Wilkin.

is also reflected in the

at San

Works

1852), II, 492. Hereafter

'
All Shakespeare
quotations
ed. W. A.
Plays and Poems,

are from Macbeth

Neilson

and

C.

ed.

Simon

and are cited

J. Hill

Wilkin
from The

(Cambridge,

(London,
Complete

1942).

59

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60

D. F. Rauber

microcosm of Macbeth's
soul, and thus the all-embracing brings us
back to the centerMacbeth.
The relational concerns the position of the characters of the drama
vis-a-vis

between

one

another.

Of

Macbeth

great

importance

the

are

bonds

close

existing

and his three victims. More important yet, Shake

speare locates each of the three victims with respect to a family. The
concept of family is very important in the play, and the number three
emerges strongly as the symbol of the family, the triad of father
mother-children.3
This family triad exists in its fullness only in the
case of the family of Macduff.
With Duncan,
for reasons to be
mentioned later, the triad takes the somewhat different, but still stable,
form of Duncan, Malcolm, and Donalbain.
The most seriously defec

tive triad is, of course, the family of Macbeth, in which there is no

child. This is symmetrically balanced by the family of Banquo in
which, dramatically speaking, there is no mother.
(This defect is
not

of direct

the

importance;

mother

is absent

to

draw

son, one of whose main functions is to emphasize

critical instability of Macbeth's family.)

attention

to

by contrast

the

the

The

third held of operation for the number three is the magical.

makes extensive use of the traditional incantatory and
Shakespeare
mystical power of this potent number. This point needs no great
That there are three sisters, that they order their words
elaboration.
and actions in three's is obvious. It is worth observing, however, that
two separate aspects of the sisters meet and are partially merged in
the number three. On the one hand, they are Christian witches, agents
of

Satan;

on

the

other,

norns

or

fates,

ministers

of

some

blind

power

operating throughout time past, present, and future. Sir Thomas

Browne notes in Book IV, Chapter XII of Pseudodoxia
Epidemica
"
that the number . .. three has not been only admired by the heathens,
but from adorable grounds . . . the mystery of the Trinity, admired
(Wilkin I, 426) And it is precisely this dual
by many Christians."
that
power
Shakespeare
exploits to create figures of an especially
ominous power, creatures who live uneasily half in the pagan, half in
8

is a primary
characteristic
both
of the family
viewed
in
stability
the triangle, the stable
of social theory and of its symbol,
family functions
as a symbol
of the just state, which
as a marriage
between
ruler
may be viewed
the offspring.
and ruled, with peace and prosperity
This thought seems to underlie
"Your
words to Duncan:
Macbeth's
our duties; and
Highness'
part /Is to receive
Because

terms

our
There

duties / Are to your throne

a connection,
is likewise

kingdom

and

the divine

ordering

and

state

children

and

of reflection,
by mode
of the universe.

servants.
between

. .

(I. v. 23)
the

earthly

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Macbeth,

Macbeth,

61

Macbeth

the Christian sphere. The

basically pagan and magical force of the
weird sisters is
powerfully enhanced by our recognition that they
constitute also a blasphemy, a parody of the sacred in Christianity.
I

would

now

like

to

show,

by

way

of

example,

how

the

tnadic

elements are used to organize the play in a

highly formal way. As
mentioned previously, it is generally accepted that the play divides
into three parts corresponding
to major divisions in the career of
Macbeth. What is now to be shown is that this structure has a remark
able symmetry, one closely connected with the past, present, and
future aspects of the weird sisters. The idea to be developed is that

the three parts of the play separate Macbeth's life symbolically and
into the three divisions of youth, middle age, and old
psychologically
age, and that the same pattern is repeated in the victims, but in reverse
order. We are not, of course, dealing here with the real time of the

physicists with respect to Macbeth, but with dramatic time. It will be

seen that Shakespeare distorts and condenses real time in an
exceedingly
bold way.
facts about the
JNow, one of the most surprising psychological
Macbeth of the first section of the play (which extends to II. iv) is
that he is not at all concerned about his childlessness or the threat
to his line implicit in the prophecy to
On the practical level
Banquo.
this can perhaps be explained by the pressing nature of his immediate

problems, but a more convincing answer is to be found in his enormous

confidence in his own virility and his wife's fertility. Macbeth is, in
short, presented dramatically as a young man. The text is full of

references

to

youth

and

fertility.

Macbeth

is

introduced

in

terms

"
minion
and "Bellona's
befitting the young warrior. He is "Valour's
to
Duncan, speaking
bridegroom."
Lady Macbeth, pictures Macbeth
as an ardent and lusty husband:
. . but he rides well,/And
his
as
his
hath
him
To
his
before
home
us."
/
great love, sharp
spur,
holp
(I. vi. 22-4) Lady Macbeth, in calling upon the spirits to unsex her
(a prayer answered in a terrible and ironic way), draws attention to
her maternity: "Come
to my woman's breasts/And
take my milk
for gall"
and
her
in
confrontation
with
Macbeth
she
(I.v.48-9),
"
I have given suck, and know / How
flaunts her proven fertility:
tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me. . . ." (I. vii. 54-5) Further
more, in this important scene she adopts the strategy of questioning
Macbeth's manliness. Her attack is saturated with
and her
"sexuality,
main weapon is clearly a kind of sexual blackmail:
From this time /
Such I account thy love." (I. vii. 38-9) Macbeth, in
surrendering to
her, again draws attention to her fertility when he exclaims, "Bring

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62

D.

F. Rauber

forth men-children only;/For

thy undaunted mettle should compose/
Nothing but males." (I. vii. 72-4), which is also an indirect reassertion
of his own virility and a defence against her charge.
Duncan, the victim of this section, is an old manmore specifically,
an old father. His family triad, as noted earlier, is that of father and
two sons. A wife is not necessary dramatically, for he is the old father,

and his progenitive function has long since been completed. Emphasis
falls rather upon his double role as fatherfather, that is to say, of his
sons and father of his people.
Duncan's
role as father is shown in
various lights, but nowhere more strikingly than in Lady Macbeth's
"
Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had done't."
famous,
(II. ii. 13-4) Thus, Macbeth and his wife, strong in their fertile youth,

kill the old king-father in classic mythical fashion. And while, as

"
Macduff says to the robbed sons, The spring, the head, the fountain
of your blood/Is
(II. iii.
stopp'd; the very source of it is stopp'd."
that
two
sons
remain.
the
fact
is
the
fountain
has
the
flowed;
103-4),
In the second section of the play (which ends at IV. i. 141 or there

abouts), Macbeth and his wife are basically middle-aged.

Significantly
this portion of the play contains many references to lack of fertility,
the fear or fact of which gnaws continually at Macbeth. Further, the

major theme of this section seems to be fulfillment, and middle age

is traditionally the time of life for the fulfillment of one's work and for
In the play the fulfillment of Macbeth and his lady is
evaluation.
and
is
so felt by them. The lack of genuine accomplishment
false,
is a theme emphasized throughout the section, nowhere more impres
"
sively than in Lady Macbeth's terse, nought's had, all's spent / Where
our desire is got without content." (III.ii.4-5),
and the "all's spent"
on
of
both
the
levels
failure
to
operates
accomplish purpose and of
sexual

The

impotence.

related themes of sterility and pseudo-fulfillment are brought

into prominence in the soliloquy of Banquo which opens the section
and establishes its tone:
Thou hast it now: King, Cawdor, Glamis, all,
As the weird women promis'd, and, I fear,
Thou play'dst most foully for't; yet it was said
It should not stand in thy posterity,
But that myself should be the root and father
Of many kings.
(III. i. 1-6)
"
also dwells upon the same subject:
Upon my
a fruitless crown, / And put a barren sceptre in
my

In this scene Macbeth

head they plac'd

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Macbeth,

63

Macbeth

Macbeth,

(III. i. 61-2) This whole movement comes to a thunderous,

gripe . .
even melodramatic, climax in the apparition of the long line of Banquo
kings which concludes this second section of the play.
But the feeling of middle age which
permeates the whole section
is made most vivid in the character of
Lady Macbeth, who is rather
suddenly transformed from a young woman full of force and life, a
woman of milk-full breasts, into what amounts to a mere worn-out,
housewife, albeit a wicked one. Her main appearance
middle-aged
is in the banquet scene, and the change in her character is startling.
When she attempts to bolster the shaken Macbeth, she makes no
reference to sex. The theme is still manliness, but the mode in which
it is developed
to true

posters

is seen in the image, "O,

fear,

would

well

become

/ A

these flaws and starts, /Im

woman's

story

at a winter's

fire, / Authoriz'd by her grandam." (III. iv. 63-6) The tone is biting,
but the image is tired, middle-aged.
Our suspicion is confirmed by
her later rebuke to Macbeth, "You
have displac'd the mirth, broke
the good meeting, /With
most admir'd disorder."
(III. iv. 109-10),
which catches exactly the tone of the querulous wife whose party has
"
"
"
been spoiled. The scene ends with an explicitly
middle
I
figure:
am in blood / Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning
were as tedious as go o'er." (III. iv. 136-8) The victim of this section,
Banquo, is a contemporary of Macbeth's, so here the two series meet
and cross as the middle-aged Macbeth slays his peer.
In the final section Macbeth ages before our eyes in what is to me
one of the most impressive
The

section

opens

with

the

displays of speeded-up

news

that

Macduff

has

time in literature.

escaped

to England.

The pseudo-ordering
of the middle section has cracked apart; life
has escaped from the closed kingdom (closed up like the womb of
and the escape marks the turning of the tide, the
Lady Macbeth),
of
the
ebb
of life in Macbeth. The tyrant's frenzied response
beginning
to the news signalizes the acceleration of time which follows: "Time,
thou anticipat'st my dread exploits: / The flighty purpose never is
o'ertook / Unless the deed go with it." (IV. i. 144-6)
Macbeth
is
reacting here against old age and the dwindling of his life. Later,
"
Now does he feel his title / Hang loose about
Angus says of Macbeth,
him, like a giant's robe / Upon a dwarfish thief." (V. ii. 20-2), a figure

which

suggests very effectively the shrinking and withering of age.

But the primary source for the conception of the aged Macbeth is,
of course, his own:
I have liv'd long enough. My way of life
Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf;

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64

D. F. Rauber
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have . . .
(V. iii. 22-6)

Time now moves with ever increasing speed. Within a few lines
"
we find, I have almost forgot the taste of fears. / The time has been,
senses would have cool'd/To
hear a night-shriek . .
(V. v. 9-11)
my
"
"
Time has been
is certainly an old-man formula, and implied in the
passage are the loss of memory of old age and finally that loss of
sensation and of response which is the harbinger of death. Then
follows

the

"To-morrow,

and

to-morrow

and

to-morrow"

speech,

given special solemnity by the triadic opening, which ends with

we have here the real death of Macbeth
"nothing."
Symbolically
as well as of Lady Macbeth; the remainder of the action concerns only
the terrible twitchings of a galvanic corpse.
Macbeth, the old and dying man, in this section kills a mother and
her childrenthe source and the issue, fertility and youth. This, then,

completes the great pattern: youth kills age, middle age kills middle
age, and old age kills youth. There is another interesting pattern in
the murders: in the first the intent is to kill one only, the old king
father; in the second, to kill two, both the mature man and his young
son; in the third (taking the section as a whole and thereby including
the planned death of Macduff), to kill three, to destroy completely,
to obliterate the family triad.
Two conclusions emerge from such an analysis. It seems clear that
there is in the play a carefully worked-out triadic patterning; indeed,
a complex interweaving
in
of various triadic elements. However,
watching

these

elements

operate

in

the

play

one

becomes

aware

of

counterforce at work, one which I will suggest somewhat fancifully

belongs to the realm of the number two. A caution is in order at this
point: the triadic structures are clear and I have confidence in this
part of the analysis. What follows, what is here represented as diadic,
is confessedly more conjectural and unsure. Yet despite these reserva
tions, I believe that the attempt to locate this counterforce and give
it a name is worth the effort, for it seems to lead to a deeper and
better understanding
the play.

of the subtle structural machinery which supports

In large part the action of the play can be viewed as diadic in the
sense that it consists of a series of one-against-one confrontations. In
these confrontations adamant positions are taken on either side, with
the outcome of the resulting struggle being complete victory for one
or the other with no compromise even considered.
On the simplest,
level, we find the man-to-man combats which both

most primitive

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Macbeth,

Macbeth,

65

Macbeth

open and close the play. At the beginning we see a Macbeth who
"Like
Valour's
minion carv'd out his passage /Till
he faced the
slave. . .
(I.ii. 19) Again, against Norway himself, Macbeth "Con
fronted him with self-comparisons, / Point against point, rebellious

arm 'gainst arm. . .

(I.ii. 55) And in the final scene, Macbeth,
stripped of everything but his prowess, throws himself upon Macduff,
one warrior against another.
But in more complex, less explicitly violent ways this sense of diadic
confrontation runs through the play, its main manifestations being
Macbeth
versus Banquo, Macbeth
versus Lady Macbeth,
Macbeth
versus Macbeth, and Macbeth versus the set of the universe. Further
"
more, confrontation is only one class within the genus of the either
"
or situation, and this latter is of great importance and wide extension
in the play. It is not unfair to say that the play is composed of a series
of contrasting and essentially dichotomous themes. A full elaboration
of this point would be tedious, and it is perhaps enough to list the
most striking of these themes:
loyalty-treason (Especially prominent in the Duncan scenes.)
growth-decay (This theme is closely connected with Banquo.)
man-beast (Most clearly seen in the confrontations between
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.)
(Prominent after the death of Duncan and
innocence-guilt
very intimately connected with sleep imagery.)
reality-illusion (Most strongly expressed in the dagger scene.)
health-disease (Introduced
in IV. iii and acquiring increasing
force

from

that

point

on.)

natural-unnatural (Powerfully stated in both II. iv and in the

Malcolm-Macduff
debate of IV. iii.)
All of these themes can, in turn, be subsumed under the more general
"
"
forms
truth-falsity" and
good-evil," which are special aspects of
an

overall

"order-chaos

"

dichotomy.

Furthermore,

what

may

well

be

taken as the motif of the play, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair," is clearly
"
dichotomous, as are at least two of the dominant image patterns, light
darkness" and "sleep-terrible
dreams."

Assuming, then, the existence of both the diadic and triadic patterns,
we must next consider their relation and their purpose. The striking
thing about the triadic elements is that, except for their incantatory
uses, they appear only dimly in a presentation of the play. They are
somewhat submerged, either, as in the case of the structural patterns,
because their extent is so great that it cannot easily be taken in
by a

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66

D. F. Rauber

single glance of the eye,4 or because, in the case of the family triads,
the structure is not drawn directly to our attention by the dramatist.
Indeed, there is a somewhat wavering quality even in the incantatory
uses. That is to say, while
incantatory three's are presented directly,
what they represent is the unspecificthe magical, mysterious, awful.
On the other hand, the dichotomies and the confrontations stand out
clearly, even starkly.
scattered throughout

Even

though the diadic themes and images are

the play, when they are present, they are
strongly present. There is no ambiguity about them, no wavering;
their effect is immediate and simple.
l he principle by which these
patterns sets are combined is, then,
not difficult to see. Three, in
conformity with the symbolic conno
tations built up around it in the Western tradition and in the
play
itself, operates primarily in terms of the imagination; its presence is
not so much seen
clearly as felt deeply. Three is the realm of the
numinous, of the religious, the intuitive, the feminine. The patterns
here are large and misty; they shift, break, and reform
again. Two
operates as the number of the logician and the practical man. Its power
"
"
is that of
black-white."
either-or,"
Two, both by nature (as it
were) and by the uses made of it in this particular play, is virile,
direct, crushing.
Ihe combination in Macbeth of these two
pattern types may be
represented in musical terms as the singing of duets against the
orchestral background of the triadic or in
pictorial terms as a fore
dominated
clear-cut
diadic
ground
by
figures against a backdrop of
shadowy

triadic

forces

which

extend

as

far

back

as

eye

can

strain.

In either case, the triadic

background operates at once to deepen the
significance of the action and to comment upon it; it constitutes also
a kind of framework within which the
great variety of diadic themes is
held.
our
sense
of
the
ever
firmly
Finally,
changing relations between
the diadic and triadic elements would seem to
generate much of the
tensional vitality of the drama.

Admittedly the truth of such a theory of how the play functions

cannot be proved in any objective
way. However, some intuitive sense
of its Tightness can be gained
by trying to imagine Macbeth without
this kind of organization.
The force of the triadic can be felt
by
visualizing the play with, say, two witches or without the murder
of Lady Macduff and her son. Another
example is furnished by the
third murderer, that figure of such
great fascination for romantic critics
and undergraduates.
His attraction can be at least
partially explained
4

This

definite

is, of course,
magnitude"

an

of the Aristotelian
application
in Poetics
7.

notion

of the

developed

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Macbeth,

Macbeth,

Macbeth

67

as an unformulated response to the background of three's which has

so consistently and skillfully been established in what has preceded.
Conversely, though this is a more difficult exercise, if one removes
some of the diadic elementsthe "light-darkness"
imagery is a possi
bilityone senses immediately a kind of flabbiness in the play.
Still more evidence is furnished by the great care taken by Shake

speare at the beginning of the play to establish these patterns firmly.

I do not intend to explicate this in detail, but anyone who chooses
to look at the first four scenes of the play will find the establishing of

the triadic in Scene 1 and of the diadic in Scene 2; and then an inter
mingling of both in Scene 3, with considerable
emphasis upon the
triadic; followed in Scene 4 by a return to a dominantly diadic struc
ture. Scene 4, it should be noted, brings to a close the introductory

portion of the play; it introduces many of the basic themes and sets
the stage for the main action. From this point on, there is no such
overt contrasting and combining of diadic and triadic; the general
patterns are diadic, with one great exception: the triadic is strongly
emphasized at points of special stress. For example, the first main
section of the play culminates in the Porter scene, which is
markedly
triadic in all of its aspects. Similarly, the second main division ends
with Macbeth's second interview with the weird sisters, which is again
extremely triadic. Without doubt these triadic scenes are utilized by
Shakespeare as a form of dramatic punctuation.
Such is my case, and so I leave it, more than a little embarrassed that
I too have arrived in the end with the quincunx of three
plus two.
The difficulty about such an analysis is that one starts in a playful mood
but ends in some confusion.
I feel with Browne that "To
enlarge
this contemplation unto all the mysteries and secrets accommodable
.. . were inexcusable Pythagorism. . . ." (Wilkin II, 550), but also that
"though discursive enquiry and rational conjecture may leave hand
some gashes and flesh-wounds, yet without conjecture of this . . ."
one cannot penetrate beneath the surface of things (Wilkin II, 562).
There seems to me to be in this reading both a kind of truth and a
kind of madness, and in the end I can only take my stand beside Sir
Thomas, who was similarly torn in writing The Garden of Cyrus, on
"
he that more nearly considereth . . . shall
the grounds that
easily
discern the elegancy of this order." (Wilkin II, 503)
Ultimately my
"
case rests upon a strong conviction of the
of
elegant ordination"
art, his ability to utilize fully even these numerical
Shakespeare's
patterns which cannot bear the searching light of the reason but which
seem to echo and resonate somewhere in the depths of our
strange
beings.

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