EA 190 Shakespeare & Japan: Week 2 Outline

I. Historical ("historicized") versus Ahistorical Readings of Macbeth

A. Education Portal's Introduction to the themes in Macbeth, by Elspeth Green

Macbeth: Themes and Quotes from the Scottish Play

1. What is mentioned in this analysis?

2. What is missing from this analysis?

B. Studying "texts" (literary, dramatic, film, visual) from other time periods and cultures

1. Historically: What did the play mean to people at the time? How did the play dramatize contemporaneous issues?

2. Ahistorically: Universal themes? Purely rhetorical analysis?

3. What is useful/helpful about studying texts ahistorically (without regard to their original historical context)?

4. What is usefu/helpful about studying texts historically (in relation to their original historical context)?

B. In this course: Two authors/directors working with materials from 500 years earlier to deal with contemporaneous (to them) issues.

1. Shakespeare: Macbeth (1606?) addressing issues around accession of James 1 (James VI of Scotland) via story of King Macbeth of Scotland (r. 1040-107)

2. Kurosawa: Throne of Blood (released 1957) addressing issues in early postwar Japan having to do with Bushido (Way of Samurai Warrior) and war guilt by setting Shakespeare's Macbeth in the Warring States period (Sengoku, 1467-1600 or 1603 or 1615)

C. Important point: this is not just about how a text or film "reflects" its time. Literary and dramatic texts have an influential role in how we see ourselves, which can in turn affect events, even if the author did not mean the text as a political intervention.

1. Some plays are more amenable to historicization than others -- Macbeth is particularly open to historicization because it so clearly was written for King James I as the patron of Shakespeare's acting troupe.

II. Shakespeare's lifetime (1564-1616) and around the time he wrote Macbeth (1605-1607)

A. What is important to know about? I.e. what do you need to know about to understand what is happening in the play?

1. What are the big ideas, the big events, the big anxieties of the time?

2. Look at chronology.

III. Start with Sources

A. Who are the historical figures that Shakespeare based Macbeth on?

Macbeth

Duncan

Banquo

MacDuff, Malcom (Duncan's son) etc.

B. What are the main differences from the story as told in Macbeth?

1. Did any King of Scotland in this period manage to live to a ripe old age?

2. Is Duncan a good guy? Old? Young?

3. Is Banquo on Macbeth's side or not?

4. Macbeth's reign in the play versus in real life? Was he good king or a tyrant?

5. Anybody named Macduff? What role does Malcolm play? Edward the Confessor?

a. The historical Macbeth allowed Norman allies of Godwin, Earl of Essex, into his court. These nobles had been exiled because of Godwin's conflict with Edward the Confessor. Edward sent Siward to crush Godwin's allies in Scotland, and in the course of that battle, Macbeth was killed, perhaps by Malcolm. Macbeth's stepson becomes the next king. Malcolm only becomes king much later.

C. Why would Shakespeare make these changes?

IV. Usurpation-Regicide/Legitimation

A. This theme in the play is related to issues of legitimacy and succession for James I, who was brought in from Scotland following the death of the childless Queen Elizabeth to take the throne in 1603. Note that his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was held prisoner and executed by Elizabeth in 1587.

1. Historically James I traced his line back Banquo (the supposed ancestor of the Stuart/Stewart House which originates six generations later), so look for places in the play where the legitimacy of Banquo and his decendants is foregrounded. List the page numbers and line #s so we can discuss them in class plus a brief explanation of why these lines are pertinent. You can also use <Act X, Scene Y, Lines xx-zz> to specify lines.

B. THE QUESTION HERE is whether Shakespeare's portrayal of Macbeth and Banquo is simply propaganda for James I.

2. How is Malcolm portrayed? What is the effect of listing all his vices? (Act 4, Sc 3, 61-132) What is the function of having the English support Malcolm to take back his rightful throne?

3. How is Macbeth's death at the end problematic for the Divine Right of Kings as promoted by James I, even if Macbeth is portrayed as a tyrant?

According to James I (The Trew [True] Law of Free Monarchies):

The king is "the head of a body composed of diverse members..." and so "it may very well fall out that the head will be forced to garre cut off some rotten members...to keep the rest of the body in integrity, but what state the body can be in, if the head, for any infirmity that can fall to it, be cut off, I leave to the reader's judgment."

Given the quotation above, how might James I have responded to Macbeth's bloody head at the end of the play? In fact, from the point of view of later history, what happens to James I's son Charles I?

V. Equivocation and the Reformation

A. What was the Protestant Reformation?

Two major figures: Martin Luther (95 Theses, 1517) and John Calvin

Protesting:

1. Corruption in the Catholic Church (especially indulgences)

2. The role of the church and its religious figures (pope, priests) in mediating the relationship between God and humans

Advocating:

1. An individual (non-mediated) relationship between humans and God

2. A vernacular bible that anyone could read (who was literate in their own language)

Problem with advocating individual relation to God: allows for sectarian divisions, which combined with rise of national identity tied to vernacular language, leads to violent religious wars.

B. When did the Protestant Reformation come to England? (1529-1537)

1. Pragmatic reasons rather than philosophical: Henry VIII wanted a divorce from his first wife, and could not get the pope to agree.

2. Henry VIII also saw it as an opportunity to get the wealth and land of the Catholic church and especially the Catholic monasteries in England.

3. During the following fifty years there was bitter fighting and oppression of either Catholics or Protestants, depending on who was in power.

C. Equivocation: Language and images related to equivocation, deception, and doubleness appear throughout the play: saying one thing but meaning another, hiding your true feelings, telling a smaller truth that hides a larger untruth, or telling a small lie that hides a larger truth. Please read the contextual overview for a brief explanation of the historical reasons for why equivocation was an important issue at the time: it was related to the suppression of Catholicism by Henry VIII, and the persecution of "recusant" (hidden) Catholics by James I in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot of November 5, 1605.

Gunpowder Plot November 5, 1605 ("remember, remember the fifth of November") was a "terrorist" plot in which a group of Catholics hid 36 barrels of gunpowder packed with nails in the basement of a building adjacent to the House of Parliament, with the intent of blowing it up along with the King (who was supposed to visit Parliament that day).

Equivocation as a technical term (AKA the Doctrine of Mental Reservation) allowed the speaker to employ double meanings of words to tell the literal truth while concealing a deeper meaning. It was used by Jesuits faced with government suppression, speaking a partial truth to the interrogators while reserving the full truth mentally for only God to hear.

For example, from the Biography of Jesuit John Gerard (1597) on his interrogation in court about equivocating when asked whether he was a Catholic or not: "I maintained that equivocation was different from lying. In equivocation the intention was not to deceive, which was the essence of a lie, but simply to withhold the truth in cases where the questioned party is not bound to reveal it."

a. Why would Catholics who were suppressed/oppressed in England at this time, advocate equivocation? Why would equivocation be seen as problematic by the government?

b. Look for places in the play where equivocation/doubleness appears to occur (hint: the Weird Sisters), or where deception is used to cover true intent (hint: by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth). Is equivocation and deception clearly distinguished in Macbeth? Who is equivocation most strongly associated with in the play? Who is deception most strongly associated with?

List the page numbers/line #s with a brief note on how the equivocation functions at that moment in the play, so we can discuss them in class.

James I was an ardent believer in witches; he had several "witches" tortured and put to death who had supposedly participated in fomenting a rebellion against him in Scotland (reported in News from Scotland 1591 pp. 313-325, see also this shorter excerpt) and he wrote an essay (Daemonology, 1597 pp. 325-328) arguing that the power of witches came from their contract with the devil. In Macbeth, a number of the details of how witches act came from these two texts, which introduced new ideas about witches from Europe, such as using sieves as boats, or having the power to cause tempests.

For James I, witchcraft theory merges with the Divine Right of Kings theory, so that witchcraft becomes a form of treason: "The true aim of witches is to assault the body of the king." So in this period, "the discourse of witchcraft intersected with many other controversial issues of the time, from the place of women and the nature of supernatural power, to treason and regicide." (William Carroll, ed. Macbeth: Texts and Contexts p. 306).

Do the prophecies a) mirror his already murderous thoughts b) anticipate/predict his murderous thoughts or c) determine (fate) his murderous thoughts?

b. Why do you think he decides to act on their prophecies? At what point does he make his decision? (Give scene-lines to support your position.) Is there any indication that he might be possessed?

c. What about Lady Macbeth? What is her relation to the Weird Sisters? What imagery in her speech seems to link them together?

VII. Witchcraft and Prophecy

A. Basic assumption: True prophecy is only possible for God. So three possibilities:

1. generated by the devil to tempt people into evil
2. lucky guesses
3. fraud to fool the gullible (illusions and stage tricks)

B. Mistrusted by government because of association of prophecy with political rebellion; but note the following prophecy that was produced specifically for James 1 (click here).

C. Can prophecy ever fail in drama? Does it fail in Macbeth?

VIII. Poetic language in Macbeth

A. A major innovation of Shakespeare was the idea that character can be evoked through style of speech. Previously, dramatists such as Christopher Marlow clearly marked upper-class characters by their use of verse (usually iambic pentameter) versus lower-class characters who used prose.

Shakespeare gives characters verse, blank verse or prose to speak, without regard to class status.

1. Some useful definitions of prose, verse and blank verse and how to recognize them. Click here for another link that specifically analyzes these forms in Macbeth.

2. Who speaks verse in Macbeth? Who speaks blank verse? Prose?

B. Major forms of rhetorical language in Macbeth

1. Apostrophe: speaking to an object as though it were animated ("Ode to a Nightingale")

2. Personification: endowing an object with human characteristics ("Mother Earth is being raped by stripmining.")

3. Puns: these play a lesser role in Macbeth but occur at key moments ("gild/guilt")

The first two techniques in particular create a very intense “poetification” of Macbeth’s use of language. Macbeth's speech is marked by an extraordinary poetic imagination -- it is one reason we feel sympathy for him even as he descends into evil.

1) Act 1 Scene 3 Lines 140-155 p. 23

2) Act 1 Scene 5 Lines 45-60 p. 33

3) Act 1 Scene 7 Lines 1-16 p. 39

4) Act 2 Scene 2 Lines 45-57 p. 57

5) Act 5 Scene 3 Lines 45-58

6) Act 5 Scene 5 Lines 20-30