Macbeth and the Metaphysics* of Evil-- Wilson Knight--Criticism & Theory

Macbeth and the Metaphysics* of Evil

Wilson Knight

S. Sreekumar—Lecture notes

Wilson Knight (1897–1985)

Wilson Knight, English literary critic and academic is noted for his path-breaking interpretation of Shakespeare’s dramas. He is a myth critic, actor, theatrical director and an outstanding lecturer. Myth and Miracle, The Wheel of Fire, The Imperial Theme, The Starlit Dome, The Crown of Life, The Imperial Theme, The Mutual Flame, and The Golden Labyrinth are his famous works. Knight has dealt with a wide range of subjects— Virgil, Milton, Pope, Byron, British Drama etc. — in his books (nearly 40).  

In his studies of Shakespeare, Knight had rejected traditional areas like source study, character analysis and psychology. He had highlighted the unity in Shakespeare, which according to him is in the poetic use of images and symbols.  He further argues that the ‘spatial’ aspects of the plays are very important. By spatial aspects, Knight means ‘atmosphere’—‘an attempt to see the whole play in space as well as time’.

Knight has set a new benchmark for Shakespeare studies; he has unveiled some features of Shakespeare’s genius that were not appreciated previously. “He has enriched our understanding, not only of Shakespeare, but of literature in general and of human nature”, as one critic points out.

Brief Synopsis of the essay

Macbeth presents an experience of absolute evil. The characters show a dominant sense of doubt and uncertainty. There is a predominant vision of evil in the play. All the characters are to some extent guilty of yielding to evil and are "paralyzed by fear." Knight concludes that, as the play draws to a close, Macbeth is no longer in conflict with himself. He “faces the world fearless". Balance and harmony replace the disorder of evil.

The Play as a vision of evil

Knight says, “Macbeth is Shakespeare's most profound and mature vision of evil”.

·         In Hamlet, we get a vision of evil in the ghost and death themes.

·         In Richard III we see evil as an individual's crime.

·         In Troilus-Othello-Lear and in ‘Timon of Athens’[ by Troilus-Othello-Lear Knight means—Troilus and Cressida, Othello and King Lear] we get the ‘hate-theme’.

·         In all these plays there is a gloom of denial. The evil here is a negation of man's positive ideals.

However, in Macbeth “we find not gloom, but blackness: the evil is not relative, but absolute”. This evil is absolute and therefore alien to man. It is in essence shown as inhuman and supernatural.  (Lady Macbeth becomes inhuman in the murder scene. Witches (supernatural) are always in the background)

Macbeth is fantastical and imaginative beyond other tragedies. It is a desolate and dark universe where all is confusing, and bound by evil.

So Many Questions

The persons of the play are themselves groping in darkness. In no play of Shakespeare are so many questions asked. Here Knight lists out a series of questions that we come across in the drama:  (enterprising scholars can count the number of questions asked in the play. For many of the questions neither answer is given, nor expected)

                  The play opens with the witches asking questions—

                  'When shall we three meet again?' and 'Where the place?'

This is followed by:

First Witch:  Where hast thou been, sister?

Second Witch:  Killing swine.

First Witch:  Sister, where thou?

Amazement and mystery

These two elements are in the play from the start, and are reflected in continual questions—there are those of Duncan to Malcolm in Act I scene iv and of Lady Macbeth to the Messenger and then to Macbeth in Act I scene v.  These questions continue throughout the play.

The questions in the murder scene are tense and powerful:

Macbeth. How now! What news?

L. Macbeth. He has almost supp'd: why have you left the chamber?

Macbeth. Hath he asked for me?

L. Macbeth. Know you not he has?

At the climax of the murder they come again, short questions, like stabs of fear:

 'Didst thou not hear a noise?—

 Did not you speak?—

When?—

Now.—

As I descended?

Some of the finest and most heart-rending passages are in the form of questions:

'But wherefore could I not pronounce Amen?' and,

'Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?'

(Look at the sleep-walking scene and find out the number of questions there.

Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard?

The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?--

What, will these hands ne'er be clean? - )

This part is summed up by Knight thus: “The scene of the murder and that of its discovery form a series of questions. To continue the list in detail would be more tedious than difficult. . . . These questions are threads in the fabric of mystery and doubt which haunts us in Macbeth”.

Surprise is continual.

·         Macbeth does not understand how he can be Thane of Cawdor as the latter is alive at that point.

·         Lady Macbeth is startled at the news of Duncan's visit.

·         There is the general amazement of Lennox, Ross, and the Old Man at the murder of Duncan.

·         Banquo and Fleance are unsure of the hour.

·         No one is sure of Macduff's mysterious movements.

·         The two murderers do not know about the presence of the third murderer.

·         Ross says, ‘we . . . do not know ourselves'. This is true of all the characters in the play as well as the audience.

Illogical Actions

Action in the play is illogical.

·         Why does Macbeth not know of Cawdor's treachery?

·         Why does Lady Macbeth faint?

·         Why do the King's sons flee to different countries when Scotland is ready to support them?

·          Why does Macduff leave his family to certain death?

·         Who is the Third Murderer?

·         And, finally, why does Macbeth murder Duncan? [The doubt raised by Knight is quite pertinent. We can say that Macbeth killed Duncan because of his over-ambition. But somehow that explanation is not wholly satisfactory.]

Because of all these a strong sense of mystery and illogicality is created. The reader gropes in darkness, unable to find out a reasonable explanation. They also suffer from doubt and insecurity.

Darkness in the play

·         Darkness permeates the play.

·         The greater part of the action takes place in the murk of the night.

Strange and Hideous Creatures

From the world of doubts and darkness strange and hideous creatures are born. “Animal disorder symbolism is recurrent in the play and the animals mentioned are for the most part of fierce, ugly, or ill-omened significance”, says Knight.

·         The Hyrcan tiger and the 'armed rhinoceros'.

·         The 'rugged Russian bear' and the wolf, ('whose howl's his watch').

·         The raven (who croaks the entrance of Duncan).

·         The owl, ('fatal bellman who gives the stern's goodnight'.)

·         'Maggot-pies and choughs and rooks'.

·         Hounds and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs, shoughs, water-rugs, and demi-wolves.

·         The bat (and his 'cloistered fight') and 'shard-borne beetle'.

·         Crow (making wing to the 'rooky wood'.)

·         Macbeth has 'scotch d the snake, not killed it'; his mind is full of 'scorpions'.

·         All these images “culminate in the holocaust of filth prepared by the Weird Sisters in the Cauldron scene”.

We also have animals irrational and amazing in their acts.

·         A falcon is attacked and killed by a 'mousing owl'.

·         Duncan's horses eat each other.

·         The owl clamored through the night.

·         The earth itself shook.

·          We are thus aware of a hideous abnormality in this world; and feel its irrationality and mystery.

The essential fearsomeness of this universe.

·         ‘We are confronted by mystery, darkness, abnormality, hideousness: and therefore by fear. The word 'fear' is everywhere. Fear is predominant. Everyone is afraid. There is scarcely a person in the play who does not feel and voice at some time a sickening, nameless terror”.

·         “The impact of the play is thus exactly analogous (similar) to nightmare, to which state there are many references. There is the consciousness of nightmare or delirium. That is why life is here a 'tale told by an idiot', a 'fitful fever' after which the dead 'sleep well'.”

·         “The Weird Sisters are nightmare made real. Macbeth's crime is nightmare projected into action”.  

·         “Therefore this world is unknowable, hideous, disorderly, and irrational”.

“The very style of the play has a mesmeric, nightmare quality, for in that dream-consciousness, hateful though it be, there is a nervous tension, a vivid sense of profound significance, an exceptionally rich apprehension of reality electrifying the mind: one is in touch with absolute evil, which, being absolute, has a satanic beauty, a hideous, serpent-like grace and attraction, drawing, paralysing.”, points out Knight in his incomparably poetic style.

Language of the Play

The language is tense, nervous, insubstantial and without anything of the visual clarity of Othello. The horrors in the play have a ‘mesmeric attraction’ [like that of a serpent] even while they repel us.

Imagery:-

Blood imagery—The reference to blood is constant in the play. However, there is no brilliance in the imagery. The image is that of smeared blood. (Blood that the murderer wipes away from his dagger or from his hands after a murder is committed).

Fire Imagery—However, there is brilliance in the fire-imagery.

·         the thunder and lightning that accompany the Weird Sisters,

·         the fire of the cauldron,

·         the green glint of the spectral dagger,

·         the glaring eyes of Banquo’s ghost,

·         the ghastly pageant of kings unborn.

Poetry of intensity

The play has poetry of intensity. The intense darkness of the play is shot with imagery of pure light and pure colour. In the same way the moral darkness of the play is shot with imagery of purity and virtue.

·         There is the picture of 'the temple-haunting martlet' [I. vi. 4] which is contrasted with evil creatures.

·         We have the early picture of the sainted Duncan, whose body is 'the Lord's anointed temple'.

·         Macduff speaks about Malcolm's mother as a saintly person who lived 'oftener upon her knees than on her feet, died every day she lived'.

·         Macbeth's agonized vision of a starry good, of 'Heaven's cherubim' horsed in air and Pity like a babe.

·         Malcolm's description of England's holy King as health-giver and God-elect who, unlike Macbeth, has power over 'the evil', in whose court Malcolm borrows 'grace' to combat the nightmare evil of his own land.

“In Macbeth this supernatural grace is set beside the supernatural evil”, writes Knight. Macbeth strikes against this grace. Duncan was 'gracious'; at his death 'renown and grace is dead'.  Malcolm will restore health to Scotland.

The darkness thins towards the end of the play.  Bright daylight dawns and the green leaves of Birnam come against Macbeth. A world climbs out of its darkness. The Child is crowned, the Tree of Life in his hand.

The Atmosphere of Macbeth (this point is very important)

It is a world of ‘fears and scruples’. “It is a world where 'nothing is but what is not', where 'fair is foul and foul is fair'”, comments Knight. Knight stresses two complementary ( balancing) elements in the play.

i. the doubts, uncertainties, irrationalities,

and

ii. The horrors, the dark, the abnormalities.

These two elements repel our intellect and heart. When we experience the tense fear that follows the nightmare, we experience something that is insubstantial and unreal to our understanding. This is something horrible also. It is the evil of Macbeth. (Pure distilled evil, distilled like the revolting, hideous broth prepared by the witches. ‘Bhayanak’ rasa, as Sanskrit Aestheticians point out)

In the repulsion of the two aspects mentioned above a state of singleness and harmony is induced in the receiver.

Knight adds, “...it is in respect of this that Macbeth forces us to a consciousness more exquisitely unified and sensitive than any of the great tragedies… This is how the Macbeth universe presents to us an experience of absolute evil.”

The purely human element in the Play

The two main characteristics of Macbeth's temptation are

(i) Ignorance of his own motive, and

(ii) Horror of the deed to which he is being driven.

Fear is the primary emotion of the Macbeth universe: fear is at the root of Macbeth's crime.

Many minor persons are definitely related to evil:

·         the two—or three—Murderers, the traitors— Cawdor and Macdonald,

·         The drunken porter( doing duty at the gate of Hell).

But the major characters also succumb to the evil of Macbeth universe.

·         Banquo is involved. Returning with Macbeth from a bloody war, he meets the three Weird Sisters. We must observe that the two generals' bravery in the battlefield is described as acts of unprecedented ferocity, mindless cruelty. They carve their way through human flesh.  They bathe in reeking (bloody, stinking) wounds. They make the battlefield another Golgotha. [Place of skulls. The reference to ‘Golgotha’ brings to the audience’ mind the savage cruelty shown by the Roman soldiers to Jesus. ]. War is here a thing of blood, not romance. [Even in the History Plays of Shakespeare no battle is more brutally, viciously and sadistically portrayed as the one described by the messenger in Act I Scene ii of the Play. Macbeth appears more like a butcher than a General in this part of the play].  The weird sisters of evil urge Macbeth to add to those 'strange images of death' the 'great doom's image' of a murdered and sainted king.

·         Banquo is troubled on the night of the murder. He says that his mind is burdened by cursed thoughts. He is enmeshed in Macbeth's horror and, after the coronation, keeps the guilty secret, and lays to his heart a guilty hope. Banquo is thus involved.

·         Macduff is also involved.  His cruel desertion of his family is emphasized.

·         Even Malcolm is forced to repeat crimes on himself. He catalogues every possible sin, and accuses himself of all.

·         The pressure of evil is not relaxed till the end.

·         Not that the persons are 'bad characters'. They are not 'characters' at all, in the proper use of the word. They are but vaguely individualized, and more remarkable for similarity than difference.

·         All the persons are primarily just this: men paralyzed by fear and a sense of evil in and outside themselves. They lack will-power

·         So, too, with Lady Macbeth. She is not merely a woman of strong will: she is a woman possessed—possessed of evil passion. The scope and sweep of her evil passion is a thing tremendous, irresistible, ultimate. She is an embodiment—for one mighty hour—of evil absolute and extreme.

[ Knight’s argument is that most of the major and minor characters in this play are linked to evil in one way or other]

The central human theme is the temptation and crime of Macbeth. The crucial speech runs as follows:

Why do I yield to that suggestion, / Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,

And makes my seated heart knock at my ribs / Against the use of nature? Present fears

Are less than horrible imaginings. / My thought whose murder yet is but fantastical

Shakes so my single state of man that function / Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is

But what is not.

Knight concludes:  “This speech is a microcosm of the Macbeth vision: it contains the germ of the whole. . . . In this speech we have a swift interpenetration of idea with idea, from fear and disorder, through sickly imaginings, to abysmal darkness, nothingness”.

'Nothing is but what is not': that is the text of the play.  [Remember that this nothingness in Macbeth is a vision of Hell itself. In Dr. Faustus, hell is described thus: Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed / In one self place, for where we are is hell, / And where hell is must we ever be.”(Thus Hell is Nothing).  In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan becomes plagued by "the Hell within him". "Myself am Hell”. (Hell is something carried by Satan himself). In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Kurtz sees Hell: “The horror!  The horror!" is his dying words]

“Reality and unreality change places. We must see that Macbeth, like the whole universe of this play, is paralyzed, mesmerized, as though in a dream. This is not merely 'ambition'—it is fear, a nameless fear which yet fixes itself to a horrid image. He is helpless as a man in a nightmare: and this helplessness is integral to the conception—the will—concept is absent”.

“Macbeth may struggle, but he cannot fight: he can no more resist than a rabbit resists a weasel's teeth fastened in its neck, or a bird the serpent's transfixing eye. Now this evil in Macbeth propels him to act absolutely evil. . . .”

·         Whilst Macbeth lives in conflict with himself there is misery, evil, fear: when, at the end, he and others have openly identified himself with evil, he faces the world fearless. He does not appear evil any longer. The worst element of his suffering has been that secrecy and hypocrisy so often referred to throughout the play. But at the end Macbeth has no need of secrecy. He is no longer 'cabin'd, cribb'd, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears’.

·         Wading through blood, he has established a harmonious and honest relation with his surroundings. He has successfully symbolized the disorder of his lonely guilt-stricken soul by disorder in the world, and thus restores balance and harmonious contact. The mighty principle of good planted in the nature of things then asserts itself, condemns him openly, brings him peace. Daylight is brought to Macbeth, as to Scotland, by the armies of Malcolm.

Notes

*Metaphysics—Metaphysics is the philosophical study whose aim is to determine the real nature (meaning, structure and principle) of things. For the common man metaphysics means something excessively subtle and highly theoretical.

Lecture notes by Dr. S. Sreekumar. This is meant only for scholarly purposes. Hope I have done justice to a wonderful piece of writing by Wilson Knight. Please comment on the analysis done here. Was it helpful for you?