Quote I’m discussing:
And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,
Show'd like a rebel's whore: but all's too weak:
For brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name--
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,
And fix'd his head upon our battlements.
I think that the sergeant summarizes the role of Macbeth’s decisions, and fortune’s influence very well in the second scene. An important thing to notice, however, is that his description remains ambiguous because it can be read in two opposing ways: either Macbeth disdains fortune with his sword and carves out his own passage, OR fortune is disdaining for brave Macbeth because it carves out Macbeth’s passage like a minion (and we all know Macbeth’s fate is not such a positive one). This ambiguity is very intriguing and the two meanings the passage conveys provide the main (in my opinion) question for any audience to answer. Was it Macbeth’s fate that led to each of these events, or was it Macbeth’s decisions that led him to his fate?
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3 comments:
Has anyone ever thought why during the murder of Banquo there is randomly a third murderer other than the two macbeth originally hired? Could it just have been an inconsistency on Shakespeare's part or could the third murderer have been someone important, like perhaps a witch in disguise trying to ensure that Fleance escaped to keep the prophecy true. I don't know who else it could be. Perhaps since lady macbeth is the one who seems even more driven for power than macbeth himself, she joined the murderers, doubling her guilt as seen later by her sleep walking. But it seems like she is at the dinner with the thanes from the start so I'm guessing it must be a witch, especially since witches are associated with threes. This makes me lean towards macbeth's tragic downfall being fated. Though its possible the weird sisters are able to see all the paths of choice and made their prophecy in accordance, and since he had either had murderous thoughts before or had them placed into him by the witches, he decided to act on them.
It actually explains that the third murderer has been hired by Macbeth at the beginning of scene 3 of act 3.
1st mur: But who did bid thee join us?
3rd mur: Macbeth
2nd mur: He needs not our mistrust; since he delivers our offices, and what we have to do, To the direction just.
I’m trying to figure out what the second murderer means by this last line. Does it mean that Macbeth is afraid of the other two will betray him, so he send a third to make sure the job gets done? I feel like it must be this, because when Macbeth is talking to the murderers earlier on, he says when referring to Banquo, “Are you so gospell’d to pray for this good man, and for his issue..?” (3.3.87)To this the second murderer simply replies, “We are men, my Liege,” implying they cannot help their natural inclinations. I think here he recognizes that the murderers he hires seem to like Banquo, and their sympathies lie more with him than with Macbeth. It also means that Macbeth cannot trust the murderers, hence the third one.
The notion of hired murders hesitating to carry out their task has occurred before, Richard II; however, in both cases greed overcame any sense of a guilty conscious. Is Shakespeare suggesting that greed is the ultimate motive driving all of us? It is a tough question to answer, for can we make blanket judgments about society based on the actions of hired-henchman, we aren't exactly dealing with societies creme de la creme. The mere fact that Macbeth hired a third henchman because he believed that he could trust the other two shows that the conscious of these murderers was strong enough to convince Macbeth to hire a third. So what did drive the murderers to kill Banquo, greed or peer pressure?
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