Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

What beast was’t, then,

That made you break this enterprise to me?

-Lady Macbeth

Macbeth                  Act I, scene vii, line 47

 

I think that if you were going to read, or hear, just one scene of this play, this would be the one you’d want. The whole play sort of pivots on this one scene, and it’s got some really good stuff in it. And, it’s relatively short.

Macbeth begins this scene with a soliloquy where he’s thinking about the murder of King Duncan that he and his wife have planned: If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well/It were done quickly; However, by the end of thirty lines of talking to himself, he’s talked himself out of it; I have no spur/To prick the sides of my intent, but only/Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself/And falls on th’other.

Then his wife shows up, and he tells her that they’re not going to do it. Lady Macbeth will have none of that, and she starts in on him,

                            Lady Macbeth

        Was the hope drunk

        Where in you dress’d yourself? Hath it slept since?

        And wakes it now, to look so green and pale

        At what it did so freely? From this time

        Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard

        To be the same in thine own act and valour  

        As thou are in desire? Wouldst thou have that

        Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life,

        And live a coward in thine own esteem,

        Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’

        Like the poor cat in the adage?

 

                                Macbeth

        Prithee, peace:

        I dare do all that may become a man;

        Who dare do more is none

       

                                Lady Macbeth

                                        What beast was’t, then,

That made you break this enterprise to me?

When you durst do it, then you were a man;

And, to be more than what you were, you would

Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place

Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:

They have made themselves, and that their fitness now

Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know

How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluckt my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dasht the brains out, Had I so sworn as you

Have done to this.

Oh my. This woman is, um…well.. I’m not sure what the words are. Suffice it to say that without her this play ends here with Macbeth deciding that it’s not a good idea to kill the king. And, of course, he’s right, it’s not. But after listening to his wife, he nonetheless ends the scene deciding otherwise,

         I am settled, and bend up

        Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.

        Away, and mock the time with fairest show:

        False face must hide what the false heart doth know. 

So we end up getting a rhyming couplet, and four more acts.

I'm afraid I've come up empty today in terms of a pic. That line about dashing the baby's brains out, well that sort of made me feel that we don't want a pic for today's lines. Hopefully we'll have one tomorrow.