Lady Macbeth's Indispensable Child
Author(s): Marvin Rosenberg
Source: Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Mar., 1974), pp. 14-19
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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MARVIN
ROSENBERG
Lady Macbeth's
Indispensable
Child
course Lady Macbeth has at least one child: she reminds her husband that she has
"given suck," and knows "How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me." History
that the child was not sired by Macbeth; but Shakespeare carefully censored
insist
may
Macbeth's
earlier marriage, and no spectator-except the few burdened with
Lady
excessive learning-could possibly, in the playwright's time or subsequently, have
suspected it. Shakespeare begins with a loving pair, and tells us unequivocally-in a play
full of equivocation-that they have had a child.
Of
I suggest that a sense of this Macbeth-child's felt presence in crucial scenes can enrich
the tragedy and profoundly intensify our experience of Macbeth's inner and outer
struggles.
That a babe is Macbeth's most powerful symbol has been suggested by L. C. Knights
and Cleanth Brooks. Let us dare further. A highly-charged child-image, persistently
challenging a father-image of like force, drives this tragedy on. Five fathers and sons
populate Macbeth. Two fathers-Duncan and Banquo-are murdered; two sons-young
Macduff and young Siward-are killed; Macbeth, who causes all these deaths, is killed by
one of the surviving fathers, Macduff. Macbeth is a wheeling pivot in this depth-upondepth exploration of man's archetypal impulses to cherish and destroy begetter and
begotten: not only does he first save and then kill a father figure, and befriend and then
make war on rival sibling-surrogates-Banquo and Macduff-and their children; he
becomes in turn a father figure who must be assaulted by children, the "unrough youths"
led by the boy Malcolm. But even further, and central to his action: all of Macbeth's
violence is in the service of a son of his own.
After Duncan's death, Macbeth sits securely on the throne. Crowned at Scone,
supported by the sworn fealty of all the thanes but one, this first soldier of the kingdom
has become its first lord and accepted ruler. His bravery has been matched, as far as men
know, by his large share of human kindness; no external circumstance need prevent him
from ruling easefully and well for many years, as he did in history.
Except for one thing.
The witches, who clearly knew the future, had predicted that Banquo's issue, not his
own, would reign in Scotland; and a fierce impulse drives Macbeth on to the murder of
Banquo and Fleance-and to the breaking point of Macbeth's own career-so that the
Macbeth-child Shakespeare invented can succeed to the throne. If Macbeth were childless,
the succession of Fleance would be no great matter, it could come after Macbeth had
peacefully paid
his breath
To time andmortalcustom.
MarvinRosenbergis Professorof DramaticArt at the Universityof California,Berkeley.He is the
author of The Masks of Othello and The Masks of King Lear, and of numerous articles on Shakespeare,
theatre history, and dramatic theory.
14 /
15 / THE MACBETH CHILD
But Shakespeare does stipulate a child-Macbeth with a father driven more by ambition for
the son's royalty than for his own.' This pattern in his design, as we shall see by
following its track, is immensely enriched by a sense of his living son.
The child's felt presence can deeply color the experience of the first scene in
Macbeth's castle, when Lady Macbeth reads the letter. She has perhaps just now given
suck to the babe (that she has milk, to trade for gall, may reflect a recent accouchement)
and put it in a cradle that is there when Macbeth comes. What emerges, for a moment
that will have curious echoes later in Lady Macduff's touching domesticity, is the softer
woman whom even Sarah Siddons sensed in Lady Macbeth's nature: the woman to whom
Lady Macbeth will return in the sleepwalking scene. Macbeth's letter will change her. The
cradle's rocking stops; her terrible prayer to be unsexed, to give up her mother's milk for
the juice of anger, shocks the more because voiced in the presence of the babe. And now
may be sensed the first sounds of the child, sounds that can orchestrate with the play's
scattered animal cries of cat, toad, owl, cricket, of the child-apparitions in the witches'
cave, the ravaged child in Macduff's castle.
Macbeth's visual care-when he enters in I.v-for his son (now, in his mind, a
king-to-be) will deepen the implications of the dialogue with Lady Macbeth. Macbeth, as
father, will speak circuitously about the killing of a father-figure, while his own Prince of
Cumberland lies before him. The babe's existence now, as later symbolically, will be a tug
to his conscience; Macbeth may well be gazing into the cradle when, refusing the
commitment to murder, he says
Wewill speakfurther.
The childas an imageof compassionwill forceitself into Macbeth'sconsciousness
in
his next soliloquy(I.vii);the child'sfelt presencecan put an edgeon all Macbethsays,
evokingthe innocencehe knowshe risksforeverlosing.For his child,as muchas for
himself, Macbeth is designed to embrace a Vatermord. Now the child-image both pushes
him and pulls him back; pulls him back more, fills his mind with visions of mercy: "pity,
like a naked new-born babe.., .heaven's cherubin... ." Under this influence, he would
dare no more than what he can feel becomes a man. Then the wife-mother comes, and
turns Macbeth's mind with different images of maleness, of bloody promises to be kept,
murderous plans executed. Macbeth himself is instructed almost like a child by an angry
mother. To kill is what it is to be a man. She says,
I havegivensuck,
and there beside her is the suckled babe; the power-and the horror-of her willingness to
Kemble,defendingMacbethagainstWhately'schargethat MacbethkilledBanquoout of personal
fear, not to secure the crown for his own issue, argued:"'Thou shalt get kings, though thou be
none'-this is the worm that gnawshis heart;this is the 'hagthat rideshis dreams;'this is the fiend that
hinds his soul on the rack of restless extasy; and this is the only fear that makes his firm nerves
tremble, and urges him on to the perpetrationof crimes abhorrentto his nature..... Banquoand
Fleance... threatento reduce him and his lineagefrom the splendoursof monarchyto the obscurity
of vassalage."
16 / EDUCATIONAL THEATRE JOURNAL
crush a living child to keep a murderer's oath is intensified by the child's presence.
Intensified, too, is the shaming of the man before his manchildWhat beast was it .... ?
Lady Macbeth's persuasion-her scorn, love, hurt, pride-transforms the image Macbeth
had clung to of man and manchild; now he will be the warrior first. Warriorskill without
conscience, they are praised for it.
Every allusion from now on to innocence, babes, dynasty is enlarged by the proximity
of the Macbeth child. Fleance, alone with his father in the night-blackened courtyard,
becomes more than an abstract threat; he, alive, rivals the seen babe. Actors of Macbeth
have sometimes, in II.i, offered significant gestures to Fleance-have patted his head
kindly, for instance, or would have if Fleance had not drawn back or been sheltered by
Banquo. This can represent a genuine symptom of Macbeth's human kindness, though
shadowed by an hostility to his son's rival. The tension between the two, man and boy,
begins really to sting when Macbeth's mind is felt moving between Banquo's Prince of
Cumberland and his own, so recently left.
Even more, after Duncan's death, must Macbeth, suddenly so powerful, confront the
uncertain fate that awaits any child of his. If Macbeth's son will not be king, he may not
be allowed to live at all. There will be echoes here of Malcolm's doubtful fate in the
questionable future of the young Macbeth; and King Macbeth, fencing verbally with
Banquo in III.i, must find his eyes coming back to Fleance, whose life seems to threaten
the very existence as well as the succession of his child.
Motifs of Brudermord and Kindermord mingle in the design.
Goes Fleancewith you?
Macbeth asks, as he watches his friend and the friend's boy who would supplant his own
son, unless killed first. When Macbeth is alone, he speaks the resolve that only the
imminent sense of his son-prince's fate can drive him to. He fears, and envies, Banquo;
but this in itself is not made motive enough for murder. Macbeth's restless mind is
designed to search for motives to murder; but he keeps coming back to this central one.
What he cannot bear is the consequence of the Sisters' prophecy that Banquo would be
father to a line of kings:
Uponmy head they plac'da fruitlesscrown,
And put a barrensceptrein my gripe,
Thenceto be wrench'dwith an unlinealhand,
No son of mine succeeding.If't be so,
For Banquo'sissuehaveI fil'd my mind;
For them the graciousDuncanhaveI murther'd;
Put rancoursin the vesselof my peace,
Only for them;andmine eternaljewel
Givento the CommonEnemyof man,
To makethem kings,the seed of Banquokings!
Ratherthan so, come, fate, unto the list,
And championme to th'utterance.
17 /
THE MACBETH CHILD
Typically an action as well as a soliloquy, the speech moves Macbeth from idea to
resolution. From initial apprehension of insecurity there comes to him a realisation of his
underlying impulse: he must kill to ensure his hope of dynasty. One critical reading has
found, in the line "a barren sceptre in my gripe" an implication that Macbeth is
confessing impotence. But again, Shakespeare, for his own purpose, improved history by
making Lady Macbeth's offspring Macbeth's. The crown is barren, not Macbeth. His talk
of dynasty would be absurd, as William Empson observes, if the Macbeths had no issue of
their begetting.2 To Brooks, it is this hope of Macbeth's for a line of kings that gives him
tragic stature.
The "son of mine" Macbeth mentions may be present to his eye, as well as his mind;
he has asked to be alone; and perhaps, looking into an inner chamber, he may again gaze
on the cradled babe whose life demands Fleance's death. "To be thus is nothing" if there
is no safety, if the crown is fruitless, if the manchild cannot succeed the man.
Macbeth would leave the child to go to speak to the murderers; in the next scene the
distraught Lady Macbeth, if again at the cradle, can take no joy in her babe-nor the
babe, any more, in the mother's milk. Lady Macbeth must ask for Macbeth to come to
her, so she may comfort and counsel his distraught mind; instead his frenetic anxiety
mounts as the burning mineral in his brain, the image of Banquo, takes fire. "You must
leave this," she urges, sensing his thrust, and the scene climaxes:
O! full of scorpionsis my mind, dearwife!
Thou know'stthat Banquo,andhis Fleance,lives.
"... and his Fleance." It is another glance verbally, if not visually, at his own son.
Macbeth takes Lady Macbeth's answer:
But in them Nature'scopy's not eterne
for a confirmation of his own impulse, and the scene broods to its end.
Up to this moment, there has been no whisper of a threat to Macbeth's kingship.
Banquo alone suspected Macbeth's means to the throne, but Banquo had easily accepted
his role as counsellor, had reminded Macbeth meaningfully that he was to Macbeth
with a most indissolubletie
For everknit.
He had sustained this role for some time, apparently; Macbeth desires his good advice
Whichstill hathbeen both graveand prosperous.
2 The suggestion is made that when Macduff, in his grief (IV.iii.216) exclaims "He has no
children,"he refersto Macbeth.But he is, of course,referringto Malcolm,who is showinghimselfso
insensitiveas to think Macduffcan be comforted or distractedin his sorrow.Leigh Hunt, scoldinga
performerof Malcolmfor seemingto alludeto Macbeth,pointed out that Macduff,hurt by a Malcolm
"unableto understanda father'sfeelings,turnsto Rosse [sic] for sympathy."
18 /
EDUCATIONAL THEATRE JOURNAL
All seems well in the kingdom; only Macduff, among the thanes, is noticed as having
avoided Macbeth's coronation. Then comes the attempt to assure the dynasty through the
killing of Banquo and Fleance; this evokes the deterioration in Macbeth's outward world
that will parallel his inward break.
That Fleance's death, and the assured succession of his own son, has dominated
Macbeth's design comes sharply clear when the murderer reports "Fleance is scaped."
Macbeth replies:
Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect,
Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,
As broad and general as the casing air:
But now, I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.
Until the discovery that Fleance survives, that the succession is in danger, there is no
evidence of Macbeth's tyranny. That does not surface until III.vi. The authenticity of the
intervening Hecate scene, III.v, has often been questioned; but the episode can be seen
structurally as providing a sense of a long, evil duration after Macbeth's banquet. The
country's discontent has only been provoked after Macbeth's despairing recognition that
his royal line may end with him. Until then, he was only "young in deed"-(still glimpsing
innocence?).
Macbeth's overt violence finally erupts only after he visits the Sisters for an ultimate
answer to his obsession with dynasty. He is comforted by child images, but they leave
him unsatisfied. Warnings and assurances about his own security exhilarate but do not
content him. He might now tell pale-hearted fear it lies, and sleep in spite of thunder: he
has been guaranteed the safety he yearned for; but another impulse continues to control
the design:
Yet my heart
Throbs to know one thing: ...
shall Banquo's issue ever
Reignin this kingdom?
He will be satisfied, or will curse the Sisters forever; when they finally confirm his fear,
when he has learned by worst means the very worst, he does curse forever the hour of
their revelation. Nothing is left for hope. Herod-like, to crown his thoughts, he carries on
his war against children-other men's children.
Now all he has to live for is death. His Lady is misting from him, and will soon be gone
altogether. So from now the tone changes; there is disillusion and despair, and the
elemental struggle of the splendid warrior trained to live until killed. The young men
come against him; the children fight back. Behind their green boughs they advance on the
bare, ruined choirs hung with yellow leaf.
19
/ THE MACBETH CHILD
For Lady Macbeth, in her sleepwalk, the manchild's cradle may be a cue for her visual
as well as verbal imagery; the V.i scene can be made to recall her invocations in I.v, and
her relationship to her babe may be part of the dark reverberations. For Macbeth,
enduring a time grown meaningless, the unmothered, futureless manchild will exist as one
of the sounds of hopeless life in the castle, among the cries of women, dying soldiers and
the voices of battle. A little cry, a final little cry, may herald Macbeth's death knell.3
3
If MarvinRosenberg'sinterpretationis used in performance,he would like to know how it went.
DECEMBER ETJ
DRAMATIC THEORY
David Grimsted, An Idea of Theatre History: An Informal Plea
John Fuegi, The Play's the Thing: Notes on Contemporary Drama Theory
Julian Olf, The Man/Marionette Debate in the Modern Theatre
David W. Addington, Varieties of Audience Research: Some Prospects for the
Future
Bela Kiralyfalvi, Lukaics: A Marxist View of the Aesthetic Effect
Gy6rgy Lukacs, About the Principles of Dramatic Form, trans. Bela Kiralyfalvi