At the end of Act II, Scene 2, Lady Macbeth tells her husband:
Hark, more knocking.
Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us
And show us to be watchers. Be not lost
So poorly in your thoughts.
When Macbeth appears in Act II, Scene 3, he is wearing a nightgown and is "lost in his thoughts." He is almost like a sleepwalker. The only reason he has put in an appearance is that no one was responding to the persistent knocking, and he finally felt compelled to go down and see what was going on. By the time he arrives at the gate, the Porter has just admitted Macduff and Lennox. Macduff says:
Our knocking hath awaked him: here he comes.
Macbeth has not slept that night. His strange, withdrawn behavior gives Macduff the false impression that Macbeth is angry because the knocking woke him up. Macduff offers a veiled apology:
He [King Duncan] did command me to call timely on him;
I have almost slipped the hour.
Macbeth simply replies,
I'll bring you to him.
Macbeth is not being deliberately rude; he just can't think of the customary polite things to say because he is thinking of his horrible deed and dreading the discovery of Duncan's body. Macduff is angered by Macbeth's reply. Macduff's own response is laden with irony.
I know this is a joyful trouble to you;
But yet 'tis one.
Macbeth doesn't get any of the innuendo. He is totally lost in his own thoughts, just as Lady Macbeth observed when she told him:
Be not lost
So poorly in your thoughts.
Macduff will remember Macbeth's strange behavior later on and will realize it was not caused by being disgruntled over a simple thing like being wakened by the knocking. Macbeth is consumed with guilt, remorse, shame, regret, fear, horror, and many other conflicting emotions. He will continue to behave like a sleepwalker until Macduff emerges from the King's chamber crying:
O horror, horror, horror—
Tongue nor heart cannot conceive nor name thee!
Macbeth had planned to be in bed with his wife when the King's body was discovered, both husband and wife pretending to be sound asleep. Shakespeare wanted Macbeth to be present when the murdered body was discovered. This would make that scene all the more dramatic. Shakespeare invented the knocking, which forced Macbeth to stop pretending to be asleep and make an appearance. Once he encountered Macduff and Lennox, Macbeth was forced to lead them to the very door behind which lay a scene he could not dare to imagine. Earlier, he told his wife:
I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on't again I dare not (Act II, Scene 2).
Macbeth's demeanor during the entire time he converses with Macduff and Lennox can be described as strange, withdrawn, stiff, and even trancelike. Whereas the two innocent arrivals interpret it as cold, surly, discourteous, abrupt, and angry because they have been pounding on his gate for so long that they woke him up out of a sound sleep. The audience understands the truth which Macduff and Lennox do not. Macbeth has to act like a host as best he can, and he knows he is going to have to put on an even harder act when the body is discovered. In trying to conceal his true feelings, he is creating a false impression. Macduff and Lennox are so innocent that they think Macbeth is simply angry because they woke him up. In reality, Macbeth hasn't even been to sleep. He has even been warned by a mysterious voice that he might never sleep again. As he tells his wife earlier in some of Shakespeare's most beautiful language:
Me thought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!
Macbeth doth Murder sleep”—the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast—Still it cried, “Sleep no more!” to all the house;
“Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more” (Act II, Scene 2).
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