Macbeth — A Crash Course In Human Behaviour

This is a post I’d been willing to jot down for the last few years now, and it’s easily the toughest yet, to write — not for the lack of ideas, but for too many of them flitting about in my mind vying desperately to find their way onto paper, err… screen. This is quite rightly my most ambitious write-up yet and well, prone to some grammatical mistakes too (disregard their presence, o kind grammar nazi).

Macbeth, in my opinion, is one of Shakespeare’s finest works. He plays with the human psyche with such subtlety that it’s hard to believe he wasn’t a psychologist. What we get in those few pages of the play are excellent examples of how Shakespeare not just understood but sculpted a puppetry around the malleability of the human spirit — both in good and bad ways. The play opened the doors to reveal the many skeletons we all have hidden in our closets and the many virtues in us fighting to keep us from going, well, crazy. And for the last few years, I’ve carried this play inside my head trying to bring the right words together to sew an analysis of the human psyche based on it. What you’re about read is a feeble attempt at describing the play as a crash course in human behaviour. I do not attempt to be chronologically in sync with the events of the play, for good reason (but I’ll try).

The Black and the White

The play opens with the three witches — harbingers of evil, and two very noble men — Banquo and Macbeth as they return from war. Very black and white, sure! But this is also where the grey-ness starts to seep in through the many cracks in the conversations. You see, the witches symbolise three of the most common human traits — envy, greed, and doubt — the (un)holy trinity that clouds our judgment and makes us do (or say) the things we never thought we could. It is worth mentioning here that Banquo and Macbeth symbolise the superego and the ego respectively (though temporarily) — the extreme moralist untouched by the id and the soft, mushy realist prone to the influence of the id’s impulses respectively.

The Woman Behind The Man

Many people jokingly say that behind every war, there’s a woman. Well, in this case, they are somewhat right (but not exactly). Enter Lady Macbeth. A strong-willed, far-sighted, passionate, ambitious, yet manipulative woman — a seductress for the mind.
Excuse me for a moment here as I hail Mr. William for creating such a strong female character who was so in contrast to the damsels in distress we are so accustomed to reading about, that too at a time when women weren’t even allowed to perform on stage. Come to think of it, Shakespeare always had a way with his characters — I’m thinking of Rosalind from As You Like It, or Katherine from The Taming of The Shrew — he made sure the women were bold and brave.
And now, coming back to Macbeth’s missus. She knew her husband well (or did she?) and she didn’t seem to have the word procrastination in her dictionary, so she acted on the news of the witches’ prophecy as fast as she could or she would lose the chance to see her husband as the King of Scotland (and herself as the Queen, obviously!). The greed for power plays out so well here and so does the aforementioned malleability of the human spirit. Macbeth’s malleable spirit gives in to his wife’s plans. The ego (Macbeth) believes that honesty is the best policy, but this mushy realist can always be influenced by a strong reaction from the id. And so, the ego gives in.

Bring in the Defense Mechanisms

You see, Banquo (the superego) had warned Macbeth (the ego) against believing in the prophecies of the witches. But the missus (the id) had other plans. There begins the conflict. Since the ego is all mushy inside, it can’t take the pressure the other two put on it. So it retracts. This is perfectly played out in Macbeth’s first soliloquy where he is clearly torn between being a protector to King Duncan as he is his guest and his King, and being the bearer of the knife that shall end his life as is evident for the lines:

He’s here in double trust:
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself.

The fear starts to creep in. But the id won’t let go so easily and this is when we see Lady Macbeth at her finest (and indeed, her cruelest) when she asks Macbeth to “man up” and makes sure to “screw [his] courage to the sticking-place”. This was actually the instance where I fell in love with the Lady’s character so much so that I stood up in applause (albeit, in my mind, because it is inappropriate in a classroom with no other sound except the English teacher’s voice).
But the conflict doesn’t end here. The night has only begun (truly!). So Macbeth decides to end Duncan’s life once and for all — he wanted the power, the fame, the love of the people, and more importantly — the throne of Scotland. With Banquo nowhere to help, Macbeth’s virtues are left to fend for themselves, and they try very hard to keep him from doing “the deed” as is evident in Macbeth’s first hallucination (read: the bloodstained dagger). Our mind is prone to putting up defenses in the face of conflict and these hallucinations are a part and parcel of intense conflict. And the hallucinations don’t end here. They come back, but more on that later.

Thus We Begin to Wade in Blood

One of the most fascinating aspects of indulging in wrongdoings is the addiction that follows the first taste — it’s a drug you keep going back to, and the more you have of it, the more you need because the effects start fading if the quantity isn’t increased. This concept is what Macbeth puts forth in my most favourite lines of the play (and well-timed too):

I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er.
Strange things I have in head, that will to hand,
Which must be acted ere they may be scanned.

We get so carried away by the thrill of that which is wrong, it stops mattering to us who or what we lose on our way forward. It is a gamble we lose one way or another. And no amount of the superego’s counsel can get us back up from the deep, dark abyss we’ve built for ourselves.
It must be noted here, that for many people, redemption does become a part of the play, but in this particular case, it doesn’t. Things only get worse.
It is worth noting here that even though Macbeth’s rationality is nowhere to be seen, he acknowledges the flicker of it when he says “Strange things I have in head, that will to hand, Which must be acted ere they may be scanned.” Part of him knows that if he allows these horrendous thoughts to linger, they will end up being scanned by the drops of virtue he still has left in some corner and he will end up stepping back — something he did not want. This is true for us all — no matter how wrong a deed we commit, there is always a minuscule bit of fear and guilt that tries to hold us back and convince us to do the right thing or to take the high road (not true in case of psychopaths and sociopaths).
And did I mention that the oh-so-benevolent Banquo is dead by this time? Well, now you know.

This also goes on to teach us that no matter how good we may be, we are prone to kneeling down to our demons, our vices at some point. That’s what we call making mistakes. Macbeth was never supposed to be so evil, but once he had killed Duncan, there was no going back. He tried, desperately to redeem himself, but he couldn’t. He instead goes on to be accountable for the deaths (read: murders) of Macdonwald, Banquo, Lady Macduff and her family and household, and Young Siward. And the lines I quoted above show how he justifies his actions — he still wishes to come back, but he believes it won’t do anyone any good so it is better to keep moving on. Oh! And did I mention Macbeth is greeted by Banquo’s ghost in the middle of an important dinner? Well, now you know that too!

The Interesting Twist

We have seen the incredible changes taking place in Macbeth’s character, but we haven’t forgotten about the missus just yet. Another fascinating concept in psychology is the dynamic nature of human personality. You see, when people throw around phrases like, “I’m not the same person, I’ve changed”, they’re not lying, they have changed indeed. It is believed that there are many factors that make up our personality, and they interact with our world — both inside and outside, and they subsequently change. Some are larger in magnitude than the others. When asked to put a number on the exact amount of time that it takes one’s personality to change, researchers quoted 18 months — that’s how quickly our personality has the potential to change. This does not, however, mean that we become a completely different person. No. We inherently remain the same, it’s just that our perspectives and priorities have shifted so much so that we can’t see things as they were before, kinda how we have different interests in different things over the years.
So, as I said, Macbeth isn’t the only character to have undergone a massive personality-shift, the Lady has changed too. Well, remember how strong she was at the beginning of the play? Remember how she convinced her husband to “man up”? Well, she’s the exact opposite now. For one, she had never anticipated that things would get so out of hand so fast. She might have been an ambitious woman, but she never wanted her ambitions to create a rift in her marriage or for that matter to create a monster of her loving husband. She feels guilty. She feels desperate for love. She needs her husband. She realises that he’s no longer the man she thought him to be. She no longer wants the fruits of her ambition and she’s willing to trade them for the life she had prior to all that bloodbath. She wants to go back in time to prevent all this from happening. But! (You guessed it) She can’t. And now she’s helpless and full of secrets that she dare not share. And when a normal human being undergoes such immense stress and trauma, they become delusional. And so did she. She was depressed by now, and she was constantly hallucinating (read: “Out damned spot”). Despite her best efforts, she could not set things right. She now felt that she had only one way out of all this. She does the unthinkable act for her character — she commits suicide.

The Heartbreak(s)

You might think that having lost his wife, his confidante, Macbeth would mourn. You’re wrong. He doesn’t. In fact, he is so unmoved by her death that he says:

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.

A cold-hearted comment. It goes on to show how deep the cracks had reached in this marriage, and how empathy was a lost cause to Macbeth. He was indifferent now. He was desperate to put an end to all those who opposed him. He was desperate to go to war. He didn’t pay heed to the witches’ prophecy of his death. Nothing mattered now.
Post this, he goes on to say my next most favourite lines in the play:

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

He wants to feel something. His heart is screaming because he can’t feel the pain of his wife’s death. Instead, he can be seen intellectualising (another defense mechanism) the death of his wife and the death of all others. Life has become such a puny concept to him that he is no longer afraid of death — not even his own. However, even till the end, he doesn’t give away the honour of a true soldier, he refuses to kneel to the enemy (Macduff) without putting up a fight — as I said, there are some inherent traits of our personality that do not change. This is evident in the following lines:

I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet,
And to be baited with the rabble’s curse.
Though Birnam Wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou opposed, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last. Before my body
I throw my warlike shield. Lay on, Macduff,
And damned be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!”

The lines that went on to become his last words. He dies.

In Conclusion

The play was created for the purpose of entertainment, but it went to become so much more than just another play. And by now I guess you can see why. It also goes on to show how we all carry the good and the bad within us (read: yin and yang), and how subjective and malleable both of those parts are. Though we may appear good, the evil is hidden beneath our very skin. Though we may do what’s right, we may be equally tempted to do the wrong. Where then must we draw the line? How then must we decide when to cross it?

Originally published at http://wordsandinbetveen.wordpress.com on August 13, 2018.