A CONSIDERATION OF DAEMONOLOGY IN MACBETH
FROM BURTON TO FREUD.
{Print bibliographies and links to hard to locate primary sources
appear below.}
In his definitive interpretation of Shakespeare, Harold Bloom (Shakespeare, the Invention of the Human) notes...
Perhaps one "reality" we may investigate is the many references in
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the text to daemonology. Bloom's essay on Macbeth should be read in full, and compared to the views of Bradley (Shakespearean Tragedy). Curry's Shakesepare's Philosophical Patterns has an invaluable essay, "The Demonic Metaphysics of Macbeth," and more recently, Wills' Witches and Jesuits discusses the gunpowder plot.
Your project will be develop a hypothesis concerning Shakespeare's Intentions. Why the many illusions? Consult the following print sources:
Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead Books, 1999.
Bradley, A.C. Shakespearean Tragedy. New York: Fawcett Press, n.d.
Brownlow, F.W. Shakespeare, Harsnett and the Devils of Denham. Newark: Univ. of Del. Press, 1993.
Curry, Walter. Shakespeare's Philosophical Patterns,. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1968.
DeGivry, E. Sorcery, Magic and Alchemy. N.Y.: Mallard Press, 1991.
Huntley, Frank. "Macbeth and the Background of Jesuitical Equivocation" Ann Arbor.: Univ. of Michigan.
Jung, Carl. The Archetype of the Collective Unconscious. New York: Princeton, 1969
Knight, G. Wilson. The Wheel of Fire. N.Y.: Barnes and Noble, 1964.
Muir, Kennith. (editor) Macbeth. Arden Edition. N.Y.: Random House, 1964.
Muir, Kenneth. (editor). King Lear: Arden Edition. N.Y.: Random House, 1952.
Summers, Montague. (ed.). The Malleus Maleficarum. N.Y.: Dover Press, 1971.
Wills, Garry. Witches and Jesuits. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Click here for additional resources for Macbeth and Renaissance cultural contexts.
MACBETH AND THE WITCHES
If once examines the testimony of those believing in alien abduction and the accounts of witch-human contact, especially sexual, the accounts appear virtually identical if we substitute witch for alien. Whether the Jungian archetypes [aliens = technological angels] or sleep paralysis accounts for the similarity, humans have always believed in something transcendent, raising issues of how contact. Banquo notes that the witches can manipulate the "seeds of time," while Horatio warns Hamlet not to engage the ghost in conversation for fear of madness. Even in the comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, we have a supernatural hierarchy that ultimately pleases, but not without terrifying. It is interesting that the only character in MND that 'contacts' or is 'abducted' by the supernatural is Bottom, who paraphrasing St. Paul, cannot account for what he has 'experienced'..
I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was--there is no man can tell what. Methought I was,--and methought I had,--but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom's Dream, because it hath no bottom... (IV,ii)
In MND, we have a 'bottomless' dream, which in Macbeth becomes nightmare as Freud wrote. CLICK HERE FOR FREUD'S NOTES
THE FOLLOWING, USING THE ABOVE SOURCES, OUTLINES WHAT SHAKESPEARE MAY HAVE INTENDED: FIND APPROPRIATE TEXTUAL SUPPORT FOR YOUR VIEW:
I. THE SUPERNATURAL, ORDER, AND ROLE REVERSAL-THE CHAIN OF BEING REVERSES:
A. GOD // UNIVERSE // KING / KINGDOM // FATHER / FAMILY
B. DEVIL // UNIVERSE // WOMAN / FAMILY // BODY / HEAD
C. “TAKE SOVEREIGNTY AWAY FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH AND YOU TURN IT INTO A COCKPIT. MEN WOULD BECOME CUT-THROATS, AND CANNIBALS ONE UNTO ANOTHER. MURDER...RAPES, ROBBERIES, WITCHCRAFT, BLASPHEMIES...ALL KINDS OF VIOLENT AND SAVAGE CRUELTIES WOULD OVERFLOW ALL COUNTRIES... WE SHOULD HAVE A VERY HELL UPON EARTH, AND THE FACE OF IT COVERED WITH BLOOD...”
(From a 1621 sermon by Robert Bolton)
II. ENTER THE WITCHES:
A. WHAT DO THEY REPRESENT, AND WHAT IS THEIR EFFECT ON MACBETH’S CHARACTER?
B. IS HE TRAPPED? HOW FREE AN AGENT IS HE?
C. DO THEY SEEK HIM OUT TO TEST / TO PUNISH? IN THE ORSON WELLS DIRECTION, "SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES" IS MOVED FROM MACBETH'S SECOND MEETING WITH THE WITCHES TO JUST BEFORE THE FIRST ONE. SHOULD THIS CHANGE OCCUR?
III. VARIOUS VIEWS ON THE WITCHES:
A--JUST WOMEN--ASSOCIATED WITH THE SUPERNATURAL BUT NOT DOMINATING--MIMETIC: WOMEN WERE CAST OUT FROM THE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES BECAME “WITCH - LIKE" (See A.C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy--on line link from the index page for this course.)
B--AGENTS OF THE DEVIL--PLAINLY IN LINK WITH SATAN
SERVANTS OF HELL AND CONDEMNED SOULS WOMEN WERE MORE “CREDULOUS, AMBITIOUS, LUSTFUL, IMPRESSIONABLE.” (See: The Malleus Maleficarum--Hyperlink below)
C--SEXUALITY--A WITCH WOULD “SPEND ALL NIGHT WITH HER SWEETHEART (SATAN ) IN LAYING, SPORTING, DANCING, DALLIANCE, AND DIVERSE OTHER DEVILISH AND LEWD SPORTS.” SATAN WAS THE PRIMARY LOVER. (See: The Malleus Maleficarum--hyperlink below)
D--PROJECTIONS OF THE MIND--(This is the view of Reginald Scott: See Renaissance Theories of Ghosts and Daemons)
1--ARE THEY MANIFESTATIONS OF THE "HEAT OPPRESSED BRAIN" OF MACBETH AS EVIDENCED BY THE DAGGER.
2--THEY ARE OUTWARD MANIFESTATIONS OF THE EVIL THAT EXITS IN MACBETH’S MIND...SEE BANQUO’S RESPONSE TO MACBETH’S REACTION TO THE PROPHECIES.
3--COULD THEY BE PROJECTIONS OF THE FEMALE ARCHETYPE--BIBLICALLY OR PSYCHOLOGICALLY THAT SEDUCE AND LURE MEN TO THEIR DEATHS? [With much controversy, this view has received attention in Brown's DaVinci Code)
E--WITCHES AS SYMBOLS--PROJECTIONS OF THE CHAOS THAT LIES BELOW AN ORDERED UNIVERSE THAT WE ARE AFRAID TO FACE--NAZI GERMANY. THEY THUS REPRESENT WHAT IS HORRID IN HUMAN NATURE. (See Jung's The Archetype and the Collective Unconsciousness)
F--INSTRUMENTS OF FATE-- “..GREAT MINISTERS OF FATE”G--THE VIEW OF FREUD: CLICK HERE
1. FREUD OPENS WITH THE 'UNSEX ME' SOLILOQUY, NOTING HER STRENGTH OF WILL AND ABILITY OVERCOME HER "TENDER-MINDED" HUSBAND.
2. TRACING HER HISTORY TO THE SLEEPWALKING SCENE, FREUD ASKS "...WHAT IS WHAS THAT BROKE THIS CHARACTER WHICH [SIC.] HAD SEEMED FORGED FROM THE TOUGHEST METAL?" FREUD CONTINUES, WONDERING IF HER COLLAPSE IS DUE TO "A DEEPER MOTIVATION WHICH WILL MAKE THIS COLLAPSE MORE HUMANELY INTELLIGIBLE..."
3. WHAT CAN YOU CONCLUDE BASED ON THE EVIDENCE FREUD PROBES... BE SURE TO CONSULT THE FULL ESSAY--[hyperlink above.]
- Elizabeth I much lamented her lack of children
- James I was therefore named by her successor to preserve succession, after having his mother, Mary, executed
- James I for Elizabeth suggested "the curse of unfruitfulness and the blessings of continuous generation." as is Macbeth.
- Macbeth is angered by the prophecy that warns he will be childless, but Banquo's descendents will be kings.
- Duncan as a 'father figure' is murdered
- The punishments that occur to the Macbeth's stem from impotence:
- his: she doubts his manhood
- hers: she does not have children [Instructor note: Does the text support this?]
- In Holinshed [Shakespeare's source] Macbeth rules justly for some 10 years, but Shakespeare condenses and omits.
- Macbeth and Lady Macbeth may be dramatized elements of the same personality, split here for dramatic effect.
4. WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR THE SLEEPWALKING SCENE.
5. IN Hysteria of Lady Macbeth, Isador H. Coriat, M.D. (1912) discusses hysterical somnambulism. Can his analysis apply to Lady Macbeth?
"ln the somnambulistic crises, there is a rehearsal of all the emotional experiences which originally caused the mental dissociation. This rehearsal is a literal one, all words, gestures, sounds, scenes, being faithfully reproduced and acted out in a most dramatic manner. Each crisis exactly resembles the preceding one...." "There is a form of nervous disease known as a compulsive neurosis in which the subject has an almost continuous compulsion to either wash the hands or to repeat other actions almost indefinitely. The compulsion may arise from the idea that the hands are soiled or contaminated. . . . The act of washing the hands is a compromise for self reproach and repressed experience. The mechanism here in the sleepwalking scene is the same as in the compulsive neurosis, a proof of Shakespeare's remarkable insight into the workings of the human mind. . . ."
6. TRACE THESE LINES FROM THE SLEEP WALKING SCENE TO EARLIER ELEMENTS IN THE PLAY...WHAT CAN BE CONCLUDED?
5-1-5 “...takes forth paper, fold it”
5-1-10 “..to receive the benefits of sleep”
5-1-20 “..she has light by her continually”
5-1-25 "..look how she rubs her hands”
5-1-35:
“..out damned spot
hell is murky
fie...a soldier and afeard
who would have thought the old man to have so much blood
the thane of fife had a wife
no more of that my lord...
here’s the smell of blood: still all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand
Banquo’s buried..he cannot come out of his grave
What’s done cannot be undone...’
IV. ISSUES IN THE PLAY:
A-DO THE WITCHES KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO MACBETH?
B-THIS RAISES THE ISSUE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO THE DEVIL, GOD AND THE THEME OF EQUIVOCATION / THE GUN POWDER PLOT..
G--WHAT WOULD AN AUDIENCE OF THE DAY BELIEVE...?
Online resources make available texts that are more difficult to locate. Use the following tables:
The Daemonologie
analysis by Bowen
WHEN YOU HAVE EXAMINED A SUFFICIENT NUMBER OF SOURCES, CONSTRUCT A HYPOTHESIS, AND CITE THE TEXT. REMEMBER THAT MACBETH CAN BE SEARCHED ON LINE: CLICK HERE.
