Soliloquy in Shakespeares Macbeth - Essay Example

 Soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Macbeth In Macbeth, William Shakespeare used soliloquy, or dramatic speeches that represent a character’s internal monologue, to identify and reveal the psychological destruction of the characters. Soliloquy enables the reader (or viewer) to develop a sense of relation towards the characters’ inner thoughts and feelings by making universal motifs explicit to the audience in personal, subjective terms, through the words of the characters. Desire, mental anguish, and death are key points of Macbeth’s soliloquies that both fuel and foreshadow his tragic end. By allowing the audience to listen to the characters’ private thoughts and feelings, soliloquy is unique among dramatic techniques. Through soliloquy, we gain access to the mental and emotional landscape of the character, who tells us what he or she would not tell the other characters. Soliloquy illuminates the mindset in an explicit, though limited way. The character tells the audience their thoughts and feelings, but is necessarily limited in their point of view, an aspect that is frequently illustrative in itself. Furthermore, by allowing the characters to indirectly address the audience and tell their story in their own words, soliloquy allows the audience to identify more strongly with them. When a character reflects on their situation, often in emotionally charged terms, they frequently express universal feelings and ideas common to all people in all places and times. “Shakespeare continually overcome[s] historical change and seem[s] to speak directly to our situation, to our needs, desires, and fears.” (Carr and Knapp 837) Therefore, Shakespeare used soliloquy frequently, in part to allow audiences to relate to characters who may be quite unlike themselves, and who commit horrible deeds within the dramatic action; murder and treachery hinder an audience’s sympathy for a character, but an explicit portrait of the murderer and traitor’s psychological state, their thoughts and feelings which lead to their acts, overcome this handicap to some degree. The characters are not defined solely by their actions, but for their emotions as well. Thus, the emotional, internal conflict so crucial to the play’s story is made accessible to the audience. In this way, as lecturer Harry Jaffa states,“ Macbeth is a moral play par excellence... In Macbeth Shakespeare presented the moral phenomena in such a way that those who respond to his art must, in some way or another, become better human beings” (Jaffa 27) Desire is the driving force behind the entire tragedy of Macbeth, and it is the desire—the overwhelming lust—for power that is the reason for Macbeth’s downfall. This desire for power is therefore a crucial feature in his soliloquies, which help establish his motivation from the beginning of the play. It is this desire that gradually erodes his apprehension of committing treacherous, bloody acts. Desire blinds Macbeth to the warnings present in the witches’ prophesies, causing him to act on them selectively, ignoring crucial information and instead latching on to visions of a grand future as King of Scotland. The famous lines “If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well/It were done quickly.” (1.7.1-2) that begin Macbeth’s Act One soliloquy illustrate the growing conflict between his desire for power and his apprehension of committing murder. Even this short (relative to the length of the play in its entirety) aside illustrates Macbeth’s growing hubris and foolhardiness in microcosm. He begins, as quoted above, in ambivalent contemplation of the acts that he eventually commits. The opening words “If it were done) indicate, first by the use of “if”, that he has not fully committed himself to the idea. Second, Macbeth phrases this idea cautiously, avoiding the active “If I do this,” in favor of a passive construction, distancing his sense of self from the acts of murder and treachery. He then contemplates the possible consequences of committing the murder, both in the afterlife “But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,/ We’ld jump the life to come” (1.7.7-8) and in the present world: We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor: (1.7.9-12) Before addressing to himself (and to the audience) the moral dilemma, he begins by focusing on the practical consequences of being caught and punished, again distancing himself from the real meaning of what committing the murder would fully entail. These are words of one who is trying to convince himself—or dissuade himself-- of something about which, by his own growing desire for power, he has already made up his mind. After he has reminded himself of the possible outcomes of the act, he turns his attention to the moral considerations: 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 (1.7.13-17) As Duncan’s relation, subject, and host, Macbeth outlines three reasons why he, of all people, should be his King’s protector and not his assassin. He calls into question his role as a nobleman and subject, and meditates on the moral implications of the act. If Duncan stands in “double trust” as his relative and King, then as relative, subject, and host, Macbeth’s act would be triple treachery. Yet, although he thinks of these problems, his ambition has already won out over both his practical caution and his moral apprehension. In his heart, Macbeth has already decided to murder Duncan, and thus the soliloquy ends with a ringing declaration of his underlying motivation to do so: I have no spur To prick the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself And falls on th'other. (1.7. 26-29) When his desire for power wins out and he commits the deed, the audience has gained insight as to why he chose his path. The reader has observed his private thoughts and apprehensions about the act, and therefore Macbeth is not merely a one-dimensional killer, but a fully-realized man who gave in to a weakness the audience had witnessed growing from the start. The soliloquy that began with wavering temptation (“If”) ended, as Macbeth himself does, with a “fall”. The immediate result of Macbeth’s decision to murder Duncan is mental anguish. Macbeth wrestles more and more with the implications of the act, and also begins to lose his reason, as evidenced by his soliloquy given upon hallucinating a dagger pointing towards the King’s chamber: Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppress'd brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use. (2.1.33-43) The fact that Macbeth is hallucinating a dagger is indication enough of his mental state: confused, half-mad, with a “heat-oppress’ed brain” (2.1.39) and guilt already weighing on his conscience. He is half-aware that the vision may be a result of his mental confusion , he questions the dagger, asking it if it is real or a product of his overtaxed and guilt-laden imagination. This reverie furthers the mental distance he created earlier between himself and the act. Rather than envisioning Duncan, he envisions the instrument of his murder. Thus, the act becomes tied up in the object rather than in Macbeth’s conception of himself. He states that the dagger “marshall’st me the way that I was going” (2.1.42) further shifting the blame away from his sense of self. Macbeth’s mental anguish at this point in the dramatic action stems from the opposing forces within him; the desire for power is in conflict with his moral sense. With these two aspects of himself at war, his very personality is being split in half, leading him to dissociate from the act in an attempt to salvage his sense of self while at the same time achieving his bloody goal. And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, Which was not so before. There's no such thing: It is the bloody business which informs Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. . (2.1.50-57) The imagery of blood, the “halfworld” (or spirit world), nightmares, witches, and wolves all contribute to Macbeth’s increasingly uneasy, disturbed mind. Wishing that he could all but disappear in the face of what he is about to do, he seeks to mentally divorce himself from the deed. Instead, he projects this growing horror onto the object, painting the phantom dagger as a willing participant, an instigator instead of an instrument. Later in the play, after so much bloodshed has occurred, Macbeth’s thoughts turn to meditations of death. Upon hearing of Lady Macbeth’s death, he reflects: 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. (5.5.22-28) His original ambition and ambivalence have been reduced to horror and despair at the results of his actions. Whereas before he was foolhardy and ready to risk all for the sake of gaining the crown, even at the expense of his honor and the risk of his soul, now he has realized just what the cost of his wrongdoing really is. The result is a nihilistic rejection of everything he previously thought valuable. Before, power was worth any amount of bloodshed and treachery. In the face of death, Macbeth rejects all life as meaningless. Macbeth’s soliloquies, focusing on desire, mental anguish, and death, show the audience the arc of his emotional response to his predicament and the actions he takes. More than his actions, his words illustrate how he has changed over the course of the play. Beginning as a nobleman with no thought of advancement, he was gradually overwhelmed with desire that disrupted his sense of integrity and threatened his very sense of self and his sanity. And after so much murder, he finds no pleasure in his ill-gotten advancement, finding the sorrows of death instead of the glory he sought. Throughout, the audience is privy to this internal transformation, expressed as it is in Macbeth’s own, private words. As teacher Emma Goldman says, “…The point of Shakespeare is the language and that therein lies the truth of all he writes” (Goldman 38) Works Cited: Carr, Stephen L., and Peggy A. Knapp. "Seeing Through Macbeth." PMLA 96 (1981): 837-47. Goldman, Emma. "Who's This Slag I See Before Me?" The Times Educational Supplement 11 Apr. 2003: 38-39. Jaffa, Harry V. "Macbeth and the Moral Universe." Claremont Review of Books 8 (2007): 27-33. Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. New York: Spark Group, 2006. Read More