CAPTAIN                    But all’s too weak;

For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name—

Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel,

Which smoked with bloody execution,

Like Valour’s minion carved out his passage

Till he faced the slave;

Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him

Till he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops

And fixed his head upon our battlements.

KING               O valiant cousin, worthy gentleman!          (1.2.15-24)

The Captain, for all that he’s rapidly bleeding out, is a born story-teller; he’s got his hearers, onstage and off, hanging on his every word, and it’s full of suspense. It’s perhaps even trickier for the reader, because that first line is ambiguous (I’m looking at 3 different editions and they all punctuate it differently, and gloss it differently too). It could be either all is too weak, that is, anything I can say will be inadequate, or, completely differently, all his (or indeed all is), meaning, all of Macdonald’s rebel forces, those kerns and gallowglasses, Macdonald himself, they’re weak by comparison, they’re not enough. Because brave Macbeth, and he certainly deserves to be called brave (well he deserves that name)—he’s got nothing but contempt for Fortune (the whore, who had seemed to be on Macdonald’s side). With his brandished steel, wielding his sword with such ferocity, and such speed, and to such violent effect that it looked as if it was smoking, a bloody haze, gory steam, red hot with blood and death, he cut his way through the fight, carved out his passage, as if he were mining flesh, like Valour’s minion, the favourite, the darling of courage. (There’s a decadence to minion; it can have a sexual sense, often used for male favourites, so here Valour’s minion is explicitly opposed to Fortune as the rebel’s whore. Macbeth’s doing something utterly outrageous, but also, perhaps, implicitly sexual; there’s an erotic quality to what the Captain’s describing and how he’s describing it.) When he faced the slave, that is Macdonald, he didn’t bother with any of the niceties, no handshake; he didn’t even say farewell. He simply unseamed him from the nave to the chops, navel to jaws, disembowelled him, yes, but that was just the start; he split Macdonald in half, from bottom to top. The stab to the guts would have been enough, but he took him apart, like a garment, or an animal. It’s a grotesque, extraordinary feat of arms, requiring immense, brutal strength, far more than would be required for, say, a swift decapitation, carried out in part by the sword’s own momentum. A two-handed job, against gravity. And Macbeth seems to have looked Macdonald in the eye as he did it, then, almost as an afterthought, cut off his head and stuck it on the battlements.

O valiant cousin, worthy gentleman! says the King, full of admiration. (Macbeth is the King’s kinsman. Useful to have that pointed out.) But gentleman isn’t quite what springs to mind…