ROSS               Norway himself, with numbers terrible,

Assisted by that most disloyal traitor

The Thane of Cawdor, began a dismal conflict,

Till that Bellona’s bridegroom, lapped in proof,

Confronted him with self-comparisons,

Point against point, rebellious arm ‘gainst arm,

Curbing his lavish spirit; and to conclude,

The victory fell on us—

KING                                       Great happiness!

ROSS                                                               —That now

Sweyno, the Norway king, craves composition. (1.2.51-59)

And so the battle began, led by Norway himself, the Norwegian king, with numbers terrible, a huge force; the Scottish troops loyal to the King were clearly outnumbered. And Norway (Sweyno the King) was assisted by that most disloyal traitor, the Thane of Cawdor, and presumably Cawdor’s own men too. This is the first explicit mention of treason, as well as rebellion; it’s not just been Macdonald’s fight, but one of the thanes too, the Thane of Cawdor, one of the highest rankest nobles in Scotland, who’s betrayed his sovereign lord and thrown his lot in with the invaders. A dismal conflict indeed, and it looked desperate. Until—hooray, Ross does suspense every bit as well as the Captain—until Bellona’s bridegroom, lapped in proof, got stuck in. Bellona is goddess of war, and so there’s another oddly erotic imagining of Macbeth’s prowess as a warrior; he’s not straightforwardly a Mars, but rather the lover of the goddess of war. (The husband of a war goddess…) And he’s lapped in proof: technically, proof is a kind of armour, which Macbeth has been clad in, but to be lapped is also to be enfolded or wrapped more generally, and it might well be that the proof in which Macbeth was lapped here is BLOOD, proof of manly warrior prowess and sheer bloody-mindedness, in every possible sense. Macbeth confronted Cawdor with self-comparisons, as an equal (an ironic anticipation of his own, far greater treachery?); he meets him point against point, blade to blade, with Cawdor’s rebellious arm against his own. But whose was the rebellious arm here? the referents are suggestively ambiguous, as well as still quite intimate in the sense of a kind of mirroring dance of violence, give and take; there’s an anticipation of Coriolanus and Aufidius as they exchange blow for blow. Macbeth beat Cawdor down, curbed his lavish spirit, taught him a lesson, tamed him, cowed him—and to conclude, the victory fell on us. We won. Fell on us suggests, still, that it could have gone either way, and the role of fate. And now the Norwegian king craves composition. He wants a peace treaty. He’s begging for it.