Enter Macbeth’s Wife, alone, with a letter
LADY [reading] ‘They met me in the day of success, and I have learned by the perfect’st report they have more in them than mortal knowledge. When I burnt in desire to question them further, they made themselves air, into which they vanished. Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the King, who all-hailed me “Thane of Cawdor”, by which title before these weyard sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time with “Hail, king that shalt be”. This have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell’ (1.5.1-10)
A radical shift in tone, as the crowded, quite formal stage of the previous scene empties and gives way to Macbeth’s Wife, alone, with a letter. It’s the play’s first soliloquy—eventually—and it’s odd, because the first words she speaks are not her own, but rather Macbeth’s, as the audience must quickly work out. When last seen, Macbeth was about to travel with all possible haste home, to his wife, to prepare to host the king, but he’s sent a messenger even more quickly, unseen (riding post, an audience would infer; on a fast horse) to give her even more extraordinary news. He seems to have written and sent this letter before his meeting with the king, before Malcolm’s naming as the heir apparent, and before it’s been decided that the king will stay with them that night. It’s just a report of the encounter with the witches, yet more evidence that he’s been dwelling on it obsessively—and that he’s close enough to his wife to write immediately to tell her, rather than wait to tell her himself. Yet it’s wonderfully vague: is she mid letter as she reads, does she enter reading? It seems so; in properly dramatic fashion the letter itself, as we hear it, begins in medias res, in the middle: They met me in the day of success. Who are they? We infer, the witches, but they’re not named. (Page one, perhaps, described the battle, the chopping and the slaying, the victory, the ride across the heath and then, this encounter—with them.)
It’s clear that Macbeth wants to believe the witches, and that he wants to convince his wife of their veracity. I have learned by the perfect’st report they have more in them than mortal knowledge. They’re reliable, accurate; some of what they’ve said has already come true, in my being named Thane of Cawdor, as they predicted. They disappeared into thin air. (Already Macbeth’s narration of the scene we witnessed is overlaying our own memories of it. They did indeed vanish, just like that.) He says that he stood rapt in the wonder of it, rapt being the word applied to him by others, his being beside himself, distracted, ravished away. And then that confirmation with the king’s messengers, suggesting that, if the first part of the prophecy had come true then, with the coming on of time, I might be king. That crucial detail is given almost diffidently, wordily (referred me to the coming on of time), and the speech he reports isn’t quite what the witches said, but rather a more concise, perhaps more resonant version of it: king that shalt be.
He had to tell her, as soon as he could, addressing her as his dearest partner of greatness. It’s a striking formulation, suggesting a relationship of equality, mutuality, and trust, and that they are very much a team. He wanted her to know so that she could not lose the dues of rejoicing, lose the opportunity of celebrating as soon as possible what greatness is promised her—or at least that’s what he says. What he gets, she gets; they’re a package deal; he knows that she will enjoy his enoblement, perhaps even more than he does. And that she too will be excited by the prospect of rising still further. Perhaps by telling her he makes it real, and makes it more likely to happen. He knows already, perhaps, how she will respond, how she will be braver, more proactive, more ruthless than him. Lay it to thy heart, and farewell: keep it secret, yes, but also internalise it, nurture these prospects within you. Macbeth’s idiom is conventional, but there’s another perverse biblical echo, perhaps: when the shepherds visit the newborn Jesus, they tell Mary and Joseph what the angels have said: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men’. ‘Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart’. Another perverse annunciation.
The scene opens—Lady Macbeth’s role in the play opens—with an act of ventriloquism. She reads Macbeth’s words, words in which other words, the words of the witches, are also embedded. He, and they, speak in Lady Macbeth’s voice; they speak through her. It’s interestingly layered, ambivalent in terms of power and agency.
