Macbeths reunited: loaded phases, high on possibility (1.5.50-57) #DaggerDrawn #SlowShakespeare

Enter Macbeth

LADY              Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor,

Greater than both by the all-hail hereafter!

Thy letters have transported me beyond

This ignorant present, and I feel now

The future in the instant.

MACBETH                  My dearest love,

Duncan comes here tonight.

LADY                          And when goes hence?

MACBETH      Tomorrow, as he purposes.

LADY                                                  O, never

Shall sun that morrow see.               (1.5.50-57)

 

Finally, he’s home. Will Macbeth still be muddied from the travel, in boots and cloak, so filled with urgency that he hasn’t paused since (perhaps) leaping from his horse? Does he gaze at her, she at him, dumbstruck by what’s happened, what will happen? Do they fall into each other’s arms? She has to turn, quickly, from the ecstatic, terrible imagining of smothering darkness, a stab in the dark, to her formal greeting, but the ecstasy can remain; Lady Macbeth’s on a total high. Her phrases recall both Macbeth’s letter and the witches’ greetings, and Ross’s too—Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor—and she demonstrates that she’s fully bought into the entirety of the prophecy: greater than both by the all-hail hereafter. She won’t articulate its significance, though, not quite yet; it’s there in that loaded word hereafter. The future king. She has been transported, taken outside herself—rapt, to use the word applied several times already to Macbeth—by his letter; she’s in another dimension, one of knowledge and certainty, not this ignorant, baffled, uncomprehending present. And I feel now the future in the instant. There’s a kind of temporal collapse here: just as Macbeth lays claim, more or less at once, to all three titles, so she is already living in the golden future that she imagines. This moment is (and I use the word deliberately, it seems ironically appropriate given the language she’s been using throughout) pregnant; it’s full of possibility, full of a new life, a new identity, but also terrible things.

Macbeth’s first words to his wife: my dearest love, Duncan comes here tonight. He doesn’t, perhaps, know that she already knows this, that the messenger got through. More importantly, though, he knows that she will understand this as a (pregnant) phrase, a statement that asks a question, the significance of which (even though he can’t bring himself to articulate it) he knows she will appreciate. The King, the old man. Our guest, in our house, tonight. Arrival imminent. Her reply, innocuous, but double-edged, of course: oh, and how long will he be staying? When goes hence? He knows what she’s asking; she’s daring him to say it first. Tomorrow, as he purposes. He says it’ll be just the one night. And Lady Macbeth can’t contain herself any longer; she has to say it. O, never shall sun that morrow see. Well, that’s not going to happen; Duncan’s going nowhere. He’s not going to see the sun rise; this night will be his last, and last for ever.

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