Enter Lady
KING See, see, our honoured hostess.
[To Lady] The love that follows us sometime is our trouble,
Which still we thank as love. Herein I teach you
How you shall bid God yield us for your pains,
And thank us for your trouble.
LADY All our service
In every point twice done, and then done double,
Were poor and single business to contend
Against those honours deep and broad wherewith
Your majesty loads our house. For those of old,
And the late dignities heaped up to them,
We rest your hermits. (1.6.10-20)
Enter Lady Macbeth—sometimes bejewelled and gracious, sometimes drying her hands on her apron, curtseying gracefully or blushingly, sometimes all of the above—the consummate hostess, our honoured hostess, as Duncan rapturously continues. Every eye is on her, this woman (for the moment, without her husband) surrounded by all these men. How she plays the power dynamics is always interesting. Duncan sails on: everyone’s always so nice to me, so kind, people go to so much trouble; it’s amazing and humbling to be so so loved, and I’m grateful. A moment of self-deprecation: I’m modelling for you how you in turn might ask God for recompense, at the same time thanking us (ironically) for causing you so much trouble. You’ve really put yourselves out here! I’m being such a nuisance! (For a play set in medieval Scotland, this exchange is almost parodically and anachronistically English.) Oh, it’s absolutely nothing, insignificant, no trouble at all. (She’s even better at this than he is.) If we did everything we’re doing twice over, every point twice done, and then did it again, done double (double double, obviously)—it still wouldn’t be anything, it would still be poor and single business in comparison with those honours deep and broad wherewith your majesty loads our house. Deep and broad is striking. It suggests—water? A flood, a wide river, perilous to cross? It also suggests a garment (the borrowed robes), a piece of cloth, perhaps, a blanket, something weighty and enveloping. The house is the family, the clan, but the fleeting impression of the castle being smothered in—something—is an unsettling one. For all those honours, the old ones, and also the new ones, these late dignities which have been heaped up upon the old ones—well, we’re in your debt. We rest your hermits, meaning, we are bound to pray for you, and for your soul. Hmmmm.
