MACBETH      Bring forth men children only,

For thy undaunted mettle should compose

Nothing but males. Will it not be received,

When we have marked with blood those sleepy two

Of his own chamber, and used their very daggers,

That they have done’t?

LADY                          Who dares receive it other,

As we shall make our griefs and clamour roar

Upon his death?

MACBETH                  I am settled, and bend up

Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.

Away, and mock the time with fairest show.

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.

Exeunt             (1.7.72-82)

 

To a modern sensibility, Macbeth’s thinking here might seem slightly muddled: he says that his wife should give birth only to sons, not daughters, as her temperament is masculine in her undaunted mettle, her courageous spirit. And yet she has mocked him as unmanly and she has herself rejected her femininity. What counts as manliness, womanliness, masculinity, femininity will continue to be contested in this play—but, in this moment, Macbeth is paying his wife a compliment, as he sees it: you’re as good as a man! The ear hears metal, perhaps more readily than mettle; to be manly is to be hard, impenetrable, more (or less) than human. (There are anticipatory glimpses of Coriolanus here, the warrior who ‘was a kind of nothing, titleless, till he had forged himself a name in the fire of burning Rome’. Coriolanus makes Macbeth look well-adjusted.)

Finally, Macbeth’s seeing how it will work, a bit slow on the uptake. Will it not be received, assumed, when we have marked with blood those sleepy two of his own chamber, and used their very daggers, that they have done’t? Well yes, that’s the point, darling. We’re framing the servants: who dares receive it other? Why would anyone imagine differently? All sorts of assumptions here about class and status: if in doubt, blame the servants. Bloodstains come back again and again in the play, especially on the face, a kind of mark of Cain, a curse. Besides, Lady Macbeth adds, you and I are going to be loudly devastated by Duncan’s death, when it’s discovered. We shall make our griefs and clamours roar.

I am settled, resolved then. I’ll do it. I bend up each corporal agent to this terrible feat. Macbeth has assimilated the conceit of the crossbow, the taut, tightened string (bend up is a verb specifically used for a bow string; an arrow in the dark). Every part of my body is ready, poised, waiting to explode into terrible violence, full of pent up force. (Very sexual, again.) Terrible feat is interesting, not least because act or deed would work just as well in metrical terms: he acknowledges their plan as terrible, but also frames it as a feat, something exceptional, valorous, noteworthy. He could be being ironic, but also, perhaps, has partly reconciled himself to it by imagining it as a heroic act, akin to his battlefield exploits. Extreme, outrageous, aspirational, superhuman. And now it’s up to Lady Macbeth in particular, but both of them, to keep up appearances, mock the time with fairest show, continue to play the perfect hosts. False face must hide what the false heart doth know, the trope of deception, the inability to be able to know intention or character from appearance that comes back again and again in the play.

And that’s the end of this extraordinary, pivotal scene, and of act 1.