MACDUFF What three things does drink especially provoke?
PORTER Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes: it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery. It makes him and it mars him; it sets him on and it takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens him; makes him stand to and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep and, giving him the lie, leaves him.
MACDUFF I believe drink gave thee the lie last night.
PORTER That it did, sir, i’the very throat on me; but I requited him for his lie, and, I think, being too strong for him, though he took up my legs sometime, yet I made a shift to cast him. (2.3.21-32)
A character note for Macduff: he’s willing to play along for a bit, now he and Lennox are inside the castle. So it seems there’s no suggestion of anything suspicious going on? They’ve come early in the morning just because? The audience might be expecting confrontation or interrogation, but no; another example of the way in which the play’s manipulation of tension is unparalleled. In practical terms, both parts of the Porter’s speech, his solo riff and his interchange with Macduff, could be extended through improvisation. The crucial thing is that Macbeth and, entering a moment or two later, Lady Macbeth have enough time to change their clothes and wash their hands, and that will depend on costuming and other practicalities. At the Globe, one has to imagine a bowl or bucket of water in the tiring house, probably cold, to remove whatever was being used for blood.
So the Porter gets to do his mini stand-up routine, with Macduff as his feed, as he sets out the three things that drink especially provokes. They are, he says, nose-painting, the broken-veined, red nose of the chronic alcoholic, as well as the temporary flush of drunkenness. Sleep, obviously, drinking until comatose. (Sleep is always moot in this play; this reference slides past easily. Can Macbeth, later on, be portrayed as a drinker?) And urine. A night out drinking and you’ll be up and down all night. The Porter gets into his stride, confidingly, consideringly, a connoisseur of the finer points of drunkenness. You might think, sir, that drink provokes lechery, but it provokes and unprovokes, and so it’s ultimately neutral. It provokes the desire, fills you with lust and takes away your inhibitions—but then it takes away the performance, makes you incapable of actually Doing It, at least in any remotely satisfactory way. And so—now he’s really riffing, picking up a point from his earlier speech—much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery. (An easy anti-Jesuit jibe.) It makes him and it mars him; it sets him on and it takes him off; it persuades him and disheartens him; makes him stand to and not stand to. Up and down, up and down, and very often in performance accompanied by gestures making all too clear the way in which optimistic alcohol-induced turgidity inevitably collapses into the flaccidity of apologetic, sodden drunkenness. Snoooorre. Snoooooorre. Snoooooooooorrre. (Sentences I Thought I’d Never Write.) So drink equivocates a man in a sleep and, giving him the lie, leaves him—mocks him, unmans him, leaves him limp. (Lie here too could be heard as lye—the drunkard wets the bed; urine, used as lye in laundry and soap-making was sometimes known as chamber-lye.)
The easy comedy of this, the way it still sounds more or less familiar, maybe obscures just how male this conversation is, and how male-dominated the play is, in its cast and its relationships. When Macduff cuts off the Porter with his I believe drink gave thee the lie last night, he demonstrates, too, that he knows how to talk to Other Ranks; this kind of banter cuts across class (and so does masculine anxiety about potency and phallic power). Macduff tilts it away from obscenity (the Porter could clearly keep going) by taking lie in the sense of, laid you out cold, made you sleep soundly; the Porter concedes that, but says that he still managed to get up, he made a shift to cast him, drink, and so here he is. And so, what do you want, sir?
