MACBETH Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood,
And his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature
For ruin’s wasteful entrance; there the murderers,
Steeped in the colours of their trade, their daggers
Unmannerly breeched with gore. Who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage, to make ’s love known?
LADY Help me hence, ho!
MACDUFF Look to the lady. (2.3.105-113)
Macbeth’s talking too much, seeing too much; he’s back in the room with the body, and not just as he’s just seen it again, but also, perhaps, previously, just after the murder (although he does ‘see’ the servants’ bloodied faces and the weapons too). It’s striking that it’s here lay Duncan, not there; it makes it immediate, vivid; does he point, gesture, as though seeing it in front of him? This is the first time that Duncan’s been named in the scene, rather than being described as the King, and it makes it more immediate, more personal. Yet Macbeth’s description of him is extraordinary, an image of monarchy desecrated. His skin is silver because he’s old, pale (silver, ‘argent’ and white are interchangeable in heraldry) but also because he’s precious; his golden blood is even more so. It’s as if his body is a reliquary, a sacred vessel made from precious metals, the streaming blood now like a terrible surface decoration. Laced can mean ornamented, as if with braid on a garment, but laces are also the points, the ties used to fasten garments together (sleeves to a doublet, for instance)—and so here it’s also as if the blood looks like it is, paradoxically, attempting to hold together the gaping wounds, like straining ribbon ties. Those wounds, those gashed stabs, look like a breach in nature, even more than a violation of the natural order, a kind of collapse, a rupture, irreparable, catastrophic damage. A wall is breached in a castle, or a defensive line, or a sea wall: this is all of nature that now lies open to ruin, the entrance of which is wasteful because it is utterly destructive, it will lay waste to everything. To kill a king is to destroy the order of things, natural and divinely-ordained. Macbeth’s gaze shifts to the (apparent) murderers, steeped in the colours of their trade, utterly soaked and saturated with blood. (Indelible stains.) There’s a contrast between the implicitly pejorative trade and the near-divine image of the dead king; again, the servants are being written off, common villains, whose deaths at Macbeth’s hand are not to be questioned. And the daggers, unmannerly breeched with gore: they’re unmannerly because they are (bathetically) uncivil, unkind, but they’re also unmanly (cowardly to kill a man while he’s asleep; Macbeth’s on dangerous ground), and they’re breeched with gore because they’re covered with blood up to the hilt, as if to the waist, wearing a terrible bloody garment. (The image of wading in blood is one to which Macbeth will return.) Breeched also repeats breach; the homophone echoes the sense of rupture. I couldn’t stop myself, he says: who could refrain that had a heart to love, and in that heart courage, to make ’s love known?To his hearers, he’s again justifying why he killed the servants, the apparent murderers: out of love for the king. But in a sense he’s also addressing Lady Macbeth, both asserting his courage, his bravery—I did it, I did—and also suggesting that he did it out of love for her. And if his eyes have kept flickering to her and are now more or less fixed, beseechingly, on her face, Lady Macbeth needs to act: a distraction, she has to shut him up, he’s losing it. And so a swoon, implicitly (there’s no direction): help me hence, ho! (It could be genuine, overcome with the strain; I’m with those who think it’s deliberate, she has to shift the focus, otherwise Macbeth is going to keep talking and pretty soon incriminate himself, or break down, or both.) Of course it’s Macduff, protective, sensitive, who intervenes: look to the lady! Cherchez la femme indeed.
