Enter Ross with an Old Man
OLD MAN Threescore and ten I can remember well,
Within the volume of which time I have seen
Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night
Hath trifled former knowings.
ROSS Ha, good father,
Thou seest the heavens, as troubled with man’s act,
Threatens his bloody stage. By th’ clock ’tis day,
And yet dark night strangles the travailing lamp.
Is’t night’s predominance or the day’s shame,
That darkness does the face of earth entomb
When living light should kiss it? (2.4.1-10)
Excellent, a random old man, complete change of tone from the previous scene (or IS it…) and just one thane, for the moment, the innocuous Ross. The Old Man is Old, he makes it clear straight away: he’s over seventy, past the allotted span of human life in the bible, and he’s seen a few things in his time. He’s lived through terrible times, hours dreadful, and unexpected, imexplicable events, things strange—but this last horrifically violent night makes everything he’s lived through and seen and heard about so far seem trivial and insignificant; it hath trifled former knowings. Ross is being polite and encouraging (is he trying to find out if the Old Man knows anything useful? in fact, is he trying to find out whether or what the Old Man knows about the murder?), calling him good father. It seems that the Old Man has been specifically speaking of the storm, the shaking earth, the rough night on which Lennox and Macduff commented earlier. Ross tells the Old Man that these disturbances, the wild weather is the heavens, the entire cosmos reflecting back the greater disorder below, the human chaos and violence. It’s as if the heavens have been troubled with man’s act, and therefore they’re threatening his bloody stage. (The theatrum mundi, theatre of the world trope lurks in this play; here’s an instance of it.) The bloody stage is a vivid image here: there has been so much blood imagined already, above all by Macbeth, a sea of blood. Ross is speaking metaphorically; his bloody stage is the violent deeds of fallen humanity, but it’s another example of the way in which blood continues to seep into the language of the play, pools in the mind’s eye. And now they tell us—now—that it’s dark, even though by the clock it’s day. The travailing lamp is the sun, and its light can’t get through the gloom; it’s as if daylight is being strangled. (Nasty.) Is it because of night’s predominance, an astrological conjunction, darkness winning—or is it rather that the very day is ashamed at what’s happened, what’s been done? Is it for that reason that darkness is entombing the face of earth (a horrible image; being buried alive?) rather than the earth being gently kissed, roused, caressed by living light? This deed that’s been done shames humanity. There’s a recollection, surely, of the darkness that covered the earth at the Crucifixion of Christ, picking up on the language of sacredness and its violation that has already been used to describe Duncan’s death. Gloomy, desecrated, claustrophobic, ominous.
