Enter Macbeth
LADY How now, my lord, why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making,
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
With them they think on? Things without all remedy
Should be without regard. What’s done is done.
MACBETH We have scorched the snake, not killed it.
She’ll close, and be herself, whilst our poor malice
Remains in danger of her former tooth. (3.2.10-17)
It might seem a poignant, initially gentle and conciliatory greeting: how now, my lord, why do you keep alone? Why are you being so solitary, keeping yourself to yourself? Why are you shutting me out, specifically? And the ear perhaps hears keep and supplies ‘sleep’, which will have particular force in performance if the Macbeths, so far, have been a couple who can’t keep their hands off each other, whose bond is intensely erotic. Not any more, apparently. Then a bit more grit: Macbeth isn’t just being solitary, he’s making his companions of sorriest fancies. He’s moping, dragging himself around, looking like death, lost in his own terrible imaginings. And he’s obsessing about what he’s done—she approaches it quite delicately—using those thoughts which should indeed have died with them they think on? She knows perfectly well what’s on his mind, what he can’t get out of his head, what he can’t stop seeing—but he needs to get a grip. Duncan (and the servants, also implied here) are dead, and that’s that. Finished, don’t dwell. Things without all remedy should be without regard, which sounds like a pithy, bitter version of a self-help affirmation: you can’t do anything to change it, so don’t think about it. Just stop, move on. What’s done is done.
No reciprocal greeting from Macbeth: his words burst out in desperation, and perhaps also frustration that, apparently, his wife doesn’t share his turmoil, his obsession, even more, that she regards it with contempt—and that she seems to have moved on. We have scorched the snake, not killed it. WEIRD. To scorch is to score, slash, as a butcher might a piece of meat, so here the snake is, literally, Duncan, a reminder of the bloody violence of his death. But of course what flashes in the mind’s eye is the disturbing image of a snake in flames, blackened but still writhing. It’s not dead, not killed because Duncan’s sons live (and Banquo and Fleance too, for the moment). The snake, however horrifically disfigured, will heal and recover her strength, and regroup. Still a threat, perhaps a greater one. Our poor malice remains in danger of her former tooth. Our great wrongdoing—my great wrongdoing—it wasn’t enough, it was poor malice, insufficient, weak. And so it’s still in danger, from the same source. The snake can still bite. What’s done is never done, it’s never enough; there will have to be more, again and again.
