MACBETH      Light thickens, and the crow

Makes wing to th’ rooky wood.

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,

Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.—

Thou marvell’st at my words; but hold thee still.

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.

So prithee go with me.

Exeunt             (3.2.51-57)

Light thickens. Perhaps my favourite—or most admired—two words anywhere in this play, perhaps in all Shakespeare’s works. (Immediately tries to think of others.) I don’t like arguing from sound effects, mostly, but it’s worth saying aloud, to think about the effect of the change in vowels, and what it’s like to say thickens after light (light=open, high; thickens=dull, choked with consonants). It’s getting darker, he says, in effect, but it’s expressed in terms of not being able to see, of fog, filthy air, even the eerie shift in the quality of light before a storm. Light thickens, palpably; it’s multi-sensory, like the blanket of the dark. Birds are roosting, as they should at nightfall—good birds—but it’s a crow (not just any crow, the crow) who’s off to the rooky wood, already crammed with its fellows, dense with its carrion crew. (And is that an onomatopoeic and ill-0mened owl, or almost, in the rooky wood too?) The crow makes wing, which sounds less free, less high than saying simply that it flies. And a properly creepy couplet, made all the more horrific by its lack of specificity: the good things of day. Which, in particular? All of them, apparently. All the good things of daylight, sunlight, life—it might be that they simply fall asleep. But drooping sounds much less benign than innocently closing petals, or a head tucked under a wing; drowse is fitful, but also, perhaps, enchanted. This is not untroubled sleep (Macbeth can’t imagine untroubled sleep any more) but at the same time there’s the possibility of never waking up again. Because night’s black agents—again, unspecified—are awake now. It’s their time. And they’re hunting; they’re already in pursuit. He’s certain about this, as the couplet emphasises, while at the same time making it incantatory, making it sound like a spell.

Thou marvell’st at my words: has she recoiled in admiration or horror, eyes wide, hand over mouth, tried to leave, even? He’s speaking witch language now; look how our partner’s rapt, as others said of him. She’s filled with wonder, but not in a good way: does she still recognise this man? She doesn’t have a choice: hold thee still, he says. Keep it together, don’t give up, don’t give anything away (screw your courage to the sticking place, as she told him). Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill. We’ve got to see this through. And the only way we can do it is to commit more crimes, worse crimes; there’s no going back. The couplet, here, makes it a grimly immoral aphorism, an evil credo. So prithee, go with me. It’s not a request: she might go willingly, complicitly, even tenderly, but the horror of that speech, its choking, unflinching evocation of evil could also suggest an iron grip around her wrist. No way out, for either of them.