MACBETH Blood hath been shed ere now, i’th’ olden time
Ere humane statute purged the gentle weal—
Ay, and since, too, murders have been performed
Too terrible for the ear. The time has been
That when the brains were out the man would die,
And there an end; but now they rise again
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
And push us from our stools. This is more strange
Than such a murder is. (3.4.73-81)
Killing is almost as old as time itself: blood hath been shed ere now (and the monosyllables are almost incantatory here, so simple), i’th’ olden time ere humane statute purged the gentle weal. There was murder before there were human laws against it, to civilise society, bring order to it. He might be imagining Cain and Abel, the first, primal murder, the killing of one brother by another: Macbeth’s first murders have been embedded within close relationships of trust, his king, a father figure, his closest friend, his battlefield brother. Laws don’t prevent murder though, because ever since people became civilised and invented these humane statutes to purge and purify their states, murders have been performed too terrible for the ear. Violent death endures. But the thing is—breaking into this philosophical, jurisprudential musing—the time has been that when the brains were out the man would die, and there an end. Macbeth’s not thinking about ethics, although the way he frames his speech suggests that he might be, it’s a more fundamental crisis than that. Something’s gone wrong: the dead don’t stay dead. This rupture in expectable, predictable reality is expressed in the brutality of when the brains were out the man would die, a broken, violated body, surely past help, finished, gone. And there an end. Macbeth longs, again, for things to be finished, concluded, done. But now they rise again with twenty mortal murders on their crowns, and push us from their stools. The blasphemous suggestion of they rise again, as if Banquo’s appearance is some kind of second resurrection, the end of the world, gives this even more force, apocalyptic force. Macbeth fixates on Banquo’s injuries, the twenty mortal murders on his crown, those gashes, or trenches, akin to the breaches in Duncan’s body, wound as rupture, tearing the fabric of body, society, humanity, reality apart. The wounded head is fleetingly Christ-like, here, but that it’s a crown (a familiar enough idiom for the head) also invokes Macbeth’s own crown, damaged, polluted, vulnerable. A final bathetic detail: at this terrible second coming, what happens? They push us from our stools, like petty, squabbling children. But the familiarity of that shove is recognisable to an audience too, a shock felt in the body, caught off balance with a too-forceful nudge, braced against too late. There are, perhaps, horrific sights on stage, and even more horrors in Macbeth’s imagination, but that shove, being pushed off your stool, that’s a muscle memory, made uncanny. This is more strange than such a murder is. Well, yes, Macbeth, but it’s also an indication of how inured he has already become not simply to violence (that’s been a long time, the fearless butcher of the battlefield) but to the commissioning of brutal murders. Murders are now normal, apparently. Ghosts at dinner parties, not so much.
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