Enter Macbeth
MACBETH How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags?
What is’t you do?
ALL WITCHES A deed without a name.
MACBETH I conjure you by that which you profess,
Howe’er you come to know it, answer me.
Though you untie the winds and let them fight
Against the churches, though the yeasty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up,
Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down,
Though castles topple on their warders’ heads,
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations, though the treasure
Of nature’s germen tumble all together
Even till destruction sicken, answer me
To what I ask you. (4.1.47-60)
Not very polite? But this is a Macbeth who is at once confident and desperate; he wants answers. The conjunction of secret, black, and midnight is nicely weird, a roundabout way of saying—hags of darkness? What is’t you do? What are you doing? (perhaps not just, what are you doing here and now, but, what is it that you do? who are you?) A deed without a name: teasingly, they understand him better than he understands himself. They may well be doing something so horrific that it can’t be described, but Macbeth himself is almost pathologically reluctant to say things straightforwardly, and especially to name his own crimes. He says it. (If it were done.) He avoids using Duncan’s name, and Banquo’s.
So Macbeth, in effect, casts a spell, or at least speaks an incantation, as he conjures them, compels them, demands of them with all possible seriousness, by that which they profess, their own skills and knowledge, their witchcraft—wherever it comes from—howe’er you come to know it, answer me. He’s deadly serious, and nothing will shake him from his purpose: he wants answers. Though you untie the winds and let them fight against the churches: the witches control winds and storms, so, let them unleash a storm so violent that it threatens church steeples. Though the yeasty waves confound and swallow navigation up, the sea yeasty because it’s frothing and foaming at the violence of its tossing waves, so that it throws ships off course and sinks them. Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down, crops flattened to the ground and forests destroyed, castles topple on their warders’ heads, their towers and walls destroyed, crushing those who guard them, and even palaces and pyramids, the most grand and monumental buildings in the world, places of myth and fame; they too will be overturned, slope their heads to their foundations.Though the treasure of nature’s germen tumble all together, all of creation, its seed, its sparks of life, utterly confounded and destroyed, even till destruction sicken, until the world itself is so wrecked that it has no appetite or capacity for further violence—none of that will stop me getting what I want, which is for you to answer my questions.
Extreme, dark, frightening, apocalyptic and total in an evocation of nihilistic evil that seems both far beyond and of an entirely different order to the dark magic of the witches, their cauldron and its contents. They raise storms, yes, and wreck ships, drown sailors, but Macbeth is here proclaiming that he is their equal, not their pupil, and that he is capable of creating in language, and withstanding (and perhaps creating) in fact, such acts of violence and horror. Bring it on, he says, I’m ready. Answer me to what I ask you.
