Enter Macbeth, Doctor, and attendants

MACBETH      Bring me no more reports. Let them fly all.

Till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane

I cannot taint with fear. What’s the boy Malcolm?

Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know

All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus:

‘Fear not, Macbeth. No man that’s born of woman

Shall e’er have power upon thee.’ Then fly, false thanes,

And mingle with the English epicures.

The mind I sway by and the heart I bear

Shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear.    (5.3.1-10)

Finally, Macbeth again; he’s been absent from the play since the end of 4.1, the scene with the witches and the apparitions, and a lot has happened since then (and time has passed, although it’s not clear how much). It’s been suggested that he’s become ever more cruel and violent and paranoid; his wife’s mad, his thanes have rebelled, and now Malcolm and Macduff have invaded at the head of an English army. What state’s he in? If the Doctor is recognisable as the same doctor who was attending Lady Macbeth then the question is also, why’s he there? Is Macbeth ill, or is the Doctor reporting on Lady Macbeth? There can be the sense that he’s being followed around by an anxious, cowed retinue, at whom he rants rather than really expecting any proper answer. Strong mad dictator energy.

Defiant, is the state that Macbeth’s in, and impatient. Bring me no more reports. Let them fly all. Stop bringing me these pointless updates on troop movements, it makes no difference. And a timely, already half-ironic reminder of the prophecy: till Birnam Wood remove to Dunsinane I cannot taint with fear. Until you tell me that this clearly impossible thing has happened, I’m just not bothered. I’m not going to lose sleep over it (one might say, with appropriate irony: Macbeth has no sleep to lose); I’m not going to break a sweat, change colour. And another thing: what’s the boy Malcolm? Was he not born of woman? Macbeth’s been obsessing about the prophecies, perhaps repeating them, mantra-like: the spirits that know all mortal consequences, all matters of life and death, and the time and means of death of all people, they’ve told me, they’ve pronounced me thus: ‘Fear not, Macbeth. No man that’s born of woman shall e’er have power upon thee’. That’s all men, right? I’m untouchable, invincible! Then fly, false thanes! He knows that his friends have deserted him, but, screw you! Don’t need you! Don’t need anyone! Go off and play with the English epicures, soft and effeminate. (Mingle can be pronounced with particular scornful disdain, even a homophobic sneer.) Underpinning all this, calling Malcolm boy, the English epicures, is an assertion of his own strong masculinity, as if he’s still responding to the taunting of his wife: I can do it, I’m still strong, I’m still the man, I’m still a man. I dare do it, I do. And the mind I sway by and the heart I bear shall never sag with doubt nor shake with fear. A final defiant and almost parodically phallic couplet: I’m tough in my mind and my motivation, unbending, and my heart is resolute; I won’t flag or fail, tremble or limply faint.