Malcolm: please come to my coronation, everyone! EXEUNT (5.11.26-41) #DaggerDrawn #SlowShakespeare

Flourish

MALCOLM      We shall not spend a large expense of time

Before we reckon with your several loves,

And make us even with you. My thanes and kinsmen,

Henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland

In such an honour named. What’s more to do

Which would be planted newly with the time,

As calling home our exiled friends abroad

That fled the snares of watchful tyranny,

Producing forth the cruel ministers

Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,

Who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands

Took off her life—this, and what needful else

That calls upon us, by the grace of grace

We will perform in measure, time, and place.

So thanks to all at once, and to each one,

Whom we invite to see us crowned at Scone.

Flourish. Exeunt omnes                     (5.11.26-41)

 

Malcolm has to have the last word, really, because history, and also because there can be no suggestion that Macduff’s setting himself up as king. It’s too simplistic to say that this is all about the restoration of order (although it is); it is providing a kind of closure, and also a lowering of the temperature. It’s a calm and measured ending, an orderly one. What does Malcolm promise? His first priority will be to reward those who’ve supported him, and quickly: we shall not spend a large expense of time before we reckon with your several loves, and make us even with you. There’s one kind of reckoning that’s gone on, Macduff’s with Macbeth, revenge, the settling of scores: this, with its extended financial metaphor, a settling of accounts, suggests a fresh start, reward, yes, but also a clean slate, books balanced, everyone paid up and satisfied, ready to start over. Malcolm the politician, the pragmatist, rather than the warrior, perhaps. He’s going to promote everyone, or at least invent a new rank and title for his thanes and kinsmen, who from this point are going to be earls, an English degree of nobility that he’s importing, the first that ever Scotland in such an honour named. It’s a historical detail, but it’s also another fresh start, a new political establishment. And there are other things which would be planted newly with the time (plants and trees have been one of the play’s recurring motifs)—and now it’s time to plant more generally. The end of the play is very much about the restoration of time and timeliness, order and harmony: Malcolm’s troops pulled down branches or perhaps could even be imagined as having uprooted trees from Birnam Wood, and now he will plant again: to everything there is a season, as it says in Ecclesiastes, ‘A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal’ (3.2-3). Now it’s the time for planting and healing.

 

What else is Malcolm going to do? Call home our exiled friends abroad that fled the snares of watchful tyranny, above all Malcolm’s brother Donalbain, who fled to Ireland; watchful tyranny is a reminder of the culture of suspicion and mistrust which Macbeth fostered, with spies and informers. And therefore it will also be necessary to produce forth Macbeth’s cruel ministers, whose who acted as his agents, who did his dirty work. Hunt down the collaborators and the lieutenants and prosecute them, says Malcolm the politician, again; justice must be done, and be seen to be done.

 

Macbeth’s name isn’t mentioned at all in this scene; no one speaks it. He is this dead butcher, uncompromising and reductive, and Lady Macbeth (who never has a name of her own in the play) isn’t named even as that; she is his fiend-like queen, a devil, who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands took off her life—whom, it’s assumed, has killed herself. (So that’s confirmed: in the eyes of an early modern audience, it makes her even more despicable. Malcolm imagines suicide in a traditional Christian framework too, not in the Stoic Roman terms that Macbeth himself rejected.) These two complex characters, who have had such an intense relationship with each other, and with the audience, through their extraordinary soliloquies, in particular: flattened out into the butcher, the fiend, villain and villainess.

 

But Malcolm’s in charge now, and it’s going to be orderly, yes, and a bit flat. What needful else, that calls upon us, by the grace of grace, we will perform in measure, time, and place. He’s going to do everything he needs to do, everything necessary that it behoves him to do by the grace of God—and it’s going to be done in an orderly, measured, proportionate, appropriate way. The final couplet, alas, is cringey (and it’s often cut). Thanks, everyone! You’ve been awesome! Please come to my coronation! It’s going to be at Scone! (the traditional location for the crowning of a King of Scotland, pronounced scoon, not scon, or scown…) Nothing to do with baked goods, but it can’t help looking like it on the page. No, cut the last couple of lines.

 

And a final fanfare and it’s done.

 

I’ll add a final entry with some final thoughts. But—setting aside the last couplet, and this whole last speech, really—what an amazing play, all too easily taken for granted. Taut, lean, frightening, startlingly modern in its psychological intensity and insight and, in Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and Macduff too, three astonishingly complex and compelling characters.

 

View 2 comments on “Malcolm: please come to my coronation, everyone! EXEUNT (5.11.26-41) #DaggerDrawn #SlowShakespeare

  1. Thank you for this wonderful commentary which I stumbled across this summer holiday while preparing to teach Macbeth for GCSE. I was an undergraduate in your faculty 30 years ago and I think I have learned more reading this than I did in my time at Cambridge!

    1. That’s so kind – I’m glad you have found it useful! I’ll be starting another #SlowShakespeare blog soon – haven’t decided on the play yet, but there will be a twitter poll at some point… I hope that your new school year starts happily and smoothly!

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