LADY Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valour
As thou art in desire? Wouldst thou have that
Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life,
And live a coward in thine own esteem,
Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’,
Like the poor cat i’th’ adage?
MACBETH Prithee, peace.
I dare do all that may become a man.
Who dares do more is none.
LADY What beast was’t then
That made you break this enterprise to me? (1.7.39-48)
The stichomythia in the couple’s exchanges, the line-sharing, is both threatening and sexy; they (think they) know what the other is going to say next, they finish each other’s sentences, pick up each other’s thoughts, know exactly which buttons to push. (She does, anyway; she knows exactly how to taunt him.) Are you scared now? Are you afraid to be the same in thine own act and valour as thou art in desire? You know what you truly desire—is it that you can’t follow through, perform, match words and desires with deeds, thine own act and valour? You know what you want: the crown, which thou esteem’st the ornament of life, the highest honour, greatest achievement you could think of. And yet you’re too much of a coward to go after it! You’re a coward by your own reckoning, your own definition, in thine own esteem, because you know what you want, you pride yourself on being a man of action, a man of courage, reckless courage—and now you can’t perform. You’ve lost your nerve. You’re like the proverbial cat, desperate for a fish but not wanting to get your feet wet; your nerves, your fears, your insecurities (I dare not) are crowding out, drowning out your desires (I would).
Lady Macbeth’s pressed the right buttons, definitely. Prithee, peace, he shoots back—lots of scope there, for pleading, or anger, resentment; even getting in her face, yelling, getting really riled and defensive. I dare do all that may become a man. Who dares do more is none. Don’t you doubt me, don’t you call my manhood, my strength, my resolution into question. (She hasn’t even put it quite in those terms yet, but that’s the ground of it; there’s a taunting undercurrent of sexual inadequacy, impotence here too.) He’s trying to quibble, too, though: I dare do all that may become a man, that’s fitting, appropriate, for a human being, a good man, an upright, honest man. Anyone who does more—by killing their King, for one—is overstepping the bounds of human decency, humanity itself, and so is implicitly less than a man, no man at all. The overreacher, who vaults too high, and falls on the other side. (The unsaid, the subtext that is such a characteristic of this play, especially the conversations between the Macbeths, is so fraught here. They are both talking about desire, about sex, about power, even if Macbeth thinks that he’s mostly talking about virtue.) Again, she picks up the conceit, turns his own words against him: so, if you’re the manly man, not more than a man: was it a beast, were you a beast, less than a man, that made you confide in me about this possibility, this plan, this enterprise? Make up your mind. What kind of man are you? And are you a real man at all? Jab jab jab, sparring, back and forth, circling, thinking the same thoughts, bound together by—love? desire? sexual obsession? years of shared experiences, triumph, pain, loss? This is, after all, one of the closest, most enduring and successful marriages in all of Shakespeare’s plays.
