Brutus and Other Heroines

by Harriet Walter

  When husband and wife first meet on stage they have no need to spell things out. Macbeth has three lines in the scene. He has paved much of the way in his letter. Although if anyone else had intercepted it they would find nothing incriminating, to Lady Macbeth’s fertile ear it reads: ‘The way is clear, my dearest partner of Greatness, and I know you will know what to do.’ All he has to say when he greets her is: ‘My dearest love, / Duncan comes here tonight.’

  We have already been party to Lady Macbeth’s extreme reaction to the same news earlier and now she can afford a calm: ‘And when goes hence?’

  (There is something of a test going on here, as though she is really asking, ‘And is he going to leave here alive, do you think? If not, what are you going to do about it?’)

  He replies,

  Tomorrow, as he purposes.

  So far, so innocent, if the room were bugged. But why add ‘as he purposes’? A simple ‘Tomorrow’ would have done. In the husband-and-wife telepathy this added phrase means ‘at least that is what he thinks’, and that is enough of a cue for Lady Macbeth to pounce in with ‘O, never / Shall sun that morrow see!’

  Shakespeare then builds two beats of silence into the five-beat line, during which… what? It is a truly pregnant pause. Husband and wife search one another’s faces, and hold their breath in shock. The thoughts they had dared think alone are now brought literally face to face. It is the moment. The time is right and what has hitherto been safe fantasy is in danger of happening. Both are terrified, but she is better at covering it up. Her next words dictate something of how the actor must play Macbeth in that moment.

  Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men

  May read strange matters.

  This has a doubly ironic ring if the audience remembers King Duncan’s observation in the previous scene, that ‘There’s no art / To find the mind’s construction in the face’, seconds before a seemingly loyal Macbeth enters and kneels at his feet. Now, Lady Macbeth warns her husband that he is transparent and must learn to ‘look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t’.

  She must tread carefully with her husband whom she thinks is ‘too full o’ the milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way’.

  In her soliloquy, before his arrival, she talks to her absent husband saying:

  thou wouldst be great;

  Art not without ambition, but without

  The illness should attend it: what thou wouldst highly,

  That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,

  And yet wouldst wrongly win,

  but she knows better than to tell these truths to his face. Instead she merely says:

  He that’s coming

  Must be provided for; and you shall put

  This night’s great business into my dispatch.

  By taking the responsibility on herself she trips him into action, hoping to bypass his conscience.

  Apart from in his letter to her, the Macbeths never mention the word ‘King’ when talking of Duncan. Lady Macbeth only uses it once, later in the play, when referring to her husband, and he likewise later and only in the witches’ presence; nor do they venture the word ‘murder’, but skirt round it with euphemisms. She talks of ‘This night’s great business’ and ‘Our great quell’. Neither can confront the symbolic enormity of killing a king.

  Lady Macbeth has been described as more pragmatic, more ruthless and more courageous than Macbeth, but she has summoned these qualities out of necessity, to serve her ‘fell purpose’. Courage breeds courage. She dares heaven itself to prevent her plan, and when no obvious divine intervention is forthcoming she feels omnipotent. However, unlike Macbeth, she does not dare look deep into herself, where she would find a much more fearful creature.

  She has also been called unimaginative. I prefer to think that she deliberately narrows her focus, shutting out all speculation about the future in order to act more efficiently in the present. When she begs the spirits to ‘unsex me here’ and to ‘Make thick my blood; / Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse’, she is praying for her natural imaginative susceptibility to be suppressed. For me the journey of the part is the fracturing and final disintegration of that suppression.

  In Act I, Scene 5, she needs to see herself as the braver of the pair whose role is to

  pour my spirits in thine ear;

  And chastise with the valour of my tongue

  All that impedes thee from the golden round.

  Indeed most of Lady Macbeth’s valour lies in her tongue. Words embolden her until they become deeds. As events progress she has less and less to say. Her courage slips as her words dry up.

  She does lack imagination in those areas where she lacks the experience of her husband. She has not seen blood shed in battle, nor developed Macbeth’s sense of soldierly honour, nor has she his reputation to lose. As a consequence, she thinks she is better equipped for killing than she proves to be. This is neatly illustrated by the contrast between her superficial boldness immediately after the murder of Duncan—

  My hands are of your colour; but I shame

  To wear a heart so white

  —and the betrayal of her true reaction in the sleepwalking scene much later:

  Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

  When Lady Macbeth welcomes Duncan to the castle she performs the ‘innocent flower’ to perfection. This is eased by ritual and courtly language that need give nothing away. The king’s gentle compliments are hard to receive, but once that ordeal is passed she can congratulate herself on her smooth success at the first hurdle.

  When Macbeth suddenly rushes away from the banquet, Lady M chases him down and goads him with a terrifying desperation. Her power is stuck behind the throne. Only he can do the actual deed. He wants to forget the whole idea but she has her reasons why they cannot possibly drop out now.

  A Fruitless Crown

  In Act IV, Scene 3, on learning that Macbeth has slaughtered his entire family, Macduff cries out, ‘He has no children.’ In Act I, Scene 7, Lady Macbeth says, ‘I have given suck.’ Macbeth is tormented by the idea of Banquo being ‘father to a line of kings’ while he himself is lumbered with ‘a barren sceptre’ and a ‘fruitless crown’. This is all the data Shakespeare gives us on the subject, but from this we constructed a theory that would end up motoring my performance.

  According to Holinshed’s chronicles, Lady Macbeth had a son by an earlier marriage. To assume that this was the child whom Lady Macbeth had suckled would iron out some contradictions and leave the blame for infertility at Macbeth’s door. It would also fuel Lady Macbeth’s taunts about her husband’s manhood. To begin with it seemed an attractive theory.

  One director I spoke to reckoned that Lady M is barren and that ‘I have given suck’ is a neurotic fantasy that Macbeth plays along with. In Kurosawa’s film Throne of Blood, Lady Macbeth is pregnant and loses the child at the banquet. Every production has to find a playable solution. Scholars may be less concerned. One footnote I read dismissed the question of Lady Macbeth’s child or children as ‘unprofitable’. That editor did not have to play the part.

  Jan Kott is more understanding. On whether or not the Macbeths have children he writes: ‘This is not the most important factor in the interpretation of the tragedy, although it may be decisive for the interpretation of their parts by the two principal actors.’ We found it to be so as soon as we started to put Act I, Scene 7, on its feet.

  Tony had the problem of moving from ‘We will proceed no further in this business’ to ‘I am settled, and bend up / Each corporal agent to this terrible feat’ in as long as it took us to speak forty-seven lines.

  Macbeth’s turnaround was my problem too. How was I supposed to persuade him in so short a time? Sarah Siddons decided that Lady Macbeth had to be so ‘captivating in feminine loveliness’ and have ‘such potency as to fascinate a hero… to seduce him to brave all the dangers of the present and… the terrors of a future world�
�. So sheer sex appeal then? Maybe Siddons could do that, but I didn’t feel so sure.

  I then voiced my problem about the ‘giving suck’ line. Was it Macbeth’s child? If Macduff is right and Macbeth has no children, then Lady Macbeth is referring to her child by another marriage. Is Macbeth infertile? Is his ‘Bring forth male children only’ a realistic suggestion? If they could have more children why is Banquo’s fecundity so threatening? These were stumbling blocks, but, as is often the case, the actors’ need for a coherent throughline produced answers that were more revealing than if we had not stumbled at all.

  In dramatic terms the previous child is a no-no. He plays an important part in the real history so why is he not in the play? Answer: Shakespeare is not interested in him. Forget him then and imagine the infant Lady Macbeth talks of to be Macbeth’s and that the child is dead.

  This seemed to us the most likely and contained the richest theatrical juice. But how, I protested, could a woman who knows ‘How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me’, and has seen that baby die, even contemplate the thought of dashing an infant’s brains out? I had fallen into the trap of seeing this violent image as proof of Lady Macbeth’s heartlessness. But once I started to act the scene and feel the desperate energy of it, I understood that the opposite was the case. Lady Macbeth is conjuring the most horrendous sacrifice imaginable to her in order to shame her husband into keeping his pledge. To speak such pain-laden words is in itself impressive, and Macbeth realises what it costs her.

  To create the highest stakes possible for the couple in this short but pivotal scene, we decided that the couple had not spoken of the child since its death and that for whatever reasons they could not have any more. I argued for more than one dead child, maybe several—a fairly normal tragedy in Shakespeare’s day—which would make her feel truly blighted and perhaps vengeful against the world. In a morning’s work we had solved Macbeth’s volte-face for Tony, found a deep connection between the two characters, and I had found the heart of Lady Macbeth.

  I consulted a bereavement counsellor about the effects on parents of losing a child. In some cases it bonds the couple more strongly than ever, in others the marriage cracks under a mixture of unspoken blame, guilt, and grief not shared in a desire to protect the partner from a double burden. Was I bending things too much to think that Shakespeare does not explain the couple’s loss because they themselves cannot speak of it?

  At the start of the play might not Lady Macbeth be in a deep depression from which she is rescued by a new-found purpose which might restore meaning to her barren marriage? By fixing things so her husband can be King she can make herself indispensable to him. If she cannot give him an heir at least she can get him the crown.

  On Macbeth’s return from the war, our director, Greg, discouraged tactile shows of affection (bereavement like theirs can lead to a physical coolness): instead they greeted one another at arm’s length. During the pause after ‘Never shall sun that morrow see’ a servant brought on a bucket of water, a cloth and a towel, and I set about washing my husband’s face and arms. In performance this served several functions: having to shut up in front of the servant increased the tension; it provided a moment of unerotic domestic intimacy; it wiped the blood and grime of battle off Tony’s face, thus assisting his quick change into the next scene; and it afforded Lady Macbeth a clearer reading of her husband’s face and state of mind. It also set up the theme of hand-washing which is threaded through the play.

  Greg helped me tell more of my story in the staging of the next scene, where Lady Macbeth welcomes the king’s party. To make up maximum numbers, the whole cast entered and filled the stage, among them Macduff, his young son and Lady Macduff with a baby in her arms. This image of happy families scorches Lady Macbeth for a second. I tried to make this moment register with a well-placed look, which I hoped some of the audience would pick up on and remember.

  For rehearsal purposes we gave each scene a title (for example ‘Sleepwalking’ is easier to identify than ‘Act V, Scene 1’). Thus Act I, Scene 7, became ‘Cold Feet’. I would listen from the wings as Macbeth in soliloquy reasoned his way out of our pact. It struck me that he was more concerned about his action rebounding against himself and about other people’s vilification, than about the morality of regicide or his pity for the King. He more or less states that if there were no consequences to his action he would not hesitate,

  that but this blow

  Might be the be-all and end-all…

  We’d jump the life to come.

  So much for the milk of human kindness: he is more worried about covering his back! Or so I thought as I waited to go on. In the wings was the life-like doll that had just been in Lady Macduff’s arms. Its weight was disconcertingly real as I held it. It was a useful touchstone for the raw fury that I would have to summon in a few seconds’ time.

  Macbeth’s

  I have no spur

  To prick the sides of my intent, but only

  Vaulting ambition

  was my cue in every sense to rush in and spur him on some more. When he breaks it to her that ‘We will proceed no further in this business’, she explodes like a primed cannon. She disdains his lame excuse that, having just been honoured, the timing is inappropriate. She confronts him with exactly the faults she had listed behind his back in soliloquy: his wanting something for nothing, his lack of resolve, his cowardice. He hides behind some code of manhood that the audience would not dispute, but she is not having it. She knows his real nature.

  In most of us law-abiding citizens the Beast is kept under the control of the Man. To Lady Macbeth this is hypocrisy. ‘Act out your fantasies. Own up to the whole of what you are. Anything less is weak,’ she seems to say.

  Within this interchange lie several important textual clues that are easily missed in the desperate heat of the argument. They provide my sliver of defence against all those who think of Macbeth as a nice guy corrupted by his wife. Examine the evidence. She says (my emphasis):

  What beast was’t, then,

  That made you break this enterprise to me?

  When you durst do it, then you were a man…

  Nor time nor place

  Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:

  They have made themselves, and that their fitness now

  Does unmake you,

  and at the end of the speech:

  had I so sworn as you

  Have done to this.

  We have not heard Macbeth swear to anything so it must have happened offstage. There must have been a discussion about doing ‘it’ at a point before ‘time and place’ were fitting; i.e. before Duncan came to stay, ergo before the start of the play, and it was he who broke the enterprise to her. I rest my case.

  Macbeth knows this to be true and is weakening, and at that moment his wife deals her trump card. That is one way of playing ‘I have given suck’, or it could be a completely uncalculated outburst that takes even Lady Macbeth by surprise. I chose to play something between the two— something that started as a rational argument but which overwhelmed her in speaking it. Suddenly all her anger and sorrow wells up.

  As she sees it, she would have loved to be full of the milk of human kindness, but life has hardened her through no fault of her own. Macbeth’s moral equivocation is a luxury that she resents. He can still hold his head up in his field. He receives honours. He may be a brave soldier when the rules are straightforward, but he is a coward in her eyes. He cannot match the courage she has built to face each childless day. As a childless wife she has no status. She feels superfluous and dried up. Nothing less than reigning as his Queen can fill the hole in her life.

  Her subconscious throws up the terrible image of killing her child, and Macbeth is won over. Only something this enormous could have got him back on course. His simple ‘If we should fail?’ is as good as a promise to Lady M, and having chosen such an emotional interpretation for the previous speech, she (and I) had some recovery problems for the reply, �
�We fail.’

  Unbeknownst to me at the time, this line is famously controversial. I would later be grilled about it in after-show discussions. In some editions it is punctuated as a question, in others not. How did I think of it? I answered that I varied the playing of it according to how quickly Lady M bounced back from what she had just gone through. The line contained relief that Macbeth was back on board, a challenge to him not to fail and also perhaps a touch of nihilism: a ‘what have we got to lose?’ Macbeth might answer ‘Quite a lot’, but life as it stands has little to offer her.

  Then follows her garbled plan. She has barely thought it through. In Act I, Scene 5, she has mentioned ‘my keen knife’. Now she talks of ‘What cannot you and I perform…?’ and of ‘our great quell’ (my emphasis). So who exactly is going to do the killing and how? We shall see how unprepared they are in a few scenes’ time. Meanwhile Macbeth, genuinely moved by his wife’s force of feeling, rewards her with ‘Bring forth male children only.’

  Is he indulging her with hope against hope or is he momentarily blinded by his own?

  In the event, it is Macbeth who carries out Duncan’s murder in Act II, Scene 2. Lady Macbeth’s job is to get the king’s bodyguards drunk and ring the bell to alert Macbeth when the time is right. In a rare confidential moment with the audience, Lady Macbeth shows she is not quite the tough nut she would like to be:

  Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t.

  Macbeth emerges from the king’s chamber, and a hissed ‘My husband!’ alerts him to his wife waiting in the shadows. He rushes to join her: ‘I have done the deed.’

  They must whisper for fear of waking the house. They are bungling amateurs and trip over one another’s words: