Suggestive Images in I.2

Bill Long 7/16/05

Since Shakespeare plays with us through his use of images, let's play with some of these images in the first few scenes of the play. This is not the place for the treatment of ideas--they will receive ample attention as we study Macbeth. The three images that stay with me here are the simple words "trust their heels" (1.2.30), the word-picture of garments or tailoring and the words "lapped in proof" (1.2.54). Only the garments/tailoring image seems to pique the interests of many other scholars. Let's see where the others lead, too.

Trust their Heels

Of course, the words "trust their heels" appear in a longer context in 1.2. After Macdonwald and his troops have been vanquished, they are strengthened by reinforcements. The "Norweyan lord" leads a second assault. This happens after "these skipping kerns" (light-armed soldiers) were forced to "trust their heels" (i.e., took to their heels, flee). But if you put together the image of skipping and heels, something doesn't seem to work, at least at first. When you skip, you lift your heels, and proceed rapidly on your toes. You can skip almost as quickly as you can run. But then, if you "trust your heels," you take to your heels, as we say, and run off. Heel toe, heel toe. Cha cha cha.

So how can someone take to his heels by skipping? Of course, you have a sort of mixed metaphor. But Shakespeare does this also in Julius Caesar, a play written a few years before Macbeth and which may, as I suggested earlier, have given Shakespeare the picture of swimmers fighting against each other or the water (cf. JC 1.2.100ff.). In that same scene (JC 1.2), Shakespeare also has Cassius describe Caesar's supposed cowardice when Caesar was in Spain in a campaign against the Nervii. Caesar came down with a fever. How does Shakespeare describe it? "His coward lips did from their color fly" (1.2.122). The image doesn't work, if you take it literally. Color flees from lips, and not the other way around. But, the image behind these words is one of battle, and a coward is indicated by fleeing from the colors (the flags). Therefore, when Caesar's lips are said to flee from their color, Shakespeare is felicitously trying to have Cassius capture his supposed cowardice and wanness. So here, in Macbeth, we also have literally contradictory images, in this case to show the rebels' rapidity of flight. Just a little bit of genius thrown in.

The Tailor and the Garment

The first "tailoring" image we get in the play is when the Captain describes Macbeth's killing fury against Macdonwald: "Till he unseam'd him from the nave to th' chops,/ And fix'd his head upon our battlements" (1.2.22-23). The image is gruesome in the extreme, when you think about it for a moment. Rather than just stabbing his opponent deeply or even decapitating him, he disembowels Macdonwald (or worse, depending on how far up the sword goes when you use or understand the word "disembowel"). Let me dwell on this point for a minute. In 2001 I published a book on the history of the Oregon death penalty. One of the cases I focused on in that book and in a subsequent article or two was a horrible crime in which the defendant killed several women, one of them by disembowelment. I focused on the case for legal reasons (i.e., the nature of the man's appeals), but when I described a few of the facts of the case to various audiences, they became squeamish in the extreme. People left the room, covered their ears, blanched, or in other ways expressed their aversion to what I was saying. Macbeth is doing this to Macdonwald in battle, and not in a criminal context, to be sure, but we should not lose the sense of an adrenaline-induced killing frenzy that overtook Macbeth as he fought.

If Macbeth plays the tailor with Macdonwald, however, he is also to be clothed with new garments in the next scene. When Macbeth hears from Rosse that he will be given the title of Thane of Cawdor, just as the Weird Sisters had indicated, his reaction is: "The Thane of Cawdor lives; why to you dress me/ In borrowed robes?" (1.3.108-109). "We wish not to be unclothed, but to be further clothed," is Saint Paul's way of saying a thought that popped into my mind as I read this passage (II. Cor 5:4). The one who has unseamed a foe is now thinking about his further vesture.

And there is another clothing image in 1.3. After Macbeth reflects on whether he ought to exert himself in pursuit of his promised fate ("If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me/ Without my stir"--1.3.143-144), Banquo says: "New honors come upon him,/ Like our strange garments, cleave not to their mould/ But with the aid of use" (1.3.144-146). "Strange" garments are new garments, which do not conform to our bodies until they are "used" by us. Will these new garments proved comfortable to Macbeth? Perhaps they will be the like robe of Nessus, a seeming present given to Hercules which had been dipped in poison and would torment the wearer so that he would tear off not only the garment but his skin.

Lapped in Proof

Finally, a brief message of a three-word phrase appearing in the Captain's description of Macbeth's warlike fury in the third battle scene (1.2.54). He went out to battle well-caparisoned. He was "lapped in proof," which the editors of the Riverside Shakespeare suggest means "clad in tested armor." No doubt it does. Indeed, the second verb "lap" in the OED is defined as "wrap." But the context gives it an erotic undertone. The primary (first) verb "lap" in the OED is defined as follows: "to take up liquid with the tongue" or, an obsolete usage, "to suck." We of course use this term to describe dogs lapping up water or liquids. But note the entire line in which it is used: "Till that Bellona's bridegroom (i.e., Macbeth), lapp'd in proof" (1.2.54)..." The context in which Macbeth is introduced is as the bridegroom of the goddess of war. She is sending him out to battle, "point against point." How does a goddess prepare her new husband for the "battles" of life? Surely by "lapping" him. While most editors would ignore this suggestion, the Oxford Shakespeare admits that there might be such an "erotic" flavor, so to speak, to these words. I am glad they have the.....hm, interpretive skill, to so recognize it.

These three examples definitely do not exhaust the store of powerful and engaging images Shakespeare uses in I.2. But they ought to encourage us to read slowly, out loud, with one eye to the action in the play and another one to a world of deep and playful human interactions.

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