Partners of Greatness
Charlee Laurie
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth display a pseudo-sexual ambition that surpasses any desire for procreation or, as Lee Edelman puts it, “reproductive futurism”; in this way, they can be categorized as ‘queer’ for their preferential treatment of ambitious gain over family that negates the hetero-normative structure of their society. While queerness itself is somewhat indefinable, it can be understood in the context of Macbeth as “… an adjective that describes the early modern period’s non-normative behaviors, desires, temporalities, and spaces as they intersect with sexuality and reproduction” (Zoch). In addition to procreation, reproductive futurism refers to the Early Modern ideal that the Child is the “guarantor of futurity” (Edelman), ensuring the survival of society, culture, and the familial line itself. Reproductive futurity is particularly important in consideration of linear ascension of the kingship from father to son. Macbeth occupies a queer space due to his desire to ascend the throne for the sake of assuming kingship, without regard to establishing a line of kings, both subverting the hetero-normative assumption of monarchical inheritance and deconstructing the society in which he exists in.
If queerness is “conjured to conjure away from the norm” (Edelman), the three witches perfectly fulfill their role: leading Macbeth into a queer temporality that directly contradicts his hetero-normative existence. The witches epitomize the queer in their refusal to accept and abide by societal definitions of womanhood, time, and place. Within the first act, the witches claim “fair is foul, foul is fair” (1.1.11), immediately setting themselves at odds with social constructions by questioning accepted definitions of foulness versus fairness. They occupy a contradictory space, in which a thing can be both itself and its opposite. This is mimicked in their appearance, upon his first meeting with them, Banquo exclaims “You should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so” (1.3.45-47). Banquo cannot categorize them according to his hetero-normative ideas of man and woman; instead they are both man and woman, or nothing at all. Their negation of being is intrinsic in their queerness: Lee Edelman claims queerness “is not to be, except insofar as the name for the thing that is not, for the limit point of ontology.” Since the witches are indefinable within the constructs of Macbeth’s time and space, they exist in a queer temporality in which they are able to “look into the seeds of time” (1.3.58) and see the future. Thus, their prophesies fracture time, drawing Macbeth and Banquo into a future that has yet to come. The witches disrupt the natural line of inheritance and ascension by planting a “seed” of ambition, a “form of desire that does not respect temporal sequence” (Love), that displaces Macbeth from the present and puts him at odds with the hetero-normative world around him; therefore, drawing Macbeth into their queer temporality.
In addition to conjuring Macbeth “away from the norm” with the promise of kingship, the witches remove him even further by discouraging his hopes of leaving a normal hereditary legacy. By naming Banquo’s offspring kings, the witches removed Macbeth’s obligation to the future, thus freeing him to bypass the present with little regard to normative sequence. Certain critics describe the future as embodied “through the figure of the child, or more exactly the child as heir contingent” (Wilson). By claiming Macbeth would be “king hereafter” (1.3.50) yet naming Banquo as a sire of kings (1.3.67), the witches left Macbeth to assume that he would leave no legacy and had no future beyond his own existence; and therefore, no obligation to potential heirs. Although the witches do not explicitly state that Macbeth’s sons would not be heirs to the throne, he quickly accepts this interpretation as truth, eagerly embracing his “barren scepter” (3.1.63). As eager as he is to bypass the ‘natural’ procession of kingship, Macbeth expresses a desire for a fruitful crown, rather than a “fruitless crown” (3.1.62). He skeptically questions Banquo’s unenthusiastic response to the witches’ prophesy, “Do not you hope your children shall be kings” (1.3.118-119), and bitterly discusses the “eternal jewel” given to “the seeds of Banquo” (3.1.70-71). He recognizes that though he may be a king himself, his claim to the throne is terminal, whereas Banquo, through his sons, has an indefinite rule. It is a hypocritical wish, considering he had “wrenched with an unlineal hand” (3.1.64) the crown from Duncan, yet he tries to unnaturally stall Banquo’s line from doing the same. Macbeth knows his reign is terminal; therefore, his one concern is prolonging it for as long as he can, rather than preserving it for forthcoming generations. Without the burden of reproductive futurity and with the promise of a terminal kingship in which he is both the beginning and end of his line, ambition and self-preservation replaces his desire to produce an heir, with the path to kingship becoming a pseudo-sexual obsession for him.
Like her husband, Lady Macbeth embraces the witches’ prophecy with surprising gusto, completely at ease with the prospect of a terminal kingship for Macbeth. In removing the responsibility of producing an heir, Lady Macbeth is permitted to embrace a more masculine role within the relationship and freed from the yoke of society’s ‘maternal’ and ‘feminine’ expectations for the sake of her ambition. She is invigorated by the idea of what her and Macbeth can achieve together as two men, and immediately summons “spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here” (1.5.39) to trade her milk for poison. She does not transform into something wholly masculine, instead she becomes something ‘other’ entirely. Similarly to the witches, she is no longer definable by the constraints of “woman” or “man,” but occupies a queer space in which she is free to offer up “the illness” (1.5.19) to spur Macbeth’s “vaulting ambition” (1.7.27). The hypothetical response she poises to Macbeth when he expresses doubts about their plot seals her ‘unsexing’, “How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me: / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums / And dashed the brains out” (1.7.56-59). She has seemingly shed the last of her ‘maternal’ characteristics and fully given herself over to their plot. Although she boldly encourages Macbeth to carry out the murder of Duncan, her plan retains nearly ironic hints of femininity: firstly, she welcomes Duncan into her home as the ideal, ‘lady-like’ hostess; secondly, she plots to have Macbeth murder Duncan in his sleep, in a most dishonorable and ‘unmanly’ manner. When Macbeth objects to her plan, he is objecting to the deceitfulness and cowardliness of it, as well as addressing his own hesitation to carry out the murder. In her response, Lady Macbeth reminds him that she willingly betrayed her gender for him and for their joint ambition, and she expects the same in return. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth demonstrate a level of “unsexing” that defies social constraints of their respective genders, betraying their roles as ‘man’ and ‘wife’, or ‘father’ and ‘mother’; thus, once again, they cross into a queer space due their mutual ambition.
Ambition becomes a pseudo-sexual replacement for intimacy in the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In his letter to Lady Macbeth, Macbeth refers to her as his “dearest partner of greatness” (1.5.11), instead of a conventional term of endearment. He directs her that “thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee” (1.5.11-13). The focus of his letter is his desire to share the promise of greatness and his newfound ambition with her, which she gladly receives. Furthermore, the only time they mention offspring is in their interaction following the murder of Duncan, when Macbeth teasingly directs her to “bring forth men-children only! / for thy undaunted mettle should compose / nothing but males” (1.7.73-75), or when Lady Macbeth is goading Macbeth into murdering Duncan. Assumingly, as husband and wife, they would discuss the matter of inheritance and children more than they do, especially considering Macbeth’s bitterness over Banquo begetting a line of kings. Yet, the only mention is in a teasing comment from Macbeth that is more concerned with Lady Macbeth’s “undaunted mettle” than the discussion of children. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth display far more concern with forcing a path to kingship than over their marital intimacy or joint reproductive futurity. Their mutual desire for greatness interferes with the hetero-normative function of their marriage; considering the “strayness of desire” is “crucial to queerness” (Stockton), their unconventional priorities of ambition over sexual intimacy makes their very relationship queer.
Although the ambitious drives of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth contradict society’s obsession with procreation and inheritance, there is nothing inherently wrong or ghastly about their preference for power over a hetero-normative drive for lineage. It is simply the unfortunate circumstances of a hereditary monarchy with a lineal line of succession that places a cap on the heights of their ambition, their reach for greatness. Macbeth could not achieve a title higher than “Thane” without disrupting the order of inheritance for the crown: being king meant killing heirs (Wilson). He had to kill Duncan and would have had to kill Duncan’s sons if they had not fled to clear his path to the throne. Depending on how one looks at it, he was either very fortunate or very unfortunate to have a wife that surpassed him in ambition and had the mettle to carry out a plan that meant the end of their line and damnation of their souls. Attributing their actions to an overwhelming ambition that rivals their sexual desire helps to clarify their somewhat foggy motivations for pursuing kingship and romanticizes the tragic outcome of their “power coupledom.”
Works Cited
Edelman, L. “Against Survival: Queerness in a Time That’s Out of Joint.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 62, no. 2., 2011, pp 148-169. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23025624. Accessed 8 Nov. 2017.
Love, H. “Milk.” Shakesqueer: A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by Madhavi Menon, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2011.
Shakespeare, William. “Macbeth.” The Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by David Bevington, HarperCollins Publishers, 1992, pp 1223-1255.
Stockton, W. “Shakespeare and Queer Theory.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 63, no. 2, 2012, pp. 224-235. http://doi.org/10.1353/shq.2012.0035. Accessed 8 Nov. 2017.
Wilson, L. “Macbeth and the Contingency of Future Person.” Shakespeare Studies, vol. 40, 2012, pp. 53-62. http://proxy.consortiumlibrary.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=82541419&site=ehost-live Accessed 8 Nov. 2017.
Zoch, A. “Macduff’s Son and the Queer Temporality of Macbeth.” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, vol. 57, no. 2, 2017, pp 369-388. http://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2017.0016. Accessed 8 Nov. 2017.
If queerness is “conjured to conjure away from the norm” (Edelman), the three witches perfectly fulfill their role: leading Macbeth into a queer temporality that directly contradicts his hetero-normative existence. The witches epitomize the queer in their refusal to accept and abide by societal definitions of womanhood, time, and place. Within the first act, the witches claim “fair is foul, foul is fair” (1.1.11), immediately setting themselves at odds with social constructions by questioning accepted definitions of foulness versus fairness. They occupy a contradictory space, in which a thing can be both itself and its opposite. This is mimicked in their appearance, upon his first meeting with them, Banquo exclaims “You should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so” (1.3.45-47). Banquo cannot categorize them according to his hetero-normative ideas of man and woman; instead they are both man and woman, or nothing at all. Their negation of being is intrinsic in their queerness: Lee Edelman claims queerness “is not to be, except insofar as the name for the thing that is not, for the limit point of ontology.” Since the witches are indefinable within the constructs of Macbeth’s time and space, they exist in a queer temporality in which they are able to “look into the seeds of time” (1.3.58) and see the future. Thus, their prophesies fracture time, drawing Macbeth and Banquo into a future that has yet to come. The witches disrupt the natural line of inheritance and ascension by planting a “seed” of ambition, a “form of desire that does not respect temporal sequence” (Love), that displaces Macbeth from the present and puts him at odds with the hetero-normative world around him; therefore, drawing Macbeth into their queer temporality.
In addition to conjuring Macbeth “away from the norm” with the promise of kingship, the witches remove him even further by discouraging his hopes of leaving a normal hereditary legacy. By naming Banquo’s offspring kings, the witches removed Macbeth’s obligation to the future, thus freeing him to bypass the present with little regard to normative sequence. Certain critics describe the future as embodied “through the figure of the child, or more exactly the child as heir contingent” (Wilson). By claiming Macbeth would be “king hereafter” (1.3.50) yet naming Banquo as a sire of kings (1.3.67), the witches left Macbeth to assume that he would leave no legacy and had no future beyond his own existence; and therefore, no obligation to potential heirs. Although the witches do not explicitly state that Macbeth’s sons would not be heirs to the throne, he quickly accepts this interpretation as truth, eagerly embracing his “barren scepter” (3.1.63). As eager as he is to bypass the ‘natural’ procession of kingship, Macbeth expresses a desire for a fruitful crown, rather than a “fruitless crown” (3.1.62). He skeptically questions Banquo’s unenthusiastic response to the witches’ prophesy, “Do not you hope your children shall be kings” (1.3.118-119), and bitterly discusses the “eternal jewel” given to “the seeds of Banquo” (3.1.70-71). He recognizes that though he may be a king himself, his claim to the throne is terminal, whereas Banquo, through his sons, has an indefinite rule. It is a hypocritical wish, considering he had “wrenched with an unlineal hand” (3.1.64) the crown from Duncan, yet he tries to unnaturally stall Banquo’s line from doing the same. Macbeth knows his reign is terminal; therefore, his one concern is prolonging it for as long as he can, rather than preserving it for forthcoming generations. Without the burden of reproductive futurity and with the promise of a terminal kingship in which he is both the beginning and end of his line, ambition and self-preservation replaces his desire to produce an heir, with the path to kingship becoming a pseudo-sexual obsession for him.
Like her husband, Lady Macbeth embraces the witches’ prophecy with surprising gusto, completely at ease with the prospect of a terminal kingship for Macbeth. In removing the responsibility of producing an heir, Lady Macbeth is permitted to embrace a more masculine role within the relationship and freed from the yoke of society’s ‘maternal’ and ‘feminine’ expectations for the sake of her ambition. She is invigorated by the idea of what her and Macbeth can achieve together as two men, and immediately summons “spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here” (1.5.39) to trade her milk for poison. She does not transform into something wholly masculine, instead she becomes something ‘other’ entirely. Similarly to the witches, she is no longer definable by the constraints of “woman” or “man,” but occupies a queer space in which she is free to offer up “the illness” (1.5.19) to spur Macbeth’s “vaulting ambition” (1.7.27). The hypothetical response she poises to Macbeth when he expresses doubts about their plot seals her ‘unsexing’, “How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me: / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums / And dashed the brains out” (1.7.56-59). She has seemingly shed the last of her ‘maternal’ characteristics and fully given herself over to their plot. Although she boldly encourages Macbeth to carry out the murder of Duncan, her plan retains nearly ironic hints of femininity: firstly, she welcomes Duncan into her home as the ideal, ‘lady-like’ hostess; secondly, she plots to have Macbeth murder Duncan in his sleep, in a most dishonorable and ‘unmanly’ manner. When Macbeth objects to her plan, he is objecting to the deceitfulness and cowardliness of it, as well as addressing his own hesitation to carry out the murder. In her response, Lady Macbeth reminds him that she willingly betrayed her gender for him and for their joint ambition, and she expects the same in return. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth demonstrate a level of “unsexing” that defies social constraints of their respective genders, betraying their roles as ‘man’ and ‘wife’, or ‘father’ and ‘mother’; thus, once again, they cross into a queer space due their mutual ambition.
Ambition becomes a pseudo-sexual replacement for intimacy in the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In his letter to Lady Macbeth, Macbeth refers to her as his “dearest partner of greatness” (1.5.11), instead of a conventional term of endearment. He directs her that “thou mightst not lose the dues of rejoicing by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee” (1.5.11-13). The focus of his letter is his desire to share the promise of greatness and his newfound ambition with her, which she gladly receives. Furthermore, the only time they mention offspring is in their interaction following the murder of Duncan, when Macbeth teasingly directs her to “bring forth men-children only! / for thy undaunted mettle should compose / nothing but males” (1.7.73-75), or when Lady Macbeth is goading Macbeth into murdering Duncan. Assumingly, as husband and wife, they would discuss the matter of inheritance and children more than they do, especially considering Macbeth’s bitterness over Banquo begetting a line of kings. Yet, the only mention is in a teasing comment from Macbeth that is more concerned with Lady Macbeth’s “undaunted mettle” than the discussion of children. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth display far more concern with forcing a path to kingship than over their marital intimacy or joint reproductive futurity. Their mutual desire for greatness interferes with the hetero-normative function of their marriage; considering the “strayness of desire” is “crucial to queerness” (Stockton), their unconventional priorities of ambition over sexual intimacy makes their very relationship queer.
Although the ambitious drives of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth contradict society’s obsession with procreation and inheritance, there is nothing inherently wrong or ghastly about their preference for power over a hetero-normative drive for lineage. It is simply the unfortunate circumstances of a hereditary monarchy with a lineal line of succession that places a cap on the heights of their ambition, their reach for greatness. Macbeth could not achieve a title higher than “Thane” without disrupting the order of inheritance for the crown: being king meant killing heirs (Wilson). He had to kill Duncan and would have had to kill Duncan’s sons if they had not fled to clear his path to the throne. Depending on how one looks at it, he was either very fortunate or very unfortunate to have a wife that surpassed him in ambition and had the mettle to carry out a plan that meant the end of their line and damnation of their souls. Attributing their actions to an overwhelming ambition that rivals their sexual desire helps to clarify their somewhat foggy motivations for pursuing kingship and romanticizes the tragic outcome of their “power coupledom.”
Works Cited
Edelman, L. “Against Survival: Queerness in a Time That’s Out of Joint.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 62, no. 2., 2011, pp 148-169. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23025624. Accessed 8 Nov. 2017.
Love, H. “Milk.” Shakesqueer: A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by Madhavi Menon, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2011.
Shakespeare, William. “Macbeth.” The Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by David Bevington, HarperCollins Publishers, 1992, pp 1223-1255.
Stockton, W. “Shakespeare and Queer Theory.” Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 63, no. 2, 2012, pp. 224-235. http://doi.org/10.1353/shq.2012.0035. Accessed 8 Nov. 2017.
Wilson, L. “Macbeth and the Contingency of Future Person.” Shakespeare Studies, vol. 40, 2012, pp. 53-62. http://proxy.consortiumlibrary.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=82541419&site=ehost-live Accessed 8 Nov. 2017.
Zoch, A. “Macduff’s Son and the Queer Temporality of Macbeth.” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, vol. 57, no. 2, 2017, pp 369-388. http://doi.org/10.1353/sel.2017.0016. Accessed 8 Nov. 2017.
Charlee Laurie is pursuing a Baccalaureate of English.
This piece was selected by Professor Sharon Emmerichs.
This piece was selected by Professor Sharon Emmerichs.