Macbeth (3 page)

The play does it all the time, from the first appearance of the weyard sisters (“When the battle’s lost and won,” “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”) through Macbeth’s first entrance (“So foul and fair a day I have not seen”) to Ross’s moving tribute to old Siward’s battle-slain son (“He only lived but till he was a man.…But like a man he died”). In this world, even the ornithology palters with us in a double sense: “Light thickens, / And the crow makes wing to the rooky wood.” Simultaneously like and unlike: the crow is a large black bird that feeds upon the carcasses of beasts and that lives in pairs (fittingly, in that Macbeth is at this point speaking to Lady Macbeth), while rooks, though closely related to crows, are sociable birds that live in vast colonies. Crow and rook are both similar and different, as Macbeth is both similar to and different from the other thanes. Rooks live in rookeries, but the adjective “rooky” is a Shakespearean coinage that plays brilliantly on an old dialect word “rawky” or “roky”: as one dictionary has it, “We say it is a rooky day, when the air is thick and the light of consequence feeble.”

Language in
Macbeth
is thickened to a viscous texture. Like that of clotted blood. Another form of what might be called poetic equivocation is the restatement of the same idea in two different idioms:

The two latter lines say the same thing twice, first in erudite Latinate polysyllables, then in plain monosyllabic Anglo-Saxon colors. Shakespeare holds together the complex linguistic inheritance of English at the time of his mother tongue’s richest expansion. He speaks in one
line to his educated and elevated courtly audience, then in the next to the ordinary people, the penny-paying groundlings.
Macbeth
is a play steeped in stage blood, but perhaps its greatest achievement is to incarnate—to incarnadine—the hot blood of life into the evanescent breath of the poetic word.

Shakespeare endures through history. He illuminates later times as well as his own. He helps us to understand the human condition. But he cannot do this without a good text of the plays. Without editions there would be no Shakespeare. That is why every twenty years or so throughout the last three centuries there has been a major new edition of his complete works. One aspect of editing is the process of keeping the texts up to date—modernizing the spelling, punctuation, and typography (though not, of course, the actual words), providing explanatory notes in the light of changing educational practices (a generation ago, most of Shakespeare’s classical and biblical allusions could be assumed to be generally understood, but now they can’t).

Because Shakespeare did not personally oversee the publication of his plays, with some plays there are major editorial difficulties. Decisions have to be made as to the relative authority of the early printed editions, the pocket format “quartos” published in Shakespeare’s lifetime, and the elaborately produced First Folio text of 1623, the original “Complete Works” prepared for the press after his death by Shakespeare’s fellow actors, the people who knew the plays better than anyone else.
Macbeth
exists only in a Folio text that is reasonably well printed. However, as explained in the introduction above, the surviving text, which is much shorter than those of the other tragedies, may represent a theatrical adaptation post-dating Shakespeare’s retirement, possibly overseen by Thomas Middleton. The extent of Middleton’s involvement is debated by scholars: the Hecate scenes have long been attributed to him, but the possibility of detecting his hand elsewhere in the play is hotly debated (the 2007 Oxford edition of Middleton’s complete works actually included
Macbeth
). Since our editorial principle in the RSC Shakespeare is to follow the First Folio wherever possible, we print the Hecate scenes as they appear there, giving only the opening words of the songs. The full text of the songs from Middleton’s
The Witch
is given at the end of the
play, but we cannot know for sure that exactly the same words were used in
Macbeth
.

The following notes highlight various aspects of the editorial process and indicate conventions used in the text of this edition:

Lists of Parts
are supplied in the First Folio for only six plays, not including
Macbeth
, so the list here is editorially supplied. Capitals indicate that part of the name which is used for speech headings in the script (thus “King
DUNCAN
”).

Locations
are provided by the Folio for only two plays, of which
Macbeth
is not one. Eighteenth-century editors, working in an age of elaborately realistic stage sets, were the first to provide detailed locations (“another part of the palace”). Given that Shakespeare wrote for a bare stage and often an imprecise sense of place, we have relegated locations to the explanatory notes at the foot of the page, where they are given at the beginning of each scene in which the imaginary location is different from the one before.

Act and Scene Divisions
were provided in the Folio in a much more thoroughgoing way than in the Quartos. Sometimes, however, they were erroneous or omitted; corrections and additions supplied by editorial tradition are indicated by square brackets. Five-act division is based on a classical model, and act breaks provided the opportunity to replace the candles in the indoor Blackfriars playhouse that the King’s Men used after 1608, but Shakespeare did not necessarily think in terms of a five-part structure of dramatic composition. The Folio convention is that a scene ends when the stage is empty. Nowadays, partly under the influence of film, we tend to consider a scene to be a dramatic unit that ends with either a change of imaginary location or a significant passage of time within the narrative. Shakespeare’s fluidity of composition accords well with this convention, so in addition to act and scene numbers we provide a
running scene
count in the right margin at the beginning of each new scene, in the typeface used for editorial directions. Where there is a scene break caused by a momentary bare stage, but the location does not change and extra time does not pass, we use the convention
running scene continues.
There is inevitably a degree of editorial judgment in making such calls, but the system is very valuable in suggesting the pace of the plays.

Speakers’ Names
are often inconsistent in Folio. We have regularized speech headings, but retained an element of deliberate inconsistency in entry directions, in order to give the flavor of Folio.

Verse
is indicated by lines that do not run to the right margin and by capitalization of each line. The Folio printers sometimes set verse as prose, and vice versa (either out of misunderstanding or for reasons of space). We have silently corrected in such cases, although in some instances there is ambiguity, in which case we have leaned toward the preservation of Folio layout. Folio sometimes uses contraction (“turnd” rather than “turned”) to indicate whether or not the final “-ed” of a past participle is sounded, an area where there is variation for the sake of the five-beat iambic pentameter rhythm. We use the convention of a grave accent to indicate sounding (thus “turnèd” would be two syllables), but would urge actors not to overstress. In cases where one speaker ends with a verse half line and the next begins with the other half of the pentameter, editors since the late eighteenth century have indented the second line. We have abandoned this convention, since the Folio does not use it, and nor did actors’ cues in the Shakespearean theater. An exception is made when the second speaker actively interrupts or completes the first speaker’s sentence.

Spelling
is modernized, but older forms are very occasionally maintained where necessary for rhythm or aural effect.

Punctuation
in Shakespeare’s time was as much rhetorical as grammatical. “Colon” was originally a term for a unit of thought in an argument. The semicolon was a new unit of punctuation (some of the Quartos lack them altogether). We have modernized punctuation throughout, but have given more weight to Folio punctuation than many editors, since, though not Shakespearean, it reflects the usage of his period. In particular, we have used the colon far more
than many editors: it is exceptionally useful as a way of indicating how many Shakespearean speeches unfold clause by clause in a developing argument that gives the illusion of enacting the process of thinking in the moment. We have also kept in mind the origin of punctuation in classical times as a way of assisting the actor and orator: the comma suggests the briefest of pauses for breath, the colon a middling one, and a full stop or period a longer pause. Semi-colons, by contrast, belong to an era of punctuation that was only just coming in during Shakespeare’s time and that is coming to an end now: we have accordingly used them only where they occur in our copy texts (and not always then). Dashes are sometimes used for parenthetical interjections where the Folio has brackets. They are also used for interruptions and changes in train of thought. Where a change of addressee occurs within a speech, we have used a dash preceded by a full stop (or occasionally another form of punctuation). Often the identity of the respective addressees is obvious from the context. When it is not, this has been indicated in a marginal stage direction.

Entrances and Exits
are fairly thorough in Folio, which has accordingly been followed as faithfully as possible. Where characters are omitted or corrections are necessary, this is indicated by square brackets (e.g. “[
and Attendants
]”).
Exit
is sometimes silently normalized to
Exeunt
, and
Manet
anglicized to “remains.” We trust Folio positioning of entrances and exits to a greater degree than most editors.

Editorial Stage Directions
such as stage business, asides, indications of addressee and of characters’ position on the gallery stage are only used sparingly in Folio. Other editions mingle directions of this kind with original Folio and Quarto directions, sometimes marking them by means of square brackets. We have sought to distinguish what could be described as
directorial
interventions of this kind from Folio-style directions (either original or supplied) by placing them in the right margin in a different typeface. There is a degree of subjectivity about which directions are of which kind, but the procedure is intended as a reminder to the reader and the actor
that Shakespearean stage directions are often dependent upon editorial inference alone and are not set in stone. We also depart from editorial tradition in sometimes admitting uncertainty and thus printing permissive stage directions, such as an
Aside?
(often a line may be equally effective as an aside or a direct address—it is for each production or reading to make its own decision) or a
may exit
or a piece of business placed between arrows to indicate that it may occur at various different moments within a scene.

Line Numbers
in the left margin are editorial, for reference and to key the explanatory and textual notes.

Explanatory Notes
at the foot of each page explain allusions and gloss obsolete and difficult words, confusing phraseology, occasional major textual cruces, and so on. Particular attention is given to non-standard usage, bawdy innuendo, and technical terms (e.g. legal and military language). Where more than one sense is given, commas indicate shades of related meaning, slashes alternative or double meanings.

Textual Notes
at the end of the play indicate major departures from the Folio. They take the following form: the reading of our text is given in bold and its source given after an equals sign, with “F2” indicating a reading that derives from the Second Folio of 1632, “F3” one that derives from the Third Folio of 1663–64, and “Ed” that it derives from the subsequent editorial tradition. The rejected Folio (“F”) reading is then given. Thus for Act 3 Scene 6 line 25: “
son
= Ed. F = Sonnes” means that the Folio text refers to Duncan’s two sons, where the context clearly demands one, so we have corrected to the singular. It is possible, of course, in this case that the mistake is Shakespeare’s, not the printer’s: he might have forgotten that he sent Donalbain to Ireland and only Malcolm to England. The editorial task is a never-ending process of conjecture and debate.

AUTHORSHIP:
There is no doubt about Shakespeare’s authorship of the bulk of the play, but it is probable that the printed text bears the marks of some theatrical revision, possibly by
THOMAS MIDDLETON.
In particular, the scenes involving Hecate seem to be additions by Middleton.

MAJOR PARTS:
(
with percentage of lines/number of speeches/scenes onstage
) Macbeth (29%/146/15), Lady Macbeth (11%/59/9), Malcolm (9%/40/8), Macduff (7%/59/7), Ross (6%/39/7), Banquo (5%/33/7), First Witch (3%/23/4), Lennox (3%/21/6), Duncan (3%/18/3), Second Witch (2%/15/3), Third Witch 2%/13/3, Porter (2%/4/1), Wife of Macduff (2%/19/1), Scottish Doctor (2%/19/2).

LINGUISTIC MEDIUM:
95% verse, 5% prose.

DATE:
1606? Certainly Jacobean rather than Elizabethan, to judge from its several compliments to King James. Performed at the Globe in April 1611 and perhaps at court in August or December 1606. References to “equivocation” and other allusions suggest written soon after trial of Gunpowder Plot conspirators (January–March 1606). The ship
Tiger
, mentioned in Act 1 Scene 3, sailed for the east in 1604 and returned after a terrible voyage in the summer of 1606.

SOURCES:
Based on account of reigns of Duncan and Makbeth in “The Chronicles of Scotland,” from vol. 2 of Raphael Holinshed’s
Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland
(1587 edition), with some use of material elsewhere in the Scottish chronicles. Shows awareness of the Stuart dynasty’s claim to lineage from Banquo. Some of the imagery is influenced by the language of Seneca’s tragedies. Hecate scenes incorporate material from Thomas Middleton’s play
The Witch
.

TEXT:
1623 Folio is the only early printed text. Its brevity suggests possible theatrical cutting. Good quality of printing, though with severe problems of lineation.