POLITICS AND MACBETH

Abstract

The question about what makes Shakespeare's texts such good tools for understanding our own experience of the world is addressed by an analysis of some passages in Macbeth based on the notions of diegesis, mimesis and deconstruction. The main argument is that textual aporias mirror our contradictory and ambiguous reactions to the real world.

Headnote

Abstract: The question about what makes Shakespeare's texts such good tools for understanding our own experience of the world is addressed by an analysis of some passages in Macbeth based on the notions of diegesis, mimesis and deconstruction. The main argument is that textual aporias mirror our contradictory and ambiguous reactions to the real world.

Keywords: mimesis, diegesis, difference, Shakespeare's tragedy, politics

1.Introduction

A few years ago I wrote about politics in Shakespeare's plays (Gibinska 2008) discussing the three parts of Henry VI. May aim was to demonstrate how the structure of the plays allows for the multiplicity of points of view, which not only open ambiguous interpretative potential and introduce ideological considerations (understood as narratives constructed on a political agenda), but also effectively deconstruct them. If the critical or the theatrical reception of the plays instil too blatantly their own agendas, the very texts of Shakespeare uncover and deny such manipulations.

Can we use Shakespeare to understand and describe our own experience of the world? of life? Definitely yes, as Shakespeare's presence in the world culture has never diminished for the last 400 years, just as critical opinions and theatre reviews of his plays have been an incessant field of polemics and skirmishes. What is then there in Shakespeare's texts that fills them with this inexhaustible semantic potential?

To try to answer this question I need to consider the old tools used in critical struggles with fiction, namely mimesis and diegesis. Mimesis 'shows' rather than 'tells', while diagesis 'narrates', and if it 'shows', then it does so only indirectly, through language. Plato, in Book III of The Republic, differentiates between narration (diegesis), and imitation (representation) which he terms mimesis. He understands these two ways of creating fictional worlds as an imitation of reality in various literary genres, with a particular force defining drama as a mimetic rather than a diegetic art. In Poetics III.3, Aristotle states that a poet can imitate reality in two ways: by creating a narrator who tells a story, i.e., tells the world, or by creating characters endowed with language and consciousness and thus creating the world through the characters' activities. Aristotle uses this particular differentiation to define the difference between heroic poetry and drama. Here I would like to employ the two types of imitation to discuss the relation of a dramatic text to the empirical world. I need, though, to introduce important modifications. First, I claim that both diegesis and mimesis are employed in drama. Characters act, but they also tell stories, so 'the world' is represented by the two kinds of imitation.

Second, I have to consider imitation and reception together. If mimesis and diegesis are the result of the author's decisions, understanding and interpretation, which are acts of reception, endeavour to re-create the fictional (imitated) world. However, re-creation in this sense is not a process symmetrical to creation.

Plato's and Aristotle's concepts are useful in producing an ontological model into which I have to fit both text and its contexts, assuming that one of the contexts is the reception of the literary (dramatic) work. Diegesis is a concept which allows me to define the text as an entity which is never outside context. Derrida's famous statement "il n'y a pas de hors-texte" (Derrida 1967) comes readily to mind. His own elucidation runs as follows:

Avancer qu'il n'y a pas de hors-texte, c'est observer que le texte affirme le Dehors; déconstruire, c'est prendre en compte cette "structure a priori" dont l'analyse n'est jamais politiquement neutre. [...] Toutes les structures de la "réalité" dite économique, historique, sociale, institutionnelle, politique, etc [...] sont impliquées en lui, a tel point qu'on peut le qualifier de texte-contexte. Il accueille en lui le référent, le réel; il les inscrit comme différance. Prendre cela en compte, c'est la déconstruction meme. (http ://www.idixa.net/Pixa)

The senses inscribed in the text are all immersed in their own contexts which become contexts of the text we examine. In order to define my own interpretative tool, which I want to call diegesis, I postulate such ontology of the text which allows for its relation to an indeterminate reality, infinite and changing with time, and, therefore, representing a wide horizon of contexts. This would mean that the essence of imitation can be discovered in all possible connections of the imitated world with the empirical world in the contexts prior or contemporary with the text, because they are inscribed in it. The recipient's business is to see those contexts, to pick them up and order them along a specific hierarchy. Since, however, the recipient brings in his/her own contexts, s/he can define connections of the text to his/her own reality, to his/her own structures 'a priori', and that, as Derrida points out, is never apolitical.

Such diegetical model should allow us, as I believe, to see in the word (the language) of Shakespearean characters the creation of a reality through a selective perception of contexts and the re-working of one text into another, translating one reality into another, which in turn must be placed within the perspective of the recipient; the latter will then re-work the diegesis of the characters through his/her own 'imitation of reality', through his/her own telling of the reality which is his/her own experience.

Thus, I can postulate an infinite linguistic and interpretative variety of the represented world, dependent on who and in what contexts tells his/her understanding of reality through struggling with a concrete text. Since every single interpretation is determinate and specific, to say that an interpretation is innocent, independent and objective is naive and reductionist; also it falsifies the interpretative process. In conclusion: Shakespeare's plays do not represent our reality and experience. We represent our reality and experience by interpreting his plays. And we act politically in the widest sense of the word.

To discuss mimesis - imitation via acting - we need a different ontological status. Derrida's 'dehors' full of other texts is less practical here, exactly because it contains other texts. For mimesis, we need a physical (rather than intellectual) aspect of being. The most important context of action (as opposed to telling) in drama is the physical experience of life, the physical qualities of the human being, of his/her voice, because these elements constitute the essence of human presence and form meanings arising in doing rather than telling. Mimesis anticipates, envisages doing/acting on the stage.

The playwright suggests dramaturgical solutions in order to allow for a concrete imitation of human activity on the stage. His 'prompts' must be taken into account by directors and actors who will then construct their own imitation of a human being in action. The audience will be given a specific imitation of the world, which, at the same time, will be an imitation of the playwright's imitation and an imitation of the recognizable here and now of life. This is the essence of the mirror set up to nature in theatre. But also, in this case, we have to admit that the creation of signs on the stage and their interpretation must be a deconstructive process, in which directors, actors, and audiences will discover fissures through which the contexts of their own experience and understanding of reality will be offered.

2.The 'political' Shakespeare: Macbeth

To see the 'political' Shakespeare, one does not need all those complicated tools. Julius Caesar or Coriolanus have always been understood in critical reception as political plays, because their plots are most obviously constructed on the idea of struggle for power. But it is interesting that their theatrical popularity did not necessarily depend on political agendas.

Examining the history of European productions of Shakespeare's plays from 1848 to 1945, I have found only two productions of Julius Caesar - in Warsaw 1928 and in Prague 1936 (Gibinska 2017: 51) - which used the play to demonstrate a political reading of the reality of the time. The most frequently politicized play has always been Hamlet. Alfred Thomas published an incisive and most interesting study of the phenomenon of political contexts of Hamlet in 2014. Andrzej Żurowski's studies (1983; 2003 a, b) proved that in Poland Hamlet was most frequently exploited politically of all Shakespeare's plays. Again, I am not exactly original in bringing the tragedies into the political context, since all great tragedies (except perhaps Romeo and Juliet) turn around the problem of power and the consequences of political (ir)responsibility. Titus Andronicus drips with blood of political and private enemies, while the horror of recriminations and murders consists the essence of the Roman polis. In Hamlet, the state is a prison, where everyday life means spying and informing the only and rightful authority. Antony and Cleopatra, apart from the study of passionate love, is also a study of the body politic of Antony. King Lear brings a story of unwise political decision which brings the downfall of the king, but also of the country lost in the civil war and facing the dilemma of a foreign invasion. Macbeth, a great study of the psychology of a criminal, is also a story of ruthless political ambition, of lust for power, of political crimes, and of destruction of the state. Thus, following only the plot lines, we can read into each of these plays our own political experience. But such treatment of the political issues in Shakespeare's tragedies is so obvious, that it must be reductionist and shallow. Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre was replete with political plays, enough to think of Marlowe, Chapman or Middleton. And yet, their plays stay in the big store of history, rarely seeing the footlights of world theatres, while Shakespeare is truly 'for all time', as Ben Jonson diagnosed.

Macbeth, unlike Julius Caesar or Hamlet, is not the play which has been most frequently appropriated politically, and yet, its unusually high poetic condensation of language and a striking quality of dramatic structure may offer the answer to the initial question: what makes us so often read Shakespeare's text politically? What aspects of the texts allow us to take it and insert it in our own current contexts in a particularly creative way, the way which opens interesting and varied interpretative shifts? The point of interest here will be particularly the diegetic passages, i.e. those which tell rather than show the world.

The first passages to be considered is the Bloody Captain's relation from the battlefield and Rosse's report, both in I.2. The two passages have a distinct epic character; offering a condensed view of the battlefields, they are filled with distinctive verbal images (e.g., "like two spent swimmers") and well aimed, felicitous epithets which suggest the superb prowess and valour of Macbeth (and Banquo) in fighting the rebels, Macdonwald and Cawdor, traitors who defy the King of Scotland and stand up against him with the help of mercenaries and foreign military power. Macdonwald recruited Kernes and Gallowglasses from Ireland, while Cawdor was backed by "Norway himself, With terrible numbers"1. The cruel and bloody confrontations were won by invincible Macbeth, who fought with courage and displayed absolute loyalty to the king.

The textual context - reports from the battlefields are brought to Duncan who waits for the "battle lost [or] won", therefore also for the verdict as to the future of his state - opens an axiological perspective. He who serves the king is brave, noble and faithful, he serves the state, his own homeland. However, a more careful inspection of the texts of the Captain and of Rosse makes us see fissures through which doubt and moral ambiguity seep out. Let us carefully consider the text. Here is the description of the traitor Macdonwald,

The merciless Macdonwald -

(Worthy to be a rebel, for to that

The multiplying villanies of nature

Do swarm upon him) (I.2.)

and of the heroic Macbeth,

For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name)

Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish'd steel,

Which smok'd with bloody execution,

Like Valour's minion carved out his passage

Till he fac'd he slave; (I.2., emphasis mine)

The choice of epithets not only describes the two thanes, but also evidences the frame of values in the world of Macbeth. The difference between the merciless Macdonwald and brave Macbeth depends on the Captain's perspective which is identical with that of Duncan and his knights. The Captain's differentiation between the two contestants is accepted without a grain of doubt. Macdonwald as an opponent must be merciless, villainous and querulous; Macbeth is most obviously Valour's minion, who disdains Fortune and deserves the title of the King's brave defendant. But what exactly does Macbeth do on the battlefield? The detailed and, at the same time, suggestively metaphorical description makes us see not merciless Macdonwald, but merciless Macbeth. Macdonwald in Captain's words is not given much attention and is almost a priori sentenced to defeat ("..but all's too weak", although Fortune seemed to smile on his cause). The inference from the image of the "two spent swimmers" suggests his prowess is equal to Macbeth's, but he is not shown in the battle, while Macbeth's great feat of fighting is offered in striking details. The Valour's minion, valiant cousin, and worthy gentleman is victorious. His actions, though, hardly corroborate the "golden opinion". Macbeth's "brandish'd steel, which smok'd with bloody execution" helped him to carve out "his passage". The figurative language, used with the intention of praise, suggests at the same time the warrior's cruelty, ruthlessness and unrestrained brutality. "The worthy gentleman" not only defies chivalric rituals - "ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him" - but performs an act of utmost savagery,

.. .he unseam'd him from the nave to th'chops,

And fix'd his head upon our battlements. (I.2.)

The Captain's appraisal, „brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name)", is turned into a highly ironic statement. The axiology of the world of the play gets uncertain, if not suspicious: the king's enthusiastic response is not the only response generated by the text, while the words of the Witches gain a specific moral and political status. "Fair is foul and foul is fair" becomes dependent upon and is resolved by the adopted point of view. Axiological doubts are inevitable: what is the virtue of valour? Is Macbeth brave? What does loyalty mean? Is the perspective of the Captain the only legitimate political stance?

In Captain's further words there is a striking emphasis on the indomitable courage and prowess of Macbeth and Banquo,

(....) they were

As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks;

So they

Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe:

Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds,

Or memorize another Golgotha (I.2.)

Bathing in reeking wounds repeats and extends the image of the steel smoking with bloody execution. Here, however, there is a new and puzzling image of another Golgotha, the space of which cannot but leave for Banquo and Macbeth the function of butchers and executioners. Derrida's différance jumps to the eye. Diegesis creates the world of sharp distinction between values and positions, yet, at the same time, deconstructs the values of the world in which such divisions exist. It is here where the political potential of the tragedy is visible. The described battles are great victories in defence of the state. But how can we understand the values involved in that defence? Can we ignore questions about the raison d'état of that king and those knights? Is it possible to accept without doubt that only one side is right?

Theatre and film productions of Macbeth most often cut the scene, leaving only enough to expose the golden opinion which Macbeth enjoyed before he became a murderer. This of course is done to enhance the internal tragedy, the psychological and moral error and, finally, the defeat of Macbeth. But the tragedy has an inevitable political aspect, which cannot be only limited to the renaissance idea of the Wheel of Fortune, but should be recognized and studied as a complex and complicated experience in imitating reality which defies uniform and reductionist representation, which complicates judgement and offers inconsistencies and aporias. Shakespeare's text does not shy from them. Alfred Thomas has demonstrated in his excellent study, Shakespeare, Dissent, and the Cold War, that the political tensions of the Elizabethan world were no less sharp and entangled than today, while incompatible reasons and aims not only introduced divisions, but resulted in dangerous and inimical exclusions. Clashes of the points of view and accepted political positions undermined values: he who was in power was not automatically right, he who was loyal to that power and defended it was not automatically a hero. Shakespeare's epic narrative at the beginning of the play uncovers hidden meanings of the political discourse, deconstructs words, and offers signs whose signifiant will lead to unexpected signifies. The différance shakes the routine acceptance of the political differences and uncovers the complicated tangle of what is imitated: the political world.

The ambivalent representation of the world is an introduction to the tragedy the core of which is the incapability and/or impossibility of recognition of truth. Macbeth, torn between foul and fair, chooses the path of crime, which is at the same time a political choice of gaining power.

This supernatural soliciting

Cannot be ill; cannot be good;-

If ill, why hath it given me earnest of success,

Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor:

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion

Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,

Against the use of nature? (I.3., emphasis mine)

He has doubts as to the moral qualification of the criminal choice. In another monologue (I.7.), he tries to convince himself that it is wrong to kill the king, cousin and guest under his own roof. But never is he torn by the idea that killing is wrong; never does he voice a doubt as to his desire to become king.

The dialogues between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, in which she argues for the crime and he against it, are a mimetic equivalent of the diegetic ambivalence of signs, and, at the same time, a continuation of political action. Lady Macbeth represents the pragmatic approach to politics recommended by Machiavelli: action has to be taken, and it has to be effective. The scenario of a perfect political crime demands hypocrisy, double-dealing and cunning in word and deed; it needs obliterating trails and clues, negating the obvious. Having chosen the path of crime, Macbeth will consistently follow the pattern, making sure that each consecutive crime is delegated to keep his hands clean, because, as he discovered to his horror, the blood on his hands cannot be washed, it is a dangerous and disquieting witness. The mimetic action of the play contains the plot which stands against the power of Macbeth. His political enemies escape from Scotland and in England gather an army with the help and backing of the English king. Being active in exile, they are pragmatic and successful in working towards Malcolm's aim of destroying the tyrant and regaining the Scottish throne.

There is no doubt as to the legitimate claim of Malcolm: he is trying to get back what belonged to his father, more, what his father bequeathed to him. Macbeth's tyranny is equally obvious and negatively stigmatized. And yet, the text again opens contexts which suggest contrastive and opposite senses. One such context contemporary to Shakespeare is the history of political tensions between Scotland and England. The metaphysical plot of the play tries to lessen the tensions and complements the accession of James to the English throne by giving Banquo the most noble profile. Re-writing the chronicles, Shakespeare made a thug into a hero whose descendants became kings.

Diegesis, that is the linguistic construction of the world of Macbeth, can be questioned because other linguistic world representations are possible. Other texts make us ask for the warrant of Malcolm's integrity and the assurance of peace and stable government in Scotland. Stretching the doubts, we may also ask for the guarantee of a reliable and honest government anywhere and at any time. Relating to the internal context of the play, we may question Malcolm's hierarchy of values remembering Duncan's exalted praise of Macbeth. Relating to our own contexts, we may question the value of fighting for the freedom of one's own country assisted by a foreign military power.

It is exactly in the possibility of opening the text to opposite, contradictory and never completely obvious senses that I find the greatest and inalienable values of Shakespeare's art. The scepticism as to black or white reasons, as to clear motivations or unshakable belief in one's truth make Shakespeare's fictional worlds a fascinating representation of human experience. Shakespeare's man is always in doubt if his ideas or deeds are fair or foul, exactly because the distinction is so very difficult, if sometimes impossible to make, and because the character's point of view may always be questioned. And this feature gives his plays a positive political potential.

3.Conclusion

Having said all this, I need to stress that I do not preach moral relativism. Crime is crime. The blood on Macbeth's hands will never be washed. But his hands are smeared with the blood of many other people. He is condemned for Duncan's blood, but what about the reeking blood bath of the battle? Is brave Macbeth 'unseaming' his enemy 'from the nave to the chops' and the murderer, dagger in hand, above Duncan's body the same person? Or two different men? The valiant and worthy gentleman killing thoughtlessly left and right - carving his passage - and the shaken man despairing about not being able to say amen, appalled by the sight of blood on his hands - are these two different moral propositions? And, finally, Macbeth murdering in the name of his king and Macbeth murdering in order to become king - are these two different political propositions?

The tragedy of Macbeth is much more than the tragedy of his inability to distinguish foul from fair. It is a tragedy which demands our keen reflection and an attempt at recognition of our own inability to deal with the world. Like Macbeth and the knights of Scotland, we as individuals and societies get again and again into a blind alley, recklessly and unwisely accepting the truths of merciless Macdonwald and brave Macbeth which are served to us on all occasions.

According to Derrida, every philosophical enterprise is in its nature logocentric. Ethical judgements of values and their hegemony are expressed in words with which we name human deeds. Shakespeare's text is written as if on Derrida's own demand. Looking at the text of Macbeth with mimetic or diegetic spectacles, we shall always find the argument of différance: no deeds, no motivations, no aims can be unambiguously qualified. In Shakespeare's texts, we find the reflection of our own dilemmas with understanding the world. The political diagnosis of our own reality has to be accepted as extremely difficult and depressing, because it can never solve anything. And yet, the great value of Shakespearean aporia is the warning against the trap of the belief in our manifest and unshakable truth.

Sidebar

Marta Gibinska, until 2012 Professor of English Literature at the Jagiellonian University, now teaches at the Jozef Tischner European University in Krakow, Poland. Her special fields of interest are Shakespeare studies and translation studies. Her publications include Functioning of Language in Shakespeare 's Plays. A Pragmadramatic Approach (1989) and Polish Poets Read Shakespeare (2000). She has published extensively on the theatrical history of Shakespeare in Poland and on the Polish translations of Shakespeare. She is a member of the Polish Shakespeare Society, Deutsche Shakespearegesellschaft, International Shakespeare Association, and European Shakespeare Research Association.

E-mail address: [email protected]

Footnote

1 All quotations from the Arden edition of Macbeth, ed. Kenneth Muir, Methuen 1982

References

References

Derrida, Jacques.1997 (1967). Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. [Online]. Available: http://www.idixa.net/Pixa/ pagixa-0510041207.html [Accessed 2015, September 12].

Gibinska, Marta. 2008. "Polityka tekstu: Henryk VI Williama Szekspira" [Politics of the Text: Shakespeare's Henry VI] in Prace Komisji Neofilologicznej PAU, vol. VII, pp. 7-26

Gibinska, Marta. 2017. "Shakespeare on Stage in Europe since the Late Seventeenth Century", section 2 'Growing with Technology, Art, and Politics (1948-1945)' in Levenson, Jill L. and Robert Ormsby (eds.). The Shakespearean World. London and New York: Routledge, pp.40-59.

Shakespeare, William. 1982 (1951). Macbeth. Kenneth Muir (ed.). London: Methuen.

Thomas, Alfred. 2014. Shakespeare, Dissent, and Cold War. London and New York: Palgrave.

Żurowski, Andrzej. 1983. Myślenie Szekspirem [Thinking with Shakespeare].Warszawa: PAX.

Żurowski, Andrzej. 2003a. Szekspir - ich rówieśnik [Shakespeare Their Contemporary]. Gdansk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdanskiego.

Żurowski, Andrzej. 2003b. Szekspir i wielki zamęt [Shakespeare and the Great Confusion]. Pelplin: Bernardinum.