Macbeth and the Sun and Capitalism
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The document provides context and summaries about key scenes and themes in Shakespeare's Macbeth. It discusses the significance of the three witches and how they represent the loss of nature-based religions. It also analyzes how nature is portrayed as bare and hostile in the play. Several important scenes are summarized, including the first scene with the witches and later scenes where they provide prophecies to Macbeth that influence his actions.
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Macbeth and the Sun and Capitalism
- 1. Macbeth and the Sun and Capitalism
- 2. Macbeth in Japan: Kumonosu-jo, a recent Ninagawa production & many more
- 3. This class is about literature and the supernatural (超自然), so we will especially pay attention to the Three Witches
- 4. Let’s read the first scene with the witches • The three witches can be played in many ways! So creative! Extremely fun! • Watch this video…(but the third one is a bit too horrible!)….(the first 2 are OK.) • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clG8ha2 D26g
- 5. Kumonosu-jo • Shows the “witches” in a fascinating way (very briefly shown in this trailer but worth looking at) • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGYDCYR yFrk • (If you rent the video, the “witch/spirit” is shown at 15:00 until 19:00.)
- 6. More witches… • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUVpLZyF BtY • This is an amateur production that shows how popular Shakespeare is. • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUH6L9P XAzE • Another one by high school kids
- 7. “…ere the set of sun” (the word “sun” appears again and again in this play!) • [Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches] • First Witch. When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? • Second Witch. When the hurlyburly's done, When the battle's lost and won. • Third Witch. That will be ere the set of sun. • First Witch. Where the place? • Second Witch. Upon the heath. • Third Witch. There to meet with Macbeth. • First Witch. I come, Graymalkin! • Second Witch. Paddock calls. • Third Witch. Anon. • All. Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.
- 8. Who are Greymalkin and Paddock? • Greymalkin is a typical name for a gray cat. Paddock is a name for a toad (frog). Later in Act IV we find out the name of the animal of Witch 3 is Harpier. “Harpier cries”---(a bird: a raven or an owl) • Harpier, Greymalkin and Paddock are the 3 witches’ familiars. (魔女の助手）
- 9. Images of “witches’ familiars”
- 10. Witch’s familiars • “familiars” or “animal guides” were believed to be supernatural entities that would assist witches in their practice of magic.According to the records of the time, they would appear in numerous guises, often as an animal, but also at times as a human or humanoid figure.
- 12. Witches • Historically by 1606, pagans, heretics were “out” and witches were more “in” as enemies. • Witches as images became popular scary figures in the 1600s. • Unfortunately there were witch hunts and many people were burned as witches in England and US and Europe. • Association with animals and nature (magic spells with herbs, rocks, etc.) • “What was left of pagan religion”??
- 14. Beautiful Fairies vs Ugly Witches • We know that fairies symbolize pagan gods and goddesses, particularly still at this time (1500s- early 1600s.) • Fairies are beautiful and live in beauty (oceans, forests, rivers, etc.) • Sometimes a storm comes along and it is like a vexing but beautiful mermaid… • Macbeth’s witches are ugly and rather nasty; it is never sunny.
- 16. What do the witches represent? • These witches are ugly and live in barren places (heath) amid storms. They may represent the loss of pagan religion, the new view of nature as something to be conquered and vanquished and controlled. • Can man really control nature? (Can Macbeth really understand the witches and rely on them and their words? Can he be sure they tell him the truth and can he be sure he interprets their words correctly?) • Can the new view of science really bring man complete control over nature?
- 17. 魔女は何を示（しめ）しているのだろう か。 魔女たちは醜く、嵐の中、不毛な荒野に住んでいる。魔 女たちは異教の宗教が失われたことを示しているのかも しれない。それは自然とは征服され、打ち負かされ、支 配されるもの、という新しい見方を示している。 人間は自然を本当に支配 （しはい）できるのだろうか？ （マクベスは魔女を本当に理解 （りかい）したのだろうか、 魔女の言葉は頼れる （たよれる）のだろうか。マクベス は魔女が本当のことを話していると思ったのか、魔女た ちの言葉を正しく解釈 （かいしゃく）したのだろうか。 新しい科学によって、人間は自然を完全 （かんぜん）に 支配できるようになったのだろうか。
- 18. “…the set of the sun…” • The end of the sun-based religions (except marginally) • No more beautiful fairies (for example in border ballads) after this (border ballads were created 1300-1400-1500, not later) • No more pagan gods (Colonial powers went to convert people in other lands.) • No more nature-based festivals (Puritans banned these festivals)
- 20. The witches are…. • The witches are the loss of nature-based religions • Nature-based religions put people serenely among a beautiful and complete universe. • The loss of nature-based religions meant that gods were no longer found nearby in trees, rivers, the sun, the ocean. • Nature became a blank, unalive, material space of strangeness. • Man is #1; nature is at the edge, at the margins, in blank spaces, ruins, deserts. • Macbeth constantly feels unsure about the witches’ messages: are they good or bad?
- 22. Nature is now bare and dark and hostile…. • In Macbeth, the witches are always outside (i.e. associated with nature) • The witches are never in the castle (the domain of Man (Macbeth is man)) • The witches are in the margins, at the edges, on the heath (a heath is a kind of landscape that is not fertile). • Gone is “friendly” nature with pagan gods nearby in trees, rivers, mountains. (No more pagan gods..) • The witches mention “filthy air”…possibly pollution of coal smoke (London’s air was very polluted by coal smoke at this time.)
- 24. Summary of the play • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkBp- 2fAbiU • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFtCYESo sDw
- 25. Understanding the plot of play is important • Please read a synopsis （あらすじ）of the plot in Japanese too. • https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9E%E3%8 2%AF%E3%83%99%E3%82%B9_%28%E3%82%B7 %E3%82%A7%E3%82%A4%E3%82%AF%E3%82% B9%E3%83%94%E3%82%A2%29 • Here is the next important scene with the witches. The witches sort of or seem to make a prediction (at least Macbeth thinks it is one) • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEidcxBTu0E
- 26. Importance of first lines in Shakespeare’s plays: THEME is introduced in the first lines(シェイクスピアのお芝居では、 最初の一行が重要：最初の一行がその劇のテーマを端的に示 している。） • Romeo & Juliet • Sampson: Gregory, upon my word, we’ll not carry coals (1.i.1) • (here first line explains sun vs. coal theme) • Macbeth • Duncan: What bloody man is that?(I.ii.1) • (here first line explains theme of suffering of people, always fighting, ambitious: “bloody man”)（この第一行は、常に争い、野心や欲望を持っ ている人々の苦難というテーマを説明している。「とん でもない奴」）
- 27. The witches show Macbeth some more (占いこと） • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0LrdOa 7uZQ • Act 4 scene 1 (famous “double double toil and trouble” scene) (1:24 into the video)
- 28. “The witches reveal their prophecies” (魔女は予言を明らかにする）: • Come, high or low; Thyself and office deftly show! 1625 • [Thunder. First Apparition: an armed Head] • Macbeth. Tell me, thou unknown power,— • First Witch. He knows thy thought: Hear his speech, but say thou nought. • First Apparition. Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! beware Macduff; 1630 Beware the thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough. • [Descends] • Macbeth. Whate'er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks; Thou hast harp'd my fear aright: but one word more,— 1635 • First Witch. He will not be commanded: here's another, More potent than the first. • [Thunder. Second Apparition: A bloody Child] • Second Apparition. Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! • Macbeth. Had I three ears, I'ld hear thee. 1640 • Second Apparition. Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn The power of man, for none of woman born Shall harm Macbeth. • [Descends] • Macbeth. Then live, Macduff: what need I fear of thee? 1645 But yet I'll make assurance double sure, And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live; That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, And sleep in spite of thunder. [Thunder. Third Apparition: a Child crowned, with a tree in his hand] 1650 What is this That rises like the issue of a king, And wears upon his baby-brow the round And top of sovereignty?
- 29. . Be lion-mettled, proud; and take no care Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are: Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him. • All. Listen, but speak not to't. 1655 • Third Apparition. Be lion-mettled, proud; and take no care Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are: Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill Shall come against him. [Descends] • Macbeth. That will never be Who can impress the forest, bid the tree Unfix his earth-bound root? Sweet bodements! good! Rebellion's head, rise never till the wood Of Birnam rise, and our high-placed Macbeth Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath To time and mortal custom. Yet my heart Throbs to know one thing: tell me, if your art Can tell so much: shall Banquo's issue ever Reign in this kingdom? • All. Seek to know no more.
- 30. Two images! (The answer is (D)!)
- 31. The riddle is: “Who can impress the forest, bid the tree Unfix his earth-bound root?” Macbeth says, “That will never be (the forest will never move)（森は決して動かない。） Who can impress the forest, bid the tree Unfix his earth-bound root?”(一体、誰が森を動 かせよう。誰が木々に大地に張った根を引き抜くよ うに命じられるのか？） Macbeth is proved wrong: one answer is “the army disguised with branches”. But another answer to the riddle is “the sun” since the sun has the power to make a forest grow. But Macbeth is out of touch with the sun!!
- 32. At the end of the play, the forest moves as the army comes (the riddle is solved), and ALSO Macbeth starts to talk ABOUT THE SUN (showing the riddle can also be solved with the word “sun” …) Macbeth: I pull in resolution, and begin To doubt the equivocation of the fiend That lies like truth: 'Fear not, till Birnam wood Do come to Dunsinane:' and now a wood Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out! If this which he avouches does appear, There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here. I ‘gin to be aweary of the sun, And wish the estate o' the world were now undone. Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack! At least we'll die with harness on our back. (V.v.41-48)
- 33. • At the end of the play, the forest moves as the army comes (the riddle is solved), and ALSO Macbeth starts to talk ABOUT THE SUN (showing the riddle can also be solved with the word “sun” …) • お芝居の終わりで、軍人たちがやってくると森は 動き出す。（謎は解けた。）そして、マクベスは太 陽について話し始める。（謎は「太陽」という言葉 でも解くことができるということを示唆している。） • I (be)’gin to be aweary of the sun(太陽に疲 れは始めている。）
- 34. The last prophecy shows that only Banquo’s descendants become kings, not Macbeth’s • Macbeth. I will be satisfied: deny me this, And an eternal curse fall on you! Let me know. Why sinks that cauldron? and what noise is this? 1675 • [Hautboys] • First Witch. Show! • Second Witch. Show! • Third Witch. Show! • All. Show his eyes, and grieve his heart; Come like shadows, so depart! [A show of Eight Kings, the last with a glass in] his hand; GHOST OF BANQUO following] • Macbeth. Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo: down! Thy crown does sear mine eye-balls. And thy hair, • Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first. A third is like the former. Filthy hags! Why do you show me this? A fourth! Start, eyes! What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom? Another yet! A seventh! I'll see no more: And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass Which shows me many more; and some I see That two-fold balls and treble scepters carry: Horrible sight! Now, I see, 'tis true; For the blood-bolter'd Banquo smiles upon me, And points at them for his. [Apparitions vanish] What, is this so?
- 35. [A show of Eight Kings, the last with a glass in] his hand; GHOST OF BANQUO following] Macbeth. Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo: down! Thy crown does sear mine eye-balls. And thy hair, Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first. WHO is BANQUO?? The “gold-bound brow” is the clue: not just kings, but the sun. (Ways of life organized around the sun.) The future “rulers” of the world are those who live with the sun. Macbeth (modern man) colonized (植民地化します) and took the land of the aboriginal (先住民) people. But when the coal is gone, then the sun will still remain. Colonization (植民地化) was/is related to economic growth (経済 成長)and coal. Shakespeare stands with the oppressed in opposing colonialism and the forced imposition of market economies and capitalism. Macbeth is an oppressor, yet partly he doesn’t like this role. Macbeth himself is shown to also be (somewhat) oppressed (by fossil fuels and by a culture that values them.)
- 36. • Man lives with the sun----Man lives with fossil fuels----Man lives with the sun • (But this process could take thousands of years) • “Fossil fuel Man” is Macbeth….his pattern is a sharp rise and a sharp fall. Macbeth doesn’t like to hear the prophecy that Banquo’s descendants will rule (that is, it is a coded prophecy that fossil- fuel-run economies won’t last.)
- 37. The Sun in Macbeth • The SUN is very very important in Macbeth!!! • “..ere set of sun” • “Oh never shall sun that morrow see!” (Lady Macbeth says it to mean “never” will King Duncan leave, since she and Macbeth plan to kill him) • “I ‘gin to be aweary of the sun”
- 39. 3 of Shakespeare’s most famous tragedies share an important pattern • Othello • King Lear • Macbeth
- 41. The “bad” voice says “be bad& use coal!”; the “good” voice says “be good! & use the sun”
- 43. Lady Macbeth (“bad voice”) convinces Macbeth (“good voice”) to kill King Duncan • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0_DYc8 q7Oc • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JLdA7Q ECiw
- 44. In all the 3 tragic cases, the “bad” voice is a voice for coal and the “good” voice is a voice for the sun • In all the 3 tragedies, the voice for coal wins (Iago in Othello, Goneril and Regan in King Lear and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth) • Coal is very convenient, people can just dig it up and don’t need to wait for summer sunshine. • But coal brings pollution (environmental crisis) and coal gets used up, causing later economic crisis.
- 46. Juliet was the sun, Bottom-the-Weaver was another sun figure and now King Duncan is the sun • A sun figure gets associated with the sun in terms of descriptive imagery • “All that impedes thee from the golden round”: (Lady Macbeth wants Macbeth to have it, but Duncan has it at that time, “golden round” is like the sun as well as a royal crown) • “Here lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with his golden blood; And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature “ (sun-like image)
- 48. Macbeth depicts • Ambition as Elizabethan people (and later, others) raced to compete and stop using the sun as they used coal • The crisis (it could last centuries) as the sun’s energy returns to importance as the fossil fuels are slowly used up. • Macbeth makes this historical era look so dramatic, but Shakespeare’s comedies such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream made it look more peaceful and easy. • Shakespeare was an artist and an artist needs inspiration to succeed… • The energy and beauty of the sun simply inspired him. • It is ART, not science, so this information is pretty vague as far as timing goes.
- 50. • シェイクスピアは芸術家であり、芸術家が成 功するにはインスピレーションが必要。 • 太陽のエネルギーと美しさはシェイクスピアに インスピレーションを与えた。 • それは芸術であるので、時が過ぎるに従って、 その内容は分からなくなっていく。
- 51. The energy of the sun is “nature” for us • Fossil fuels (produced by fossils of plants grown with the sun’s energy) are also part of “nature” • Macbeth uses the word “nature” 25 times!! King Lear 35, Othello 24 • If art can be attached to nature, it can share in the organic success of nature… • ….this is also the principle of “wa”（和）--- harmony with nature….(the human mouth unified with the plant (nature))…Shakespeare didn’t know the kanji “和” of course, but he understood the principal that nature is a huge cosmos and we are just one small part of it.
- 53. So the sun is many things for Shakespeare • The sun is first an artistic inspiration for Shakespeare • Also Shakespeare liked and supported Giordano Bruno’s heliocentric ideas • There was a Renaissance cult of the sun as well (no evidence that Shakespeare belonged or did not belong to it.) • So it is good not to focus too much on “fossil fuels” and to think instead of the beauty of the sun when you read Shakespeare….
- 55. Shakespeare was born in 1564 • It’s almost 500 years ago. • He can’t be called an expert on science and energy. • We can’t use his ideas to predict the future of energy. • He was simply inspired by the sun’s energy. • Above all, he was an artist. He was not a scientist!
- 57. Nevertheless, if you google “end of fossil fuels” you will get many results (I’m sure you know about it already) • “Fossil Fuels Just Lost the Race Against Renewables “---Bloomberg, April 2015 • “Fossil-fuel phase-out”—from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia • “Paris 2015: The Beginning of the End for Fossil Fuels?”—Global Wind Energy Council • Etc...(It seems to be decades away, not right away…)
- 58. “G7: End of fossil fuel era?” By Roger Harrabin BBC environment analyst June 9, 2015
- 59. Coal-related imagery for Lady Macbeth (thick, smoke, gall=stinking, dark) Lady Macbeth: The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements. Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood; Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry 'Hold, hold!' (I.v.37-54)
- 60. The most noticeable sun vs. coal-related imagery occurs right after Duncan’s murder Act II. Scene iv. Lines 1-9 Enter Ross with Old Man Old Man: Threescore and ten I can remember well: Within the volume of which time I have seen Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night Hath trifled former knowings. “I have lived a long time but this night was the worst I’ve ever seen”の意味 Ross: Ah, good father, Thou seest, the heavens, as troubled with man's act, Threaten his bloody stage: by the clock, 'tis day, And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp: Is't night's predominance, or the day's shame, That darkness does the face of earth entomb, When living light should kiss it? … 万象を照らす光が地の面に接吻する時になっても、暗闇が地の面を覆っている。
- 61. Other academics are also talking about the crisis of capitalism: The human prospect in the twenty-first century is not an altogether happy one. From the outset, our future can be specified at two levels of abstraction. The first is humanity-in-nature. Human engagement with the rest of nature has, over the past decade, reached the point “where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded.” The second is capitalism-in-nature. The unfolding crisis of neoliberal capitalism—now in between the signal crisis of 2008 and the unpredictable but inevitable onset of terminal crisis—suggests we may be seeing something very different from the familiar pattern. That pattern is one in which new technologies and new organizations of power and production emerged after great systemic crises, and resolved the older crises by putting nature to work in powerful new ways. The neoliberal revolution after the 1970s is only the most recent example. Today, however, it is increasingly difficult to get nature— including human nature—to yield its “free gifts” on the cheap. This indicates we may be experiencing not merely a transition from one phase of capitalism to another, but something more epochal: the breakdown of the strategies and relations that have sustained capital accumulation over the past five centuries. Jason W. Moore, “History as If Nature matters: Introduction to Capitalism in the Web of Life” (Verso, 2015)
- 62. The End