Themes


‘Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel, Which smoked with bloody execution, Like Valour’s minion carved out his passage Till he faced the slave;


Which ne’er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him, Till he unseamed him from the nave to the chops, And fixed his head upon our battlements.’


Duncan’s reaction to this gory account is to commend Macbeth’s actions: ‘O valiant cousin!worthy gentleman!’ This is a clear celebration of the traditional ideal of manhood. Similarly, Duncan points to the bleeding sergeant’s wounds as evidence of his honour on the battlefield: ‘So well thy words become thee as thy wounds; / They smack of honour both’ (Act 1, Sc 2). This connection between manhood and physical courage continues throughout the play. Lennox suggests that the battlefield is a place where young men may prove their masculinity; he declares that the English army is made up of ‘many unrough youths that even now / Protest their first of manhood’ (Act 5, Sc 2). Young Siward’s death towards the end of the play also illustrates how bravery in battle is seen


as a manly trait. When Siward hears of his son’s death, he is relieved to learn that Young Siward’s wounds were on the front of his body, confirming that he did not run from his enemy. Siward sees this as appropriately manly behaviour: ‘Why then, God’s soldier be he! Had I as many sons as I have hairs, I would not wish them to a fairer death’ (Act 5, Sc 9)


Ross views Young Siward’s death in a similar fashion, noting that ‘like a man he died’. Macbeth himself plays on this idea. After Duncan’s body is discovered he adopts the role of the


decisive alpha male. He instructs the other thanes to adopt a manly attitude (possibly arm themselves) to deal with the murder of Duncan: ‘Let’s briefly put on manly readiness, / And meet i’ the hall together’ (Act 2, Sc 3). However, some commentators have pointed out that Macbeth is merely playing a role here. Internally he is a much more sensitive individual, badly shaken by his crime in the previous scene. Lady Macbeth plays on the idea of manliness in her efforts to persuade Macbeth to kill Duncan. When Macbeth expresses his reservations about the crime she asks, ‘Art thou afeard / To be the same in thine own act and valour / As thou art in desire?’ (Act 1, Sc 7). She suggests her husband is not a real man if he expresses fear: ‘When you durst do it, then you were a man! / And, to be more than what you were, you would / Be so much more the man.’ Throughout the play, Shakespeare’s characters echo the idea that bravery is a manly trait. When


Macduff weeps at the news of his family’s death he is told by Malcolm to ‘Dispute it like a man’ (Act 4, Sc 3). Interestingly Macduff’s response is: ‘I shall do so; / But I must also feel it as a man’. His emotional behaviour is appropriate here but it does represent a deviation from the typical emotional composure associated with manliness. Shakespeare recognises that human beings are more complex than simple idealised representations of gender allow. However, Macduff does not deny the aggressive side of his character. In typical ‘manly’ fashion he vows to kill Macbeth himself: ‘O, I could play the woman with mine eyes And braggart with my tongue! But, gentle heavens, Cut short all intermission; front to front Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself; Within my sword’s length set him’ (Act 4, Sc 3)


Emotional composure is also seen as a traditional manly trait. In the Banquet Scene, Lady Macbeth points to Macbeth’s hysteria at the sight of Banquo’s ghost as unmanly. She asks him, ‘Are


167


Macbeth


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