288: Macbeth Inverted

Summary

Classical Stuff You Should Know

Episode 288: Macbeth Inverted

Date: December 2, 2025
Hosts: A.J. Hanenburg, Graeme Donaldson, Thomas Magbee

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on an interpretive lens for understanding Shakespeare’s Macbeth: the theme of inversion—how natural and social order is upended by Macbeth’s regicide. Instead of a straightforward play-by-play summary, the hosts guide listeners through the cosmological, ethical, and symbolic frameworks that underpin the play, focusing especially on the medieval worldview and its implications for reading Macbeth. The episode is especially useful for educators, students, and lovers of Shakespeare who wish to delve deeper into the play’s thematic architecture.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The "Macbeth" Superstition and Episode Origin

• The episode starts with jokes about the theater superstition of not saying "Macbeth" on stage, referencing historical mishaps and the play's "dark" reputation ([00:37]).
• The episode was chosen via Patreon poll, emphasizing an audience request to revisit Macbeth from a thematic rather than summary perspective ([01:53]).

2. Medieval Cosmology: The Foundation for Order

• A.J. gives a detailed overview of medieval cosmology and its geocentric, hierarchical model:
  • Earth is at the mutable, lowest point in a chain of being.
  • "The way that man is built—with reason, spirit, and appetite—is a reflection of the universe" ([05:22]).
  • Harmony in the spheres and society mirrors harmony in individuals ([06:55]).
  • Quote:

    “The big takeaway is that… the universe is full of light. The sun is constantly filling the whole thing with light…” – B (A.J.) [07:08]

3. The Principle of "As Above, So Below"

• Graeme connects cosmology to medieval understandings of authority—God rules creation as the king rules his people, reason rules the soul, parents rule the family, health governs the body, and harmony directs music ([07:44]-[11:48]).
• When Macbeth kills Duncan, he not only disrupts a political order ("king to people") but imprisons the entire cosmic and social arrangement.

4. Kingship and Sacrifice

• Ideal kingship is modeled on the self-sacrificing Christ rather than authoritarian might ([13:08]):
  • Quote:

    “The image that the medievals had… of the ultimate king was a man sacrificing himself for his people.” – C (Graeme) [13:08]

  • Duncan’s language is laden with agricultural metaphors—he “plants” his subjects so they may flourish ([14:13]).

5. Sin as Inversion of Good

• The murder of Duncan inverts all the "authority-subject" relationships ([16:00]-[19:00]):
  • Nature rebels ("falcon killed by an owl," "horses eat each other"—unnatural events) ([16:00]–[18:48]).
  • Graeme:

    “This inversion that happens with their murder of Duncan and their alliance with the witches is unnaturing, an unnatural thing, going against the natural order.” [16:54]

6. The Witches as Agents of Inversion

• The witches themselves embody the theme of inversion ("fair is foul and foul is fair" [19:02]), confusing gender, reality, and language:
  • “You have these characters that they're not men, they're not women… their language is presented in order to confuse.” – C (Graeme) [19:03]

7. Prophecy, Language, and Self-Destruction

• Witches’ prophecies are self-fulfilling and manipulative, achieved not by magical force but by exploiting ambiguity and Macbeth’s ambition ([19:59]-[21:20]).
• The play’s moral catastrophe begins with the subversion of truthful language.

8. Femininity, Masculinity, and Domestic Inversion

• Lady Macbeth’s iconic “unsex me here” speech (read aloud at [27:12–29:57]) is dissected:
  • She rejects compassion and hospitality—asks to be filled with “direst cruelty” from “the crown to the toe,” suggesting an upside-down self.
  • Her home becomes a place of murder rather than life ([31:44]), and hospitality is inverted into hostility.
  • Quote:

    “She wants, literally, her milk to be gall.” – C (Graeme) [30:00]

• Macbeth, for his part, relinquishes reasoned masculinity for impulsive, appetite-driven violence:
  • Quote:

    “The first things of my heart shall be the first things of my hand.” – Paraphrased by C (Graeme) [35:30]

9. Disintegration of Mind, Sleep, and Conscience

• Macbeth’s guilt manifests in insomnia; sleep is another motif of natural order, and its loss marks psychological and cosmic disorder:
  • “Methought I heard a voice cry, sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep—the innocent sleep… Chief nourisher in life's feast.” – Macbeth [40:09]
• Lady Macbeth’s fate is insomnia and madness—her sleepwalking exposes her inescapable guilt ([43:26]-[45:32]).
  • Quote:

    “Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles… infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.” – Doctor [45:37]

10. The Collapse of Social and Natural Order

• The fallout from regicide is catastrophic:
  • Nature, government, reason, and family all unravel.
  • “This is what sin does, right? It promises the crown, and you get it, but you lose everything else… hell is getting what you want.” – C (Graeme) [51:24]

11. Inversion and the Power of Language

• The witches' real magic is linguistic: they “win us with honest trifles to betray us in deepest consequence” ([56:49]).
• Using language to “obfuscate” and trap others is likened to a kind of witchcraft, or even an “antichrist” spirit ([53:50]–[56:45]).

12. Nuances in Kingship and Rebellion

• The hosts discuss ambiguous moments: Duncan is not portrayed as a perfect king; the play opens with rebellion against him, and his sons’ lack of open grief is noted ([61:09]).
• Several possible readings for Duncan’s overthrow are debated—was he a bad king, or merely the victim of ambition?

13. Final Reflections and Modern Lessons

• Medieval cosmology offers a lens not only for reading Macbeth but for considering modern disruptions of order:
  • The contemporary cultural push toward individualism and breaking norms has its virtues, but unchecked, can lead to “a lot of heartbreak” ([65:27]).
  • The play warns that attempting to “fight against ordered reality” may give you what you want—but not what you need.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Medieval Cosmology and Order

• "So there's this beautiful symmetry between God, the universe, the state and man." – B (A.J.) [06:55]

On Inversion in Macbeth

• “Sin is not an opposite of good. Sin is an inverting of good, a twisting of good.” – C (Graeme) [16:56]
• "This inversion… is everywhere. Nature, health, music, family, king, people… and it's embodied in these witches." – C (Graeme) [51:45]

On Sleep and Conscience

• "Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care... balm of hurt minds, chief nourisher in life’s feast." – Macbeth [40:31]

On the Power of Language

• “The power… is not that they, like, pour a potion on him… it’s that they plant in him… his base desires through misusing words.” – C (Graeme) [56:03]
• "When you are using language not in good faith… you are, like, aligning yourself with this inversion of the witches." – C (Graeme) [53:50]

On Rebellion and Kingship

• "If you were playing Malcolm, the son of Duncan, you need to make a decision. Because it's unclear… if you are sad your dad has died or if you're kind of like, now it's my turn." – C (Graeme) [61:09]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [03:52] — A.J. explains medieval cosmology.
• [07:44] — “As above, so below”: mapping cosmic order to political/familial order.
• [13:08] — Kingship as Christ-like sacrifice.
• [16:00] — Macbeth’s murder of Duncan as cosmic and natural inversion: omens in nature.
• [19:03] — The witches, gender confusion, and language inversion.
• [27:12–29:57] — Lady Macbeth’s “unsex me here” speech and its symbolism.
• [40:09] — Macbeth's insomnia and "murder of sleep."
• [45:37] — Lady Macbeth’s madness; “unnatural deeds breed unnatural troubles.”
• [51:45] — The theme of inversion as a key to the entire play.
• [56:45] — The witches and the subversive power of language.
• [61:09] — Ambiguity in Duncan’s kingship and Macbeth’s rebellion.

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Closing Thoughts

This episode emphasizes Macbeth’s enduring resonance as a fable of disorder, not just at the level of plot, but of language, psychology, nature, society, and the cosmos itself. The hosts’ blend of banter, direct Shakespearean citation, and classical knowledge makes high-level themes accessible and applicable—whether you’re teaching, studying, or simply re-reading Macbeth for pleasure.

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Recommended for:
Fans of Shakespeare, teachers, students, and anyone seeking deeper meanings in classic texts.

Transcript

[A]

Hello, and welcome to Classical Stuff youf Should Know, a podcast about an hour long.

[B]

Hey.

[A]

Oh. My name is Thomas Matting.

[C]

Wacka Wacka.

[A]

Joined as always by Wacka Wacka himself, Graham Donaldson.

[C]

Hi.

[B]

And wiggle Wiggle, Fart fart.

[A]

I forgot your name. Wiggle, wiggle Fart fart. I knew we've called you that before. And Wiggle Wiggle. Fart Fart himself, AJ Hannenberger.

[C]

It was Fart Fart wiggle wiggle. But that's fine.

[B]

Are you sure?

[A]

The wiggle comes before the fart, sir.

[C]

All right.

[A]

We are here to get things moving in there. We're here to study a little bit of Shakespeare. So we have found ourselves a theater. We are all sitting on stage right now, and that is the one place I want to be while we discuss Macbeth. We're supposed to say that over and over in the theater?

[B]

I was gonna say, that's not something you should ever say in a theater. Right.

[C]

Okay. Maybe we should do a whole other episode on the history of that. Because people. I've always grown up saying, like, you don't say Macbeth in theater. But what is it? What does it. Where did it come from? Is that a thing?

[A]

It's your episode, man.

[C]

Okay, I wasn't planning on talking about that. Okay, but we are talking about that.

[B]

I'm pretty sure it caused the potato famine.

[A]

The potato, Jeez. It's traced back to the play's original 1606 performance, with tales of the actor playing Lady Macbeth dying on opening night.

[B]

Whoa.

[A]

Other supposed mishaps include real daggers being used for props, actors for falling off stages, and mysterious deaths or accidents during production.

[C]

It's a pretty dark play, so it doesn't surprise me if some spooky things happen around it.

[B]

I love Macbeth.

[C]

You love Macbeth. So we're talking about Macbeth. This is a Patreon requested episode. I said, hey, I've got a couple of episodes. Ideas that I could do. And I gave a list of two.

[B]

It's a short list.

[A]

And they voted on which one they wanted.

[C]

I'm sure I could have come up with more, but it was unanimously. Everybody wanted Macbeth, and they poo pooed the other one. No, it's not true. We'll just have to.

[A]

You're gonna do the other one later, right?

[C]

One later. Okay. But we're gonna be talking about Macbeth and not just, like. We're not just gonna run through the play. I'm pretty sure we've done an episode on Macbeth a long time ago, so we're Going to talk a little bit about like sort of one of the, one of the big themes in the play or also how you can, if you're teaching Macbeth or if you're reading it, how you can kind of take a lot of the lines or a lot of kind of these, what seem like these desperate things, these, these like sort of one off little phrases, but are actually working together to create kind of like an interpretive lens to understand what's happening on the play kind of symbolically or maybe thematically, if that makes any sense. We talked about doing this kind of thing when we. I did an episode on Romeo and Juliet and how some of the big metaphors about plants and poison and, and medicine is kind of like this, this big interpretive lens that you can take to the play itself, that Romeo and Juliet are like these ingredients to a medicine that when combined, heal the families but destroy the ingredients. You know, this kind of stuff. And there's something similar that's happening in Macbeth in regards to medieval cosmology, which is where all good podcasts should start.

[A]

I feel like we haven't done that in years, right?

[C]

Talking about medieval cosmology, wasn't I going.

[B]

To do a Spheres, like a new version of my old. Old.

[A]

I think it's one of the first 10 episodes we did.

[B]

Probably it was like 20 minutes long.

[C]

Then let's do a recap. So, A.J. if you were, if someone was saying like, what is medieval cosmology? Because I know you teach it to your ninth graders, like, what is it? In a nutshell, the cosmology, the way the system of thought that the people of the Middle Ages used to like, understand nature and the cosmos and the heavens and the spheres. And then that translated to understanding themselves and government and all that stuff.

[B]

Man, that's like a whole. I do a whole, like hour and a half long lecture for my students on this, but I'll give you the short version, so please. It's geocentric, so Earth in the middle. But that wasn't. It wasn't that they were like stupid. It was that they. They did some observations and tried to do the best they could. And it seemed like Earth was in the center. Around the Earth are several concentric big crystal spheres, big giant crystal balls. And in each of those is lodged one of the planetary things. So the one just outside of the Earth is a sphere of fire, I think, and then the moon, and then is it Mercury, Venus, and then the sun. So the sun is its own sphere. Like they thought it was a planet. Just a really Bright one. It goes all the way out until the outermost sphere called the prima mobile. It's where we see the stars and then beyond that is where pure logic lives. That's the realm of God. It's the realm of timelessness, of life entire and logos. The like functioning of math was basically like when you learned it, you were learning the mind of God. So the more you learned math, the more you learned about how God worked and functioned. So when they say in the beginning was the word Logos and the word was with God Logos, they're basically saying Jesus is the foundational functioning principle of the universe. In each of those areas there are beings that are. That live in those spaces. So each of the planets has its own little intelligence that runs the planet. I wouldn't say necessarily a soul, but it's like a thing. Its job is to move the planet. It tries to get as close to God as it can. And the most perfect movement it can imitate is like circular motion. Then there are angels that live in those arenas. And there are different like levels and hierarchies of angels. Some of them are concerned with us, only the bottom third or so. And then the two top thirds are concerned with God. Some are really close and are like on fire. When they're praising comes all the way down to our personal genius who is a spirit that is attendant to us. And then in the air you have these things called daemons. They're. They're things that live in the air. And then on the earth you have, you know, creatures, humans. And then you also have an extra species called the longevity or fairies, if you want to call them fairies. There are dark fairies which are bad and steal your kids. It's never very clear what they are. They could be the dead or special class of the dead, or another species entirely. You also have the high fairies, which are regal and usually meet you for amorous adventures. And then you have the low wood fairies who are like love to dance and generally avoid people if they can. They're basically the. The big. So you have the spheres. And maybe the big takeaway is that there are like the way that man is built with reason, spirit and appetite is a reflection of the universe which. Which is like at the bottom where we are was not. It's a big mistake to think that we put ourselves in the middle because we thought we were the most awesome and most important. Generally the view was that we are where everything that is mutable lives we fall apart. We are not eternal. We're like the worst part. We're all, you know, what's kind of left over.

[C]

We change, we die, we change. This is where Paul is as well.

[B]

Exactly. It's not that we're like the absolute best. And then you have the enforcers, the spirit, that's the angels, and then you have God. So there's like reason, which is like reason. And then that also reflects the Godhead. So there's this beautiful symmetry between God, the universe, the state and man. And then they also assumed. And this is actually true, this is one piece that I think we've lost is that the universe is full of light. So the sun is constantly filling the whole thing with light. We just are in shadow at nighttime. That's actually true of the universe. Yeah. It looks like a black background, but we can see stars. And that we can see them means that basically the whole universe is just chock full of light everywhere. Which is kind of changes my feel of the universe. Instead of thinking of a dark expanse, it's a brightly lit.

[C]

So this is good. So this is. Yes.

[B]

Is that enough?

[C]

That's perfect. And if there's sort of one way to sort of crystallize that. The system of interpretation of the universe that the mind of the Middle Ages made up was one that was trying to take all of the components together and fit it into an understanding that was true for them as, as human beings, which was true for the universe. So it's a phrase that's gotten co. Opted in sort of like modern woo woo, a New age stuff. But the idea of like as above, so below, which is. You hear that a lot in like alchemy. Yeah, New Age wackiness. But that was very much true of the Middle Ages. Like the way that the universe was ordered was the way that man was ordered. God at the head, he's got his angels who carry out his commands and then he's got the. The world of the appetites. And that was true. So like God was, was the creator and, and his creation, he had authority over. And this idea that there was. There was this relationship of authority, a relationship of. Of order is throughout Macbeth. Because what Macbeth does when he kills Duncan is that he is inverting the, the, the way that the world is supposed to be. And it has all of these effects on all of. Of human order. So obviously the big one is that God is the authority over all that he's created. And this mimics itself. Mimics itself in a bunch of different relationships of authority and, and I guess subjects one being sort of like nature and creatures is another one of these pairings, nature is kind of this governing authority. It has its rules, it has its way of being. And then we as creatures are sort of subjects to, almost to mother Nature. So the animals, horses, birds, the plants, they are the subjects of their queen, which would be nature herself. That's, that's one of these, these pairings. Another pairing would be reason to the soul. So like reason is like the God of the soul. We use our reason to govern our soul. This is an old platonic idea. Health is like the thing that governs our bodies. So we have, there is this, the principle of human health. Harmony is the governor of music. And then you also have that fathers govern the family. And how this plays itself out in government is that the king is supposed to govern his people and his people are subject to the king. And so when you have an ordained king like Duncan, who has been poured over with this sort of holy oil, it's not just that it's kind of helpful to have somebody in charge. It's that he is almost. His life is almost like a metaphor of the universe. His ruling of the kingdom is kind of like God ruling over everything. It's like health ruling over the body. It's like reason ruling over the soul. It's like a father ruling over the family. It's like nature ruling over creature, creation, everything in the, in the heart or everything in the system of understanding. Maybe the worldview of the Middle Ages was this relationship between authority and subject and not in a heavy handed, kind of like exploitative way. Whereas we as modern people tend to think of authority as primarily exploitative and subjects as mainly like the exploited. In the Middle Ages it was sort of this harmonious back and forth. Now, of course, in practice there was terrible kings and there was revolutions, but the system, the ideal, this sort of not so much a classical ideal, but the sort of medieval ideal was one that the order of everything, if everything, the kingdom would be healthy if things were in order and if things were running the way that they ought to run.

[B]

Okay, and just to speak in like defense of kings, not that I want a king, but a king in his ideal was somebody that cares for the people and takes risks and like risks that the people don't want to take. And most of antiquity knew that being a king was a really hard job and a lot of people didn't want it. And so the king, like a good king, was something to be cherished. Now, it didn't always work out that way. Kings were often terrible, but good kings were something that the people really loved and yearned for. And when it was working as it should, the king cared for and rewarded his subjects, and the subjects, in turn, serve their king well. Right, so it's not. It's like a relationship that could be really good.

[C]

Right? Yes. And so there's a scene where Duncan even talks about, like, him dispensing his. His goodies to the people as a. As a reflection of this. I'll see if I can find that. Because I didn't pull.

[B]

It's right at the beginning, right?

[C]

Yeah, it's right after the battle, but.

[B]

I can find it if you want.

[C]

And those. And also the. The image that they had of the king, if the. If in the Christian west, if they think of, like, what is the image that we have of what the good king is and what is the most important coronation that has ever happened? Is what. What's the most important coronation maybe that's ever happened? Yeah. Who has been raised up to be our king and who is crowned for our. For us?

[A]

Christ.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. So, like, the image that the medievals had of, like, the ultimate king was a man sacrificing himself for his people was a man dying for his people. So even the image that the mediev had the king wasn't like Osiris the Great who's just going to stomp on everybody, or an Alexander the Great who's going to run over the earth, or a Caesar. It was a. A person who was going to give up and pour himself out for his people. So now, did that ever. Did that always happen? Of course not. But at least the ideal was of this sort of sacrificial king. All right, let's see where is. I'm just trying to see.

[B]

So here's a. Here's a part where Duncan is, like, rewarding Macbeth. So one guy turned traitor. So he says, go and pronounce his death, and with his former title, greet Macbeth. So Duncan is just greeting Macbeth, and he says, welcome hither. I have begun to plant thee and will labor to make thee full growing noble Banquo, thou hast no less deserved, nor must be known no less to have done. So let me enfold thee and hold thee to my heart.

[C]

And then Bengal says, there, if I grow, the harvest is your own. So you got this idea that, like, the king's job is to take care of his subjects and give them the things that they need so that they can flourish. And so not only do we have this vision of the king that is supposed to bring his. Bring life and flourishing to his people. It's also playing into this metaphor that nature does this for us. Nature takes care of us and. And brings forth, like the fruits and the flourishing of all this. The reason why I'm laboring this point and bringing. Bring this all up is that if you go and read through Macbeth and you have those pairs in your mind, nature to the creation, father to family, health to body, reason to soul, and king to people, you see that the. That the treason and. And the. And the murder that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth crave ends up inverting and destroying all of those. All of those relationships. And they get expressed sort of symbolically through it. So the example. Maybe the most. The. The. One of the. The example that I. That tipped me on to this as I was reading this is that when Duncan gets killed, when Macbeth kills Duncan, there's a couple of characters who are. Who are talking about what happened that night. So you had. Duncan gets murdered. And we'll look at the scene where Duncan's murdered in a second. But you have these two characters who are talking about that there was a crazy storm that happened the night before. And so there. So when Duncan is murdered, nature seems to go into a revolt itself. And it gets sort of inverted. The old man says that three score and 10. I can remember well within the volume of which time I have seen hours dreadful and things strange. But this sword knight hath trifled former knowings. And Ross, the guy he's talking to, is like, yeah, man, it was wild last night. I've never seen nature be so destructive in her force. And the man says, tis unnatural. That's probably a great word for Macbeth. This inversion that happens with their murder of Duncan and their alliance with the witches is un. Unnaturing, an unnatural thing going against the natural order. Even like the deed that's done on Tuesday last. A falcon towering in her pride of place was by a mousing owl hawked at and killed. So this guy's like, I saw this, like, tiny bird eat a falcon. And Ross says, and Duncan's horses, a thing most strange and certain, beauteous and swift. And the minions of their race turned wild in nature, broke their stalls, flung out, contending against obedience as they would make war with mankind. And the old man says, tis said they eat each other. So Duncan's noble horses sort of go mad and break out of their stalls and hate human beings. And they ended up eating each other, these horses. You know, I can just. I always. For whatever reason, when I remember reading this as a kid, I had this image in my mind of like the red muzzle of a horse, like eating another horse. And that was so horrifying. It's so unnatural. It's such an inversion of the way that we think of things. And this is what the murder of Duncan was like. And so the Macbeth takes on. The play takes on a view, or it is a. A good example of the Christian understanding of sin, that sin is not an opposite of good. Sin is an inverting of good, a twisting of good, Taking that which is natural, taking that which is orderly, taking that which is the way things ought to be and just slightly changing them, just twisting them a little bit, inverting them, making them not be, adding a little note of discord to a harmony, adding a little bit of a twisting to the story. Or to take what the witches say as soon as they. In the very first scene when they're introduced, fair is foul and foul is fair. Right. That famous phrase that this is, what this is, that element that is going to exist into our harmonious whole is, we're going to take that which is fair, we're going to make it a little foul, we're going to take that which is foul, and we're going to promote that thing as fair. And. And the witches really kind of are these agents of inversion. Even when Banquo sees the witches for the first time. Agent, do you remember what he says about them when he sees the witches?

[B]

He doesn't know if they're man or woman.

[C]

Yeah. He's like, you have a.

[B]

You appear to be woman, but your beard would hint that you are not.

[C]

Exactly. So you even have these characters that they're not men, they're not women. They are. They are. Their appearance is such as to confuse the world into this. And even their language is. Is presented in order to confuse. So the witches invert language. They take. They. They flatter Macbeth and they give. They say, like, hail, Thane of Glamis. Hail, Thane of Cawdor, and hail, King hereafter. And Macbeth is already Thane of Glamis. And then he becomes Thane of Cawdor, and he's like, well, I must become king. Like, they sort of give him this prophecy. And maybe that's what I want to talk about in the. In between about this idea of prophecy. Like, when. When we're given prophecies, like, does that run away?

[A]

Right?

[C]

Huh?

[A]

Run away?

[C]

No, I was gonna say more like when the oracles give us a prophecy, does it end up becoming fulfilled? Because we now believe it as prophecy, and we like Subconsciously work to make it happen. We can talk about that in between, because that's not really what we're talking about in this episode, but how prophecies kind of work. But these witches come in and they are these agents of inversion. And so they say, fair is foul, and foul is fair. They're not really women. They're not really men. They're not really physical or corporeal. We don't know, because they kind of vanish and they're. And they are clearly in league with darkness. They're clearly in league with evil. Hecate is the. They sing songs to Hecate, the queen, the head witch. And you've kind of got this element that is coming in to. To sort of unseat nature, to sort of like. To sort of break up the natural thing. And. And it's in the murder that Macbeth does. So let's see this. If you. If you go into reading this play with having eyes open for that. For the disruption of natural things, you'll see it everywhere. Even a little. Little line. So, like when. Let's see. When Macbeth kills Duncan, when. Sorry, when Malcolm, who has seen the dead body of Duncan. So Malcolm is one of the characters who is. He's like the noble. He ends up killing Macbeth at the end. He is the true believer. He is the. The good. He's like the anti. Macbeth. He is like the. The virtuous man. When he sees the. But the dead body of Duncan, he brings into this theme. So he says, all right. McDuff says, oh, McDuff has seen the dead body of Duncan. He says, oh, horror, horror, horror. And he comes in, he says, confusion now hath made his masterpiece. Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope the lord's anointed temple and stole thence the life of the building. And everyone's like, what are you talking about? And this idea that the king is. The king is like the lord's anointed temple. And. And the killing of the king is like the sacrilege of the temple. And now all the holy relics have been ransacked, and now we are going to have pestilence and death because we have. You know, we've. We've done this impious thing just as if you destroyed a temple, you are now going to have. The gods are going to bring curses or bring plagues or. Or all sorts of things. The killing of the king is now going to bring these terrible things. Macbeth kind of echoes this when he pretends to be upset about the death of. Of Duncan. He says, this Here lay Duncan, his silver skin laced with his golden blood, and his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature for ruins. Wasteful entrance. Again, this, like, phrase that has to do with the killing of the king is like somebody coming. And just like tearing into a landscape, just making a breach into plants or into a natural scene. And when you do that, when you disturb the soil or when you rip the bark of plants, you bring in the capacity for disease and pestilence. Right? And so the killing of Duncan has kind of is bringing about this capacity for the death of nature or for disease to come in. And what has. And the whole thing that has sparked this has been Macbeth's sin, Macbeth's pride, Macbeth's ambition to be king himself.

[B]

Anyway, so you want to find another one. So here's one where Lady Macduff's husband has just run off, and she says, wisdom, to leave his wife, to leave his babes, his mansion, his titles, in a place from whence himself does fly. He loves us not. And here's the important bit. He wants the natural touch. For the poor wren, the most diminutive of birds, will fight her young ones in her nest against the owl, against the owl. All is fear and nothing is love as little as the wisdom where the flight so runs against all reason. So basically, he is left, and that is something against nature. And doesn't Duncan show up? And when he shows up, he's like, all nature announces my entrance. Something like that.

[C]

It's everywhere. Yes. Now, Lady McDuff, she. The thing is, now this is coming to the sort of. The second layer of. Of the play that I want to talk about a little bit later is that people are also wrong, right? Like, so Lady McDuff is saying this, and she's saying, like, oh, man, my husband. I can't believe he abandoned us. And she says, it's unnatural. A bird, even a little, even a wren, the tiniest of birds, stays in the nests to fight off people going after his chicks. And the. The reality is that McDuff has actually gone off to find an army to bring back to protect Scotland. Now, of course, when he's gone, he doesn't take into account how evil Macbeth is, because Macbeth does come and kill Lady McDuff and her chicks. And so, in that sense, Lady McDuff is right. McDuff didn't stay behind to protect her. He's gone off. And they are open up to the. To the destruction of the tyrant. And so they are killed. But. But her. But everyone, like, she sort of reads the situation like this and her son. And I think it's either Ross or Angus say to her, like, you're wrong, lady. Like, McDuff's gone off. He's actually a noble guy. He's gone off to do this thing. She's like, doesn't seem so noble to me. He's abandoned me. And then she ends up getting killed.

[A]

So.

[C]

The reading of people is also another sort of theme in this play, which we can come back to, because Duncan can't really read people very well either. So let's see what other inversions that we have in here. Lady Macbeth is probably another great one. You have the inversion in the character of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, you have great examples of taking the masculine and taking the feminine and inverting them into. Into their, like, dark and evil manifestations. Macbeth. So I don't. I don't. Let's see. So Lady Macbeth, when we were first introduced to her, she's got this big, long speech where she basically asks all of hell to take away her femininity so that she can be more ambitious. She asks all of the minions of darkness to. To take away all of the graces of her feminine. Her feminine ways so that she can become more wicked.

[B]

It's one of my favorite speeches in the whole play.

[C]

I'll read it. So let's see. So she gets a note from her husband saying that the witches told me that I'm going to be king. And the first Atlanta, Macbeth says, is, my husband doesn't have what it takes to be king. He's too nice. Which is really funny because the whole beginning of the play is Macbeth them talking about how bloodthirsty Macbeth has been in battle, cutting dudes in half with his sword. When you see Macbeth for the first time, he's probably covered head to toe in like bloody gore. And then Lady Macbeth says that he's too kind. He's. He's too nice. But this is our introduction to Lady Macbeth. I'll read it. Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be what thou art promised. Yet I do fear thy nature. It is too fill of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it. What thou wouldest highly, thou wouldest holily, wouldst not play fault, and yet wouldst wrongly win. Thou' st have great calamus. That which cries thus, thou must do if thou have it, and that which rather thou doest fear to do, then wish this should Be undone, hi thee hither that I may pour my spirits in thine ear and chastise with the valor of my tongue all that impedes thee from the golden round which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem to have the crown withal. And then someone comes in and says, like, hey, the king is on his way. And then he exits. And then Lady Macbeth says, 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 women'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 dunmost 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.

[B]

Such a good speech, man. Shakespeare went hard on that one.

[C]

In that speech, think of if you're just reading that speech with. With your antenna up for, like, inversion of nature. It's almost in every line. Yeah, she wants to be on sext. She wants her. Her milk of human kindness to be gone. She wants, literally, her milk to be gall. She wants her blood to be thick. Make thick my blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse. So if there's. If there's something natural in the human person to feel pity, I want to be unnatural, so I no longer feel that pity. She even says, and this is, I think, if you were skeptical about the idea of inversion, think about this. Fill me from the crown to the toe top full of dire cruelty. So fill me from the crown to the toe of dire's cruelty. Well, if you're filling from the crown to the toe, like, doesn't that sound like she's upside down? Like, if you're being filled from the crown to the toe. Maybe I'm wrong, but I even think that when she's saying that, she's almost, like, thinking of herself being inverted, right? Being turned upside down and filled from the crown to her toe. Anyway, maybe not, but feel me from the crown to the toe top full of dire's cruelty. So she has got this big, long speech where she's basically asking the minions of hell to take away her femininity so that she cannot have any Kind of mercy and be totally filled with cruelty.

[B]

So she can take this in an unholy way, because Macbeth isn't willing to.

[C]

Yes. And where is it gonna happen? It's going to happen in her home. It's going to happen in the place where she is the matron, the mistress of.

[B]

And she should be hospitable.

[C]

She should be hospital. But her home is gonna be a place of death. She should be this place where when you come, you are welcomed and you are safe, but you are now going to be murdered in your bed.

[B]

So the really funny thing to me is that it seems like, did Duncan have a kid or was.

[C]

Duncan has two boys.

[B]

He has two boys. So there is. There are people that are, like, in the running for kingship. Okay, that makes sense. I was gonna say it seems like Macbeth would have gotten some sort of reward near there, but no.

[C]

So you've got Malcolm and Donald Bain, who they basically, when the murder happens, are like, we got to get out of here. And they flee now. So if you. So in the. If we want to. If we think about masculinity and femininity in an archetypal way, like, what is that? When we mean that which is feminine, the capacity for culture, the. The creation of life, the taking of, like, the baser materials and elevating them into higher materials. Like, this is. This is sort of the archetypal feminine. We've talked about this on. On episodes on Paradise Lost before. That kind of. In. In this, the Christian conception of. Of femaleness, of femininity is. Is that. In Eve, it is that in Mary, it is that which is sort of ordering of things. It is. It is the creation of home. It is the creation of a place where life can happen both in the womb and also in the community. If masculinity is. Is the sort of the outward action, if. If the masculine is about, like, wonder and reason and exploring and expanding the borders of Eden, Eve is all about taking those expanded borders and elevating them into a. Into a place of culture, taking and turning the world into a home, turning four walls into a hearth. Right? Like, this is the combining of male and female together. Is this. Is this element of elevating and life giving. This is kind of this great vision of the Christian marriage that has existed in Western literature. Are we tracking. And if people are like, what are you talking about? We go into a lot more detail on previous episodes on this kind of thing. What I wanted to get at in this episode is that both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, by aligning Themselves with the forces of darkness to sort of satiate their own ambitions, end up having to invert those things themselves. Lady Macbeth no longer wants to be a place of. Of. Of life. And her home is no longer a place of welcoming in a king and. And welcoming in people and serving them and. And being a place of feasting and merriment and warmth in a cold, cruel world. It ends up being the place of where you're going to be murdered in your. Butchered in your sleep, and she's not going to have any sort of compassion for it. It's very funny. Later on, she pretends to faint so that she can, like, cast suspicion away from Macbeth. And. And I think one of the characters is like, oh, Lady Macbeth. Oh, you don't want to hear what we're talking about. This is no place for a lady. Which is very funny because she, like, was the one that basically, like, egged her husband on to doing this. Like, Lady Macbeth is. No, no, no, dainty lady. So you have this sort of, like, Lady Macbeth inverts herself so that her very femininity becomes some sort of dark version of it. This sort of, like, devouring woman who wants to sort of kill and destroy. And then Macbeth himself ends up being a version of this later on in the play. He is filled with anxiety and he is filled with nervousness he can no longer sleep with, which is his own inversion, which we'll talk about in a second. And he goes back to the witches and they give him more prophecies to mess with his head. And these are the famous ones of that Burnham Wood. You're gonna be cool until the. Until Burnham Wood comes to your castle. No one born of a woman is ever going to kill you. And you should get. You should beware, McDuff. And when Macbeth hears these prophecies, he says that, like, you know, this is. He no longer has to worry. But he's got. Let's see if we can find it. He has this. This speech where he says that he no longer is going to care about measured action. And he says, the first slings of my head are the first things of my heart shall be the first things of my hand, or something like that, where he says, as soon as I feel something, I'm now going to go and do it. I am now no longer going to have, like, measured, rational discourse of my actions. Whatever I feel, I'm going to lash out and do, no matter how violent. And this is sort of the inversion of the masculine in Macbeth. No longer is Macbeth. He is he is not going to be someone who is going to be reasoned and measured in his violence. One of the good things about masculinity is that it can be forceful and violent for good and. And for justice. But now Macbeth is saying, like, I am no longer going to be reasoned and measured in my violence. I'm no longer going to be. My soul is now no longer going to be ruled by my reason. It is going to be ruled by my appetites, and it is going to be ruled by my inclinations, by my instinct. The first thing I think is going to be the first thing that I do. And this is sort of Macbeth giving himself over to this inversion. Whereas Lady Macbeth is saying, like, I'm going to turn my home into a place of death. Macbeth is now saying, I'm going to turn my ability to be powerful, to have force no longer for good, I'm going to use it now for evil, or I'm going to use it for my own desires. And then it's at this point that Macbeth is now just like the bloodthirsty, cruel tyrant. There is no. There's no room for him to debate. Earlier in the play, he's like, should I do this? I shouldn't do this. I know it's wrong, but I really want to be king. And gosh darn it, those witches told me I should be and I should listen to them. And he kind of has almost like a Hamlet nature to him, where he's kind of going back and forth over this, but by the end of the play, he is just.

[B]

He's fully corrupt.

[C]

He is fully corrupted. Bloodthirsty madman who thinks nothing of dressing down a person. He basically is like the. The third world tyrant who, like, when the person comes and says, your wife is sick, he's like, you cure her, I'll kill you. Right? Like, he. He. He gets full. Sort of turns into this full tyrant. So, yeah, throughout the course of the play, you get this inversion of. Of Macbeth as masculine. This inversion of Lady Macbeth is feminine. You get the destruction of nature. Horses are eating each other, birds that are. That are eating each other, that shouldn't be eating each other. And then you get a couple of other inversions that happen. The famous thing that happens to Macbeth is that when he kills Duncan, he wakes up the guards who are drunk and frightens them because he's covered in blood. And they see him, and they think they're seeing a ghost, but they're so drunk, they don't really know what's going on. And they whisper they say the Lord's prayer to. And they to go back to sleep. And they both say amen. And Macbeth realizes that he himself can no longer say amen. And the amen sticks in his throat. And then Macbeth is. Is convinced that he has heard that he heard a voice saying that he is never going to sleep again. So here we go. So this is what Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are having this conversation. And after the murder has happened, Macbeth said. One cried, God bless us and amen the other. As they had seen me with these hangman's hands listening to their fear, I could not say amen when they did say God bless us. Elena McBeth says, Consider it not so deeply, Macbeth. But wherefore could I not pronounce amen? I had most need of blessing, and amen stuck in my throat. And Lanny. Macbeth said, these deeds must not be thought after these ways. So it will make us mad. Which is some fun foreshadowing.

[B]

Quit thinking about it. It's gonna drive you crazy.

[C]

It's gonna drive you crazy. Macbeth says, methought I heard a voice cry, sleep no more. Macbeth does murder sleep. The innocent sleep. Sleep that knits up the raveled sleeve of care. The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast. Lady Macbeth says, what do you mean? Still it cried, sleep no more to all the house. Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more. Liam, Macbeth is like, stop being such a big giant baby now, Macbeth. So here's another thing that gets inverted. Macbeth kills Duncan. And Macbeth now has his guilty conscience is going to keep him from sleep. And this happens to the rest of the play. Macbeth no longer gets to sleep. He murders Duncan, but he now no longer gets to sleep. And he talks about the good thing that sleep is. Sleep is a natural thing. When we can't sleep, something unnatural has happened to us, right? It is not.

[A]

It is.

[C]

It is a. You know, it is a bad thing when if someone doesn't sleep, like, you'll die if you don't sleep, right? If you don't sleep and you have insomnia, you will go crazy. You will get. Take leave of your senses. Macbeth has those wonderful lines of what sleep is. It knits up the raveled sleeve of care. I'm actually wearing a shirt that has a big hole in the arm. I could have my sleeve of hair being. Being knit up the death of each day's life. Sore labor's bath. Right. Like, after a good day of doing, like, good work in the world, and you go to bed, and you're a little bit sore, and you lie in your bed, you're like, oh, this is so nice. Macbeth doesn't get to have that anymore. Yeah.

[B]

I remember when our. Our walk in england this summer, like, sleeping was.

[C]

Was glorious, fabulous. You come home, you take off your shoes, you have a shower, you lay in the hotel bed and, like, sore labor's bath.

[B]

It was awesome.

[C]

It was wonderful.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

By macbeth giving in to his ambition. He no longer has this. His relationship to this natural thing, his relationship to nature. So think of maybe sleep is bestowed to us by nature herself As a thing to cure us, to knit us back up after a day. Nature bestows wonderful sleep on us. Nature's great nature's second course is what it was called, Chief nourisher in life's feast. And now macbeth is cut off from that because he's gone off, and he's decided to align himself with the forces of the witches. He is now no longer going to be able to partake in some of the great things, like sleep. So there's another broken, Another inverted thing. Macbeth is now someone who is going to be awake when everybody else is asleep. He is going to be sort of. His mind is going to be overrun by cares when all the innocent get to sleep. Lady macbeth also has another fate befall her. What's. Who remembers? What's the famous fate that befalls lady macbeth?

[B]

Oh, she go bananas.

[C]

She does.

[B]

She sleepwalks.

[C]

So at the beginning of the book, when the murder has done, lady macbeth says, don't think about it. Just stop thinking about it. Just put it from your mind. If you keep thinking about it, it's going to make you go crazy. Later on, macbeth is going to see a ghost of banquo, and he is going to be very. He's going to make his guests feel real weird because he's going to be shouting out all sorts of things like, get away from me, you bloody thing. And I thought you were dead. I thought I did away with you. And lady mcbaskin be like, hahaha. He does this from time to time. Yeah, he. He. This was a malady he's had since he was a kid. Don't think about it. Just ignore it. Let's just keep eating. Let's just put it from our mind. Just move forward. And all the guests are like, maybe we should leave. And they actually do leave. And lady macbeth Is furious.

[B]

She's like the dory of the just keep swimming.

[C]

Now, this is lady Macbeth. Sort of like her way of dealing with it is sort of this. This just move forward. She wants to master. She wants to have dominion over her guilty conscience. But you can drive nature out with the pitchfork, but she keeps coming back. Isn't that the proverb?

[A]

That is.

[C]

So how does it. And how does it come back with lady Macbeth? Well, she. It goes into her mind, right? Like she is. She goes. She goes mad. She can no longer sleep. And she sleeps, walk, she sleepwalks. So when. When the doctor and the gentlewoman are discussing this, the doctor comes in. He's like, so you've seen her walking around? The gentleman's like, yeah. And she says the most terrible things. And. And the doctor says, a great perturbation in nature to receive at once the benefit of sleep and do the effects of watching in this slumbery agitation Besides her waking and other actual performances, what at any other times have you heard her say? And the gentle woman says, I'm not telling you what she says because it's so terrible. And then lady Macbeth comes in. She says things like, who would have known that the old man was so full of blood?

[B]

And how do you have so much blood in there?

[C]

And the doctor says, unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles. Infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine than the physician. God. God forgive us all. Look after her. Remove her from the means of all annoyance. So make sure she's not near sharp objects.

[A]

Who says that?

[C]

The doctor.

[B]

Oh, wow, that doctor knows his stuff.

[C]

The doctor does know his stuff. And then later on, Macbeth says, when the doctor says, your wife is sick, and McBe says, Cure her of that. Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased? Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raise out the written troubles of the brain, and with some sweet, oblivious antidote, cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart. And the doctor replies, no. Therein the patient must minister to himself. Macbeth says, ah, throw physic to the dogs. I'll none of it. And then he's. Then he basically says, travel the countryside and find some kind of drug that you can give my wife to make her normal again. And then the doctor says, I am getting out of this country. This place is falling apart. So macbeth is basically like, give her a drug. Give her some white wine. She'll be fine. Just give her something. And in other words, like, fix it through some sort of Drugs, unnatural means or whatever. And the doctor's like, this can only be done. You can only do this the right way. And in this case, the right way is like confession. And so there's this sort of linking of that. This inversion that comes with this grand sin, this sin that would basically, it's not just the killing of Duncan. It's like it's taking this whole vision of the ordered universe, the way that Ajay described at the beginning, and basically saying to that thing, no, like, screw that. I want to destroy it, or I want to be in a different place. I want to be higher up than my. Than my allotted position in this world is. I am adding an element of discord to this harmony. And when you do, the system falls apart. Your body falls apart. Lady Macbeth goes crazy. Your mind falls apart. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth can no longer sleep or their sleep is troubled. Nature falls apart. You got horses eating each other.

[B]

His country falls apart. Everybody leaves, and he's not ruling anything.

[C]

Well, the government falls apart, and everyone is in rebellion against Macbeth. Reason falls apart. Macbeth no longer, like, can see the obvious thing which every 10th grader who's ever read this can see, which is like, the witches are not for your good. They are not, like, giving you good things. His. His reason falls apart. And McBeath places his, like, hope in the. In, like, his interpretation of the. Of the prophecies of the witches is that he's going to die an old man because he's like, oh, no one born of woman's going to kill me. So that means that natural death will kill me, and I'm not going to die until Burnham Wood reaches my gates. Well, it takes trees a long time to grow, so I'm going to be an old man. This is perfect. And the reality is, is that he's killed by someone from C section and people are dressed up like trees.

[B]

The other. The other thing that, like, if you are still feeling weird about the whole natural order thing, and then if you, like, get out of your position, everything goes wrong. Well, I mean, this is what they believed about the universe. And. And for the. The in. In, like, the bounds of the play, he is a bad king. Like, he doesn't rule kindly, right? Duncan, when he. He rewards people who serve him well, he is kind. He, like, takes away traitors. He helps people who are good.

[C]

Maybe. Keep going, Keep going. This is how I wanted to end the podcast with. With throwing a. A shade of doubt upon Duncan. But we'll come to that later.

[B]

Okay, but in any case, like, we know Macbeth is not a good ruler. Dude consorts with wishes. He kills people that disagree with him. He is, like, not as caring for his wife. Everything kind of goes haywire. And nature writing itself, like, I think it does at the end, right, Nature comes back and says, like, this ain't gonna happen. You don't get to stay this way. It's almost literally.

[C]

It's almost literally the forest itself comes to attack.

[B]

Exactly. Like, nature itself comes back and says, no, you can't be this.

[C]

The ants, man. The ants are coming.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay, so what is the shade on?

[C]

Oh, we'll come to that later. So, but so if you. Another element on this is that Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are. Have a fruitless marriage. They don't have any children, and they can't seem to have children, or if they do, it's not really sort of talked about. They're kind of this, like, power couple. She's obviously prey to the devil to take away her womenly ways. So, you know, that's got to do a number on child rearing. And so there's like, that symbolically right there. They also don't have the natural family, you know, of. Of husband and wife produces child. Like, there is. There is the. There is that element going on there as well. Now there's another side to that whole story, which we talked about in our. In our AMA earlier. So we're not saying that that fruit. The marriages without children are unnatural, but in this play, it clearly is. Is geared towards that. Is that there. There's a couple of references to this, and. And so you get all sorts of these inversions. And it also plays itself out in the relationship between the king and his people. Everybody hates Macbeth. Everybody is scared of him. Later on, his. I think it says that the troops are fighting for him because of command, not because of love. And it's like, aw, you know, so Macbeth is. Is. This is what sin does, right? It promises the crown, and you get it, but you lose everything else, right? Like, hell is getting what you want. Macbeth is. So there's this play that fair is foul and foul is fair. This inversion of everything is kind of this, like, thematic lens that you can use to read the play. And when you have that sort of theme bouncing around your mind, you see, it pops up. It is. It is everywhere. Nature, health, music, family, king, people. That sort of inversion is everywhere, and it's embodied in these witches. Do you.

[B]

Did you do any research into the, like, when this play was written and who it was performed for?

[C]

No, not really.

[B]

So this kind I did a quick Google and it was performed for James the first, who had just ascended to the throne and was from Scotland. So this puts a little bit into context. Like this was when Shakespeare was patronized by the king. At least I would assume so. So this was performed for a king. And saying like, hey, when the king dies, everything goes screwy would have been something totally acceptable to a king. And you could easily explain the play away that way. But this is a theme that also shows up in other books, like in Julius Caesar, which was written. Not necessarily. It was written for the opening of the globe, not necessarily for a specific monarch. It shows up again right when Shakespeare is going. Or when Caesar's going to die. All of nature goes topsy turvy the night before. And basically they try to say like, ah, it's just nature doing its thing. He's like, no, it's not. This is. These are omens. Something is going screwy. And then Caesar's wife says the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. Like, this is not okay. And there when we kill the monarch, everything goes bananas. Like, it's not, it's not that. It was just Shakespeare trying to appeal to a new king. This was something that, as you read ancient literature, that hierarchy where the king is supposed to care for and serve his people, the people are supposed to protect their king and serve him. It's supposed to be this wonderful back and forth relationship. And when that goes.

[C]

Harmonious relationship, hierarchy.

[B]

Exactly. It's a harmonious hierarchy. And when it goes wrong, nature itself is broken. It's kind of everywhere. And it's not just that Shakespeare was appealing to a new king, at least in my opinion. Like it's. The more you read of that old stuff, the more it is just kind of all over.

[C]

I have thought about that line that the heavens blaze the death of princes. The very fact that we have like this giant comet that's been flying over us this past two months, the biggest comet we've ever seen. And anyway, whatever.

[B]

So it's just.

[C]

Which prince Sometimes.

[A]

I was going to say making you nervous.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Now he is, he is a man of the people.

[C]

It could be him. Oh gosh, hope not. Anyway, I've had a good run, so. Yeah. So harmony and health are destroyed. And. And it's in the character of these witches. Now the witches are really interesting because what is the power that they have if they have magic that works? We don't really see it work. They talk about like making their witches brew and they're gonna like shipwreck a boat and all this kind of stuff. So they. They. They insinuate that they have magical powers because of their potions, but the real power that they have is in their words. They take things and they imply something, but they mean something else. So you have this twisting of word that is the power of darkness. You know, the power of the witches is to take a thing, a word that stands for something, or to take sentences, to take grammar that stand for things and trick you with them, to assume something, to flatter you, to go into your passions, to. To. To appeal to your baser desires and to trick you. And they're not actually straight up lying to you. They are telling you true things, but they're just not truth that you think is true. And there's something to be said there about that. When you are using language not in good faith, and you are purposefully obfuscating yourself in order to catch somebody up, you are doing that same thing. You are, like, aligning yourself with this inversion of the witches. So think about that before you tweet everybody that there's something about, like, yeah, the. The purposeful obfuscation of language that is also evil. We could even go real metaphysical on this. And if we said that in the, you know, the word was with God and the word was God, that if Christ is the word of God, we are doing something Antichrist when we are using words in the wrong way, or we are using words to purposefully misconstrue ourselves to the pain and detriment of somebody else. That I think has a. That's. That's a. That's a thought that I think has a lot of legs. That is a. That is worth turning over in your mind. And this is. This is the thing that destroys Macbeth. It's not that they, like, pour a potion on him and he's like, I can't help myself. I have to kill. It's that they. They plant in him. They sort of nudge him towards his base desires through misusing words. And Macbeth even makes some sort of reference to this. Let's see if I can find it.

[B]

And isn't it largely Lady Macbeth that pushes him there, like, going to do anything?

[C]

That's right. And then Lady Macbeth seems to also be. Seems to sort of implicitly know this. I've seen Macbeth staged where, like, there are little hints that Lady Macbeth has had some sort of, like, past interactions with the witches. It's never indicated in the play, but it makes a lot of sense. So, like, you have the witches maybe, like, have Little necklaces or little trinkets or little, like, little doodads. And maybe, like, Lady Macbeth has one of those things on her, on her, like, dresser. Like someone gifted her this witchy object, right? And it's kind of been infecting her because she clearly, at the beginning of the play, is, like, already evil. And she, like, sort of pulls her husband into it. But in regards to words, even Banquo says this about what the witches say. But tis strange. And oftentimes to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles to betray us in deepest consequence. Macbeth's like, nah, surely not. But there's this idea that, like, the inversion. Even so, I don't know, maybe that's where it starts. Maybe the inversion of all these terrible things, the inversion of our health, the inversion of our reason, the inversion of our government, the inversion of our family, the inversion of nature, the inversion of our relationship with God, all begins with the inversion of words. I don't know. The play sort of, like, has that. It's. It's. It's the. The subtle prophecy that seems to be saying two things at the same time that begins this infection into the rest of the play. If you read the play with this idea of sickness and infection, you will see that that pops up everywhere else. Now it's not so cut and dry that Duncan was amazing. And this is what we'll end, that Duncan was some sort of amazing guy. And. And how. Because the whole play begins with a. With a revolt. People are rebelling against Duncan, and no one ever really says why. And in fact, the. The person who rebelled against Duncan, when he gets captured, this is what they say about him. So they. They capture the guy who was invaded, who was betraying against Duncan, and it doesn't seem to be for his ambition, and it doesn't seem to be for anything else. Just he says this. But I have spoke with one that saw him, this unnamed or who maybe he was named, this, like, unseen character who rebelled against Duncan. I have spoke with one that saw him die, who did report that very frankly, he confessed his treasons, implored your highness's pardon, and set forth a deep repentance. Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it. He died as one that hath been studied in his death to throw away the dearest thing he owed, as twere a careless trifle. So Malcolm kind of says, like. He kind of had this, like, calm death where he confessed that he rebelled against his king and that he Lost and that he was cool with it. So to me, as a reader, that leads me with sort of like, two readings. Either one, the guy was sort of careless and just cared not for his life, or he thought his cause was just. And now that he's been caught by Duncan, he's confessed that he has rebelled against him and he's going to own it. And everyone's kind of is like, that's actually kind of honorable. He said nothing in his life became him, like, leaving it. Malcolm was like, if you saw him die, you would have thought that, like, he died the right way. He didn't scream, he didn't grovel, he didn't cry. He kind of, like, manned up and did it.

[B]

But it sounds like there's a third reading. The third reading is that he did a wrong thing, like, and he knew it was wrong. And when they caught him, he confessed and says, like, yeah, I pretty much did that. And then the reason his death became him like nothing else in his life is because the rest of his life was garbage, right? So he did all these bad things, and when he finally got caught, he, like, flipped. He owned up. He said, yep, I've done it. I deserve this death. Yeah, send me outright. So I think there's a third reading there where the guy is actually bad, but he has, like, a remorse, like, helpful remorse at the end.

[C]

I guess the other reasons why I always have a little bit of suspicion cast on Duncan is that both of his sons don't care that he's dead. And they, they just sort of like. And later on, when they have caught, when, when Malcolm and McDuff, Malcolm, the son of Duncan, talk about it. Malcolm doesn't seem to, like, have any. McDuff says, like, let's come and weep. Let's cry about these things. And Malcolm doesn't seem to have much remorse over it. I don't know. There's always just a little. If you were the character, if you were playing Malcolm, the son of, of Duncan, you need to make a decision. Because it's unclear in the play if you are sad your dad has died or if you're kind of like, now it's my turn. And maybe you're kind of happy that your dad is dead, regardless when, when the traitor is killed. Duncan says there's no art to find the mind's construction in the face. So Duncan's like, you think you know a guy, and it turns out that he's rebellious against you. So I don't know. I, I, I don't even think it's even as cut and dry. Shakespeare himself is obfuscating the language a little bit. There are. There are. I mean, it's clear that Macbeth is evil and bad, but there's also. There's always rooms for interpretation about this rebellion at the beginning. Is it just. Was it just a power grab or was it that Duncan wasn't a great king? I mean, he definitely has people in rebellion against him, this guy. And then. And then Macbeth. And then Macbeth has a person in rebellion against him because he's terrible. I don't know. Why do we rebel against. Yeah. So.

[B]

But I mean, clearly Macbeth's rebellion wasn't founded on anything that Duncan had done wrong except for being his own desire.

[C]

But Malcolm. Sorry. Macduff's rebellion is founded on Macbeth being wrong.

[B]

Oh, for sure.

[C]

So there's like. In other words, Malcolm ends up being. Sorry. Macduff ends up being an agent of justice and a cleansing agent of nature. And, like, coming in and when he cuts Macbeth's head off, like, and kills him, it's a good thing. Like, Macbeth has gone so far that there's no redeeming him.

[B]

And it's one of the coolest scenes. It's such a good line when he says, like, what is it? McDuff was from his mother's womb untimely ripped.

[C]

Yeah. I did sort of joke in class that like. Like saying I was born of C section is kind of like a weird mic drop.

[B]

It is a little weird mic drop, but it. But I mean, it put instant fear into McBellar.

[C]

That's true. Oh, for sure. It's like Macbeth just cowers eye for my mother's womb was untimely ripped and McBest like, Ah, crap.

[B]

Yeah. So cool. I love. I love that ending scene.

[C]

Yeah. Anyway, that's the. That's sort of. If you. Lots of Shakespeare plays have this. Whereas there are. If you sort of start reading in the. These sort of symbolic elements, horses eating each other. Duncan looks like a landscape that has been torn and now disease enters into it. And when you sort of combine this with this sort of knowledge of this medieval cosmology, you get this whole reading of the play. It's not just about one man's ambition. It's about, like, we as individual people and our desires and, like, all of ordered reality. Like, if we want to fight against ordered reality, like, we could win, we could get what we want, but we're not gonna like it. And so there's lots of lessons there for this sort of disembodied age. We live in or, or in a culture that really champions like smashing norms and, and self actualization and self creation and don't do what people tell you and break out of the place and forge your own path. Like there are virtuous lessons there, but there's a, that can, that sets a lot of people up for a lot of heartbreak. And like the witches, like things that can be promised to you could also have this meaning that you aren't, you don't have your ears open for that could be your own destruction. So anyway, that's it.

[A]

Well, thank you all for listening. This has been Classical Stuff. You should know. You can find us [e-mail] you can find us on patreon patreon.com classical stuff where we have in between episodes after each episode. We're going to record one right now to go into some more ideas from the book, from the play. And then we also do monthly AMAs so where our patrons can ask us questions and we answer those and it's like a full additional episode every month. So you can find us on Twitter X whatever, lisclstuff, C L S S C A L Stuff. And you can email [e-mail] thank you all for listening. We'll talk to you again soon.

[C]

Ciao.

[B]

Bye bye.

[C]

Sa.