After King Duncan is murdered by macbeth, we learn from the Old Man and Ross that some strange and “unnatural” things have been going on. Even though it’s the middle of the day, the “dark night strangles the traveling lamp,” which literally means that darkness fills the sky and chokes out the sun, i. e. an eclipse. Could this be another allusion to the way the king’s life has been extinguished (kings are often associated with the sun’s power) and his power usurped by “darkness” (macbeth)? Probably. And in this case, nature itself becomes a symbol for the political struggle.
That makes sense, if you think that kingship in the play is shown to be part of the natural order, something handed down from God. (See our “Power” theme for more about the Divine Right of Kings. ) And that’s not all. We also learn that an owl was seen killing a falcon and Duncan’s horses went wild and began eating each other. Clearly, nature is out of whack, right? Owls are supposed to prey on mice —not go around eating larger birds of prey like falcons. And Duncan’s horses? Once tame, they “broke their stalls [… contending ‘against obedience” just before they ate each other.
It sounds like all of nature is in a state of rebellion, bucking their natural roles and “contending” against the natural order, just like macbeth has upset the natural order of things by killing the king. When Macbeth visits the weird sisters and demands to know whether or not Banquo’s heirs will become kings, the witches conjure a vision of eight kings, the last of which holds a mirror that reflects many more such kings. Cool vision, right? Not to Macbeth.
See, these are Banquo’s heirs, which means that Macbeth’s sons aren’t going to become king which means Macbeth had better watch his back. But it would have been pretty cool to Shakespeare’s audience, because, as the stage directions tell us, the last king is carrying “two-fold balls and treble scepters”. These two balls (or orbs) are a symbolic representation of King James I of England (VI of Scotland), who traced his lineage back to Banquo. At James’s coronation ceremony in England (1603), James held two orbs (one representing England and one representing Scotland).
It looks like Shakespeare has just paid a nice little compliment to his patron. When Macbeth considers murdering Duncan, he sees a floating “dagger of the mind” that points him in the direction of the sleeping king’s room. As Macbeth wonders if his mind is playing tricks on him, the dagger becomes covered in imaginary blood, which anticipates the way that very real daggers will be soiled when Macbeth murders King Duncan. But where does this dagger come from? Did the witches conjure it up? Is it a product of Macbeth’s imagination?
Is Macbeth being tempted to follow or warned not to pursue the hallucination? Given what happens later, we’re tempted to say that it’s Macbeth’s own vision, an externalization of his guilt. As another instance of the language that camouflages evil may serve any of the frequent euphemisms by means of which macbeth and his lady delude themselves as to the true nature of their thoughts and deeds. When Macbeth first hears that he’s been named the Thane of Cawdor, he asks Angus why he is being dressed in “borrowed robes”.
Macbeth doesn’t literally mean that he’s going to wear the old thane’s hand-me-down clothing. Here, “robes” is a metaphor for the title (Thane of Cawdor) that Macbeth doesn’t think belongs to him. And later, Angus says that Macbeth’s kingly “title” is ill-fitting and hangs on him rather loosely, “like a giant’s robe / Upon a dwarfish thief”. Angus isn’t accusing Macbeth of stealing and wearing the old king’s favorite jacket, he’s accusing Macbeth of stealing the king’s power (by killing him) and then parading around with the king’s title, which doesn’t seem to suit him at all.
To an age like ours, deeply concerned with the metaphysics of guilt, the discrimination of personality, waning relevance of our traditional criteria for civilization, macbeth offers a peculiarly revealing image of human nature and experience. It is one of the few masterpieces in English whose protagonist grows in depravity without diminishing our pity for him, so that even when he stands before us unmistakably as a “butcher”, we do not condescend to him, but painfully share his guilt.
