by Ben Crystal
Look at it this way:
He’s riffing. Miles Davis eat your heart out! Remember that he’s supposed to be writing in iambic pentameter, so the speech should look like this:
Take a look at the scene as a whole in this way (Figures 1 and 2 opposite):
The entire extract should, if absolutely sticking to regular iambic pentameter structure, look like Figure 1. But actually it looks like Figure 2.
Yes, I’ve too much time on my hands.
Full of murder and suspense, it’s an incredibly emotionally charged scene, so, as you would expect, the metre is very irregular. Or rather, the metre is very irregular, so we know it’s an incredibly emotionally charged scene.
But what advantage does the irregular metre give Shakespeare, and more to the point, his actors and his audience?
At the end of Act 4, I touched on the idea that if there’s a line of six syllables followed by a line of ten syllables then the actor has to fill the two-beat space that is left after the six but before the new line of ten, to observe the metre.
Numbers, numbers …
This is what I mean:
The scene is written in what is supposed to be iambic pentameter, and the basic steady rhythm of ten syllables per line. When there aren’t ten syllables in a line, to carry straight on, ignoring the underlying rhythm, would wreck the pace of the scene that Shakespeare intended.
The actor playing Macbeth, speaking the lines above, should say ‘I have done the deed’, then should try to fill the following 2½ beats (five syllables) somehow: he could move to Lady Macbeth, he could look scared, he could listen out to hear if anyone is raising the alarm. Then, when he’s done that, after he says ‘Didst thou not heare a noyse?’ there’s another pause of two beats (to complete his line), before Lady can give her line. Perhaps she gets frustrated with him panicking. Or they both stand there listening …
The point is, for the actor playing Macbeth to run his two lines together, and Lady to come in immediately after Macbeth’s last line, would be to ignore the clues given by the metre.
I haue done the deed, didst thou not heare a noyse? I heard the Owle schreame …
And if the metre wasn’t important, if it wasn’t there to fill some function, Shakespeare would have written it in prose.
There are at least two good things that come from Shakespeare breaking the metre up like this. The break gives the actors time to act, react, move across the stage, do a bit of stage business, show the audience how their character is feeling, whatever. They’re pauses for ‘reaction shots’, I suppose you would say, to steal a term from the movie business, and these breaks are good clues to the actors that some thing more is going on, beneath the plain speaking of the words.
But they also set the pace of the scene. Whether you give the character one beat or 4½ beats will determine how soon it will be before they say their next line, or how quickly the character they’re speaking to will start speaking their lines …
Take a look at the scene from Macbeth again – I’ve filled in the gaps in the metre, to clearly mark out where a bit of stage business (or a pause, or silence) is needed to keep the metrical rhythm steadily bouncing along:
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, Miles Davis, eat your heart out …
Now what do you do with all those gaps and pauses?
* * *
The little ‘O’
Talking of moments to show character, something you’ll find a lot of in Shakespeare’s plays is the letter O:
O that this too too sullied flesh would melt
O all you host of Heaven! O Earth; what else?
O what a Rogue and Peasant slave am I?
… to take three examples from a chap who says it rather a lot (Hamlet). With this little letter, Shakespeare practically gives an actor carte blanche to do, well, whatever they like. It is, for want of a better way to explain it, a blank space, a sign to tell the actor to vocally signal their emotional response. Sigh. Express contempt. Or frustration. Or relief. Make it brief or drag it out, but whatever you do, use it and don’t just say ‘Oh’. All together now, Ohhhhh for a Muse of Fire …
* * *
Scene 9
The London Underground
Well, there are plenty of things you could do with all those gaps and pauses, which is one of the reasons why Shakespeare is performed so much and his plays are open to endless interpretation. What is written below is my interpretation, and by no means do I list all the possible thoughts and feelings that may or may not be running through these two characters’ heads. It’s not a definitive analysis, it’s one of many.
If you’re a playwright and you’re writing in iambic pentameter, and you want your character to sound calm and sane and clear, you might write their speeches using clear and simple words, with thoughts that finish at the end of a line of metre.
Conversely, if you want to express a character’s angst, their stress, their worries and their confusion, yes, you could just have them say, ‘Ooh I’m feeling a little stressed and confused right now’, or you could have them talk about something completely different, but make them say it in a very complicated way. This is what Shakespeare does with Lady Macbeth’s first speech in this scene.
Let’s look at it:
The first two sentences are simple, and essentially say the same thing: what made them (the King’s guards) drunk, made me strong. What has exhausted them, has given me fire.
But wait a second – what kind of person repeats the same thing over and over? ‘To bed, to bed, to bed …’ as she says later in the play (once she’s gone mad). She’s telling us that she’s not nervous, that she’s been calmed by a quick swig of alcohol. And the metre, in two lines of ten, would support that. But she’s repeating herself, so maybe she is a little nervous. Then:
Hearke means listen. Peace in this instance means forget about it, it was nothing. She hears a noise that makes her jump, completely belying her previous statement of boldness, not two lines before. She’s so nervous that a shrieking owl made her think it was the sound of the king dying. A curious line follows:
11 The fatall Bell-man, which giues the stern’st good-night.
Which is a pretty odd thing to say. After being scared by the owl, she starts talking about it in a melodramatic, poetic way. This is something that Lady seems to do a lot of (in her first meeting with Duncan in Act 1, Scene 6, she gets so nervous she ends her speech with the somewhat peculiar ‘We rest your hermits’). She’s reassuring herself, perhaps making a joke about the fact that it scared her, calling it a fatal bellman. An owl was said to be a harbinger of doom; hearing its call was considered bad luck. So if she is joking, it’s a very black humour. The ‘joke’ calms her, and in the next two lines of ten she thinks about her husband – has he killed Duncan yet? Is he about to? What about the guards? Will they catch him?
She tells us the guards are sleeping, and with the mid-line ending, excitedly interrupts herself to tell us she put something in their drinks to make them sleep:
Perhaps she’s nervous, or proud of the part she played – whatever the reason, she remembers the drugs, then imagines Death and Nature fighting over the sleeping guards:
Immediately, her husband calls as he enters – he’s heard someone talking: this is one of Shakespeare’s clues. His two characters (unknowingly, in this instance) share a complete line of metre:
He wants the actors to pick up their cues here – to not let there be a gap between one character speaking and the other. No pause, in other words, between Lady Macbeth saying live, or dye, and Macbeth entering and calling out.
This is indisputable: the scene is written in metre. The rhythm is bouncing along and the audience is tuned into it. If Macbeth doesn’t speak right on cue, it will upset the rhythm of the metre. If he does, the metrical rhythm can continue unbroken.
If Shakespeare had wanted a pause between the lines, he’d have put one in, as we’ll see in a moment. There’s a clearer example coming up, but this is th
e beginning of Shakespeare orchestrating the dramatic intensity of the scene, through the metre.
A moment ago I said that the two characters unknowingly share a line of metre. It seems clear from what’s said that when Macbeth calls ‘Who’s there? what hoa?’, Lady doesn’t see him, or perhaps doesn’t hear him properly, because she has a further six lines before they start talking to each other; plus the speech ends with her calling out and asking if it’s Macbeth approaching.
This is the first real unspoken stage direction from Shakespeare. He wants Macbeth onstage, perhaps in shock, but visible to the audience; and more to the point, out of sight of Mrs Macbeth.
Whatever it is that she thinks she heard when he called has scared her, and the one thing she didn’t talk about directly in her previous speech (but seems to have been on her mind) she finally vocalises:
She’s still talking to the audience, and begins by saying Oh no, the guards have woken, he hasn’t killed Duncan, he’s been caught and we’re going to get busted for trying to kill him, rather than actually killing him. She carries on fretting to herself/the audience:
Worried that they have been caught in the act, she calls hearke again, interrupting her own fretting, thinking she heard a noise (she probably did hear something this time – perhaps her husband returning). Immediately, either reassuring us or herself, she tells us she placed the daggers carefully for Macbeth to find, implying everything should be going well …
A curious way to commit a murder, leaving the intended murder weapons for anybody to find. If she put the daggers in place, why didn’t she do it herself? As we heard in Act 1 of Macbeth, it’s at her insistence that they’re doing this at all. We hear her reason straight away:
I’ve always thought it interesting that when she refers to her father, it’s a nine-syllable line – and because of the contraction, intentionally a nine-syllable line. Without the contraction (done it instead of don’t) it would be an even ten.
What deep psychological trauma lies in that simple sentence? When she saw Duncan sleeping, as she laid the daggers next to him for Macbeth to find, she says he looked like her father … Does this remind her of her own father’s death for some reason? Is that what drives her mad, eventually, a twisted idea that she’s killed her own father?
Whatever the reason, it’s a cheeky little slice of back-story for an actor, and writing it in a nine-syllable line means there’s a half-beat before the next line where the actor can pause, reflect, think of something, and in so doing give the audience a momentary glimpse into the character’s life.
Then she breaks from her thoughts, hears him, calls to him. But he doesn’t immediately reply:
This is a fascinating little piece of writing. Either she still can’t see him yet, doesn’t recognise him, or perhaps is worried that the person coming towards her isn’t Macbeth. Not only that, he doesn’t reassure her straight away: My Husband? she asks – a three-syllable line, meaning he waits 3½ beats before he responds. Why does he wait? That’s a question for the actor. Perhaps he’s nervous. Perhaps he’s listening for the guards, or crossing the stage to whisper to her. Perhaps he’s completely freaking out. Whatever the reason, finally he says:
And then pauses for another 2½ beats. He listens again. Then asks her:
She doesn’t reply immediately. She waits two beats before answering. Think about that. Two people, standing in near-dark, in a castle. One has just killed the king. Both are nervous as all hell, and straining to hear if they’ve been caught.
She waits. Thinks or listens. Then she says:
A beautiful line of ten. Owle scream, crickets cry. Great bit of poetry. The words she uses sound like the owl and cricket noises she thought she heard during her speech earlier, cr-cr-cr …
Then she asks, Did you just say something? And Shakespeare, deciding they’re not tense enough, gets them really worked up:
This is really wonderful writing. Look at the staggered, shared speech that looks like a stairway, ending with the words As I descended? Shakespeare shares one line of iambic pentameter between two characters, over four speeches. The actors must, in order to keep the metrical rhythm, immediately respond to each other, jumping on each others’ words.
Speak those four speeches out loud as one unbroken line, no pausing or punctuation:
Did not you speake when now as I descended
That’s how fast it should be said. It’s machine-gun fast, and Shakespeare, knowing that his actors knew how metre worked, tells them to say it that fast, without any need of actually writing stage directions down. He’s speaking to them through the metre.
It’s the closest thing to Shakespeare’s voice we have, closer than any of the sonnets where he writes so much in the first person. When you find these directions in Shakespeare’s plays, it’s almost like a bearded voice whispers over your shoulder, ‘Do it like that …’
But we need to step back a line or two. We’ve missed something small, but noteworthy. Macbeth asks Lady
Macb.
Didst thou not heare a noyse? ____________|
And she replies:
Lady
I heard the Owle schreame, and the Crickets cry.
Did not you speake?
He uses the thou of special intimacy, the pet name, to her. She uses the more formal you to him, as she has done ever since he tried to talk her out of the murder, and as she does until she dies …
Immediately after that rat-a-tat-tat shared line, Lady Macbeth begins a new line of metre with one word, ‘I’ …
And they both stop still …
… they’re both fiercely listening for any sound that might let them know they’ve been caught killing God, or that someone might have heard them speaking to each other. Nine syllables – 4½ beats – that’s a lot of stage time, especially after the quick-fire exchange. After the rapidity of the shared line, a great pause. Then Macbeth comes in with his line and we have another 4½ beat silence:
If the previous lines are performed to follow the metre, and the intensity is there, then Lady Macbeth’s ‘I’ followed by the silence as they listen, followed by Macbeth’s call of ‘Hearke!’ (shut up and listen) might get a laugh from the audience. It is kinda silly. Them both standing there quietly, carefully listening, and then he says Shush! Master dramatist that he is, Shakespeare often places moments of comedy in moments of great tragedy, and vice versa. Make your audience laugh, and you’ll make them cry even harder.
So they listen for another 4½. Then something makes him think: Who’s sleeping next door to Duncan? Could that be what we think we can hear? Did someone sleeping next door hear the murder and wake up? Lady Macbeth finishes the line of metre, answering immediately:
Why does she answer immediately? Why isn’t there a pause after Chamber? The metre demands that Lady comes in on cue, and, bearing in mind that this is her house (well, castle), and they’ve planned to murder the king, of course she’s going to know who’s sleeping where.
He replies to her answer of ‘Donalbaine’ with a very sad line, ‘This is a sorry sight’. We know he isn’t showing her that he’s brought the daggers back with him, because she doesn’t seem to see them until the rather straightforward line of ten a bit later on: ‘Why did you bring these daggers from the place?’
Perhaps they’re still far away from each other onstage. It’s very likely to be quite dark – why would the torches still be lit so late at night when everyone should be in bed? Perhaps he’s staring at his bloody hands, thinking of Donalbaine (Duncan’s son) now sleeping next door to his dead father. Perhaps he’s talking about the two of them, terrified of being caught, condemned to an eternity in hell even if they do survive long enough to rule as king and queen for a few years. Whatever action is taking place, after he says ‘This is a sorry sight’, there’s a pause of two beats before she responds with another line of ten syllables.
That’s a stupid thing to say, she says, after a moment’s pause. Perhaps she’s getting control of her nerves more quickly t
han he is. If he were to reply in likewise fashion, in a line of ten, we might think he was calming down too. But he doesn’t.
He goes from one extreme to another, a line of six syllables (and so a pause of four) then a line of twelve. Then an eleven, followed by an eight. He’s metrically all over the place, so the actor should take that as the cue for Macbeth’s mental state too; he’s having trouble recounting the story to her.
There’s a short pause, again, before Lady Macbeth says something rather odd:
If you think about it, that really is quite an odd thing to say. Macbeth has been talking about the guards, so although Lady’s comment (if she’s referring to the guards) isn’t entirely out of context, it’s the kind of thing you’d expect your grandmother to say after one too many glasses of port. Perhaps she means the ‘two lodg’d together’ (two sleeping in the same room) are the noise she heard earlier. Perhaps it’s simply an affirmation of what her husband said. But she waits a beat to say it, and then there’s another pause before he speaks. For some reason, her comment seems listless.
Then there’s yet another pause before Macbeth says something else – he talks about the guards. So it seems they are both talking about the guards, but there’s something not quite right about what they’re saying.