Act V: Scene 3
Summary
Macbeth
dismisses reports of invasion by trusting to the prophecies of the apparitions,
which seemed to promise him invincibility in battle. When a servant enters to
announce the approach of a huge army, Macbeth appears momentarily to lose
courage and then angrily spurns his servant and orders his armor to be put on.
The Doctor, whose news concerning Lady Macbeth is just as grim, is treated with
similar contempt.
Analysis
Macbeth's
tone is typically brazen. The reports he has heard can have no consequence,
given the prophecies of the three apparitions of Act IV, Scene 1. Throughout
this scene, any doubts he may have are quelled by his bold imperatives:
"Bring me no more reports," "Fly, false thanes," and more.
We see a man completely self-assured, a "confident tyrant," as Siward
calls him in the subsequent scene. These angry words do much to assert his own
manhood, in contrast to the cowardice he perceives in others — not only his
servant, whom he calls "cream-faced" and "lily-livered,"
but also the rebel soldiers, whom he insultingly refers to as
"epicures" (that is, self-indulgent and lazy).
In the
dialogue with the servant, Macbeth orders him to "prick his cheeks"
in order to "put colour" back in his face, an ironic reminder of the
earlier color symbolism when Macbeth was accused by his wife of having a white
heart, as opposed to her own red hands. Another imperative — "Give me my
armour" — has to be repeated when Macbeth's armourer, Seyton, initially
refuses to do so. Similarly, when the Doctor confesses that he has been unable
to cure Lady Macbeth's madness, Macbeth mocks his ability, challenging him to
"Throw physic (medicine) to the dogs."
But there is
also another Macbeth, who admits to being "sick at heart" and who
feels he has entered the season of the "yellow leaf," that is,
literally, the fall of his own reputation; and who, in a further moment of
self-realization, recognizes the sickness of his own land: "If thou
could'st, Doctor, cast / The water of my land, find her disease, / And purge it
to a sound and pristine health / I would applaud thee to the very echo / That
should applaud again" (50-54).
Earlier,
referring to his wife's sickness, Macbeth has questioned the doctor's ability
to remove from her those thoughts and feelings "Which weigh upon the
heart." The Doctor's response: "Therein the patient must minister to
himself" is particularly interesting. Where we expect "herself,"
Shakespeare instead uses the masculine pronoun, referring to a patient of
either sex, particularly in proverbial statements such as this one. The
suggestion is that Macbeth, too, must find the cure to his own disease.
Macbeth's military preparation, which the Doctor says he has heard about, is
unlikely to be any more effective than a medicinal preparation or remedy which he
might prescribe for the sick nation of Scotland.
Glossary
English
epicures (8) the self-indulgent English
sway (9)
command
goose (12)
cowardly
sere (23) dry
fain (28)
rather
skirr (35)
scour
oblivious
(43) that brings oblivion
physic (47)
medicine
cast the
water (50) examine the urine (here, used metaphorically)
rhubarb . . .
drug (55) purgatives
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