|
|
REVIEW
- Greenblatt, Stephen. "Shakespeare Bewitched."
- New
Historical Literary Study: Essays on Reproducing Texts, Representing
History. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993. 108-135.
Thesis: Greenblatt asks a startling question: "Why shouldn't we
say that this play about evil is evil?" (111). Greenblatt asks this
question because women accused of witchcraft were tortured to extract
confessions and then burned at the stake or hung. This evil could not have
taken place if people had not believed in the reality of witchcraft, so,
Greenblatt asks,
"Why shouldn't we say . . . that Macbeth, with
its staging of witches . . . , probably contributed, in
an indirect but powerful way, to the popular fear of demonic agency and the
official persecution and killing of women?" (111).
Greenblatt's basic answer to his own question is that Shakespeare neither
affirms or denies the reality of witchcraft; Shakespeare "takes what he
wants from the world and gives no sign of concern for the fate, either
exculpation or execution, of the miserable old women actually or
potentially facing trial on charges of sorcery" (121).
What Shakespeare takes from the world, according to Greenblatt, was a state
of belief which was highly ambiguous. The belief in the reality of
witchcraft was sanctioned by King James, who published a book on the
subject, but Reginald Scot, in The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584),
argued that supposed witches were either con-artists or—in Greenblatt's
words—"harmless melancholiacs and hysterics incapable of
distinguishing between reality and fantasy" (115). King James ordered
Scot's book burned, but Greenblatt (and other scholars) believe Shakespeare
must have used it as a source when he was writing Macbeth.
According to Greenblatt, as the state of belief about the reality of witchcraft
was ambiguous, so is Shakespeare's presentation of the reality of witches.
In support of his point, Greenblatt asks us to take notice of Banquo's
reaction to the witches:
"What are these," Banquo asks when he and
Macbeth first encounter them,
So wither'd and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th'inhabitants o'th'earth,
And yet are on't? (1.3.39-42)
Macbeth echoes the question, "Speak, if you can:—what are you?" to
which he receives in reply his own name: "All hail, Macbeth!" Macbeth is
evidently too startled to respond, and Banquo resumes the interrogation:
I'th' name of truth,
Are ye fantastical, or
that indeed
Which outwardly ye show? (1.3.52-54)
The question is slightly odd, since Banquo
has already marveled at an outward show that would itself seem entirely
fantastical: "You should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to
interpret / That you are so." But "fantastical" here refers not to the
witches' equivocal appearance but to a deeper doubt, a doubt not about
their gender but about their existence. They had at first seemed to be the
ultimate figures of the alien—Banquo intially remarked that they did
not look like earthlings—but now their very "outwardness," their
existence outside the mind and its fantasies, is called into question.
What is happening here is that Shakespeare is
staging the epistemological and ontological dilemmas that in the deeply
contradictory ideological situation of his time haunted virtually all
attempts to determine the status of witchcraft beliefs and
practices. (123)
The witches are presented in this manner, says Greenblatt, because it suits
Shakespeare's artistic purpose to create "the sense of an equivocal
betwixt-and-between" (127).
Evaluation:
Greenblatt's method is to pose a problem, consider possible solutions, and gradually work his way to his conclusions. I prefer a straight-arrow style—main point first, everything else following in a straight line.
Also, although Greenblatt's central argument is persuasive, he raises a question, which he, as the first figure of New Historicism, ought to answer, but dodges: What were the
real-world "political and ethical consequences" (112) of the representation
of the Witches in Macbeth?
Bottom Line: A long way around to a persuasive literary analysis of the Witches.
|