SOURCE: “‘Male and Female Created He Them’: Sex and Gender in Macbeth,” in College Literature, Vol. XVI, No. 3, Fall, 1989, pp. 232-39.

[In the following essay, Liston examines gender issues and sex roles in Macbeth, and theorizes that when men and women step out of their defined roles they lose their humanity.]

Probably none of Shakespeare's plays is so explicit in demarcating man from woman as is Macbeth. Man (including the plural and such obvious derivatives as manly, manhood, and unmanned) appears more than 40 times, almost always with a conscious sense of defining the term—or rather, of defining a person by the term. Woman (including similar formations) appears about a third as frequently, with a similar sense of precise definition.

The most obvious examples of this defining process appear in the preparations for the murder of Duncan and in the discovery of it (1.7 and 2.3); in the preparations for the murder of Banquo and the Banquet scene (3.1 and 3.4); and in the scene in which Malcolm tests Macduff's loyalty (4.3). In all of these scenes, what is at issue is a definition of human nature. (Nature and derivatives appear 27 times; and kind, with similar meaning, as in the “milk of human kindness,” appears a few times also.) In several instances the words take on a highly sexual meaning, as when Lady Macbeth challenges Macbeth's manhood prior to the murder of Duncan and questions it during his apparent hallucinations in the Banquet scene. Similarly, she is highly conscious of her own sexuality when she speaks of her “woman's breasts” while calling on the “spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts” to “unsex me here” so that she will not be impeded in her plan by “compunctious visitings of nature” (1.5).¹ What presents itself here is a conflation of sex roles and of gender, and a demonstration that human beings are by nature sexual beings. When men and women step outside these sex and gender roles, they lose their humanity. Their liberation from definition destroys them; paradoxically, in fact, it confines them. After their great crime, Macbeth feels “cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears” (3.4.23-24), and Lady Macbeth is imprisoned within her own sick mind.

After the witches' short opening scene, the first line of the play is Duncan's “What bloody man is that?” The man in question is the sergeant who reports brave Macbeth's bloody deeds. And immediately we are on the way to a definition of man as Bellona's bridegroom, a being who is valiant, courageous, and essentially a person committed to direct, unreflective physical action. Just as immediately, however, this simple definition is undermined as Macbeth and Banquo meet the witches, who “should be women” (1.3.45) but whose beards belie their sex. It is further undermined a few moments later as Macbeth, yielding to the suggestion that he actively try to bring about his accession to the kingship, finds “my seated heart knock at my ribs, / Against the use of nature.” The thought shakes his “single state of man” (134-140). Single here is glossed by most modern editors as “weak,” but Kenneth Muir notes “Grierson [in his 1914 edition]—I think rightly—says that single here means ‘indivisible’ and the phrase as a whole ‘my composite nature—body, spirits, etc., made one by the soul.’”² Though either sense can be correct—and possibly both are—my sense of the lines accords with that of Muir and Grierson. Integrity is the word that the entire phrase “single state of man” suggests. (This is precisely the contention of Richard Horwich in “Integrity in Macbeth: The Search for the ‘Single State of Man.’”³)

Oddly, though Macbeth is ostensibly concerned with regicide and kingship, with the fate of a kingdom, the play proceeds on the values of a domestic tragedy. Whereas the history plays and the Roman plays enact their public values in public spaces, several of the tragedies—this one especially—seem to take place indoors and to focus on the values that are defined by and embodied in personal and familial relationships. Certainly the play begins on the battlefield where the integrity of the nation is called into question, and it ends there also, even if the final scene is staged in Macbeth's castle. But the scenes we remember most—those in the great middle of the play—are indoor scenes, dependent upon the relationship of husband and wife, of man and woman.

The word man first appears near the end of 1.4, as Macbeth tells Duncan that “I’ll be myself the harbinger, and make joyful / The hearing of my wife with your approach” (45-46). The Folio opening stage direction for the next scene reads “Enter Macbeths Wife with a Letter.” Though it is true that Lady Macbeth's speech prefix is consistently Lady, and that several other stage directions (e.g., 1.6.10 and 1.7.28) read enter Lady, Lady Macbeth is not initially defined in her own right but regarded as an extension of her husband.

Likewise, the first appearance of husband is Lady Macbeth's anxious breaking off from “Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had done’t” to greet “My husband!” (2.2.13) as Macbeth enters to announce “I have done the deed.” But the word has ironically been anticipated by Banquo's statement at the beginning of the preceding scene that “There’s husbandry in heaven, / Their candles are all out” (4-5). There is husbandry on earth also, and the snuffing of Duncan is its product.

As Macbeth's wife, Lady Macbeth is perceived and judged according to the roles and functions that a proper wife fulfills and performs. Given her station, there are two: to provide heirs to her lord, and to be his hostess. It is in the latter capacity that Duncan regards her as he arrives at Inverness: “See, see, our honor’d hostess!” (1.6.10). Surely it is no accident that Duncan's exclamation completes a speech of Banquo's that alludes to the child-bearing role:

                                                            This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting marlet, does approve,
By his lov’d mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smell wooingly here; no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle.
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ’d
The air is delicate.

(3-10)

The scene concludes with subtle but nevertheless insistent emphasis on the role of both the hostess and the host, Duncan asserting “Fair and noble hostess, / We are your guest to-night” (24-25), and finally going off with—

                                                            Give me your hand.
Conduct me to mine host, we love him highly,
And shall continue our graces towards him.
By your leave, hostess.

Host and hostess appear only once more each, in the immediately succeeding scenes. As Macbeth contemplates the murder of Duncan—“If it were done,” etc.—he pauses to consider arguments against the murder.

                                                            He’s here in double trust:
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host.

(1.7.12-14)

The crime of regicide is in Macbeth's mind, but not prominently. He is conscious of Duncan's “great office” (18) and of his own subjection to that office, but much more conscious of the domestic demands imposed upon kinsmen and hosts.

In the following scene, shortly after he notes the “husbandry in heaven,” Banquo informs Macbeth that

                                                            the King's a-bed.
He hath been in unusual pleasure, and
Sent forth great largess to your offices.
This diamond he greets your wife withal,
By the name of most kind hostess.

(2.1.12-16)

In this apparently simple statement, just moments before the murder, the offices of host and hostess, the roles of wife, and nature—alluded to in kind—are all mentioned, casually; and all are about to be violated.

That Lady Macbeth is ambitious is unquestioned. But what is she ambitious for? She first appears in 1.5, reading Macbeth's letter, and chills us as she starts to lay the plans that will culminate in Duncan's death after his fatal entrance “Under my battlements,” the instrument being “my keen knife.” Yet nowhere, neither here nor elsewhere, does she ask for anything for herself, in her own right. She apostrophically addresses Macbeth with,

                                                            Hie 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 thee crown’d withal.

(25-30)

At the end of the scene, but not before, she finally includes herself in the profit to be gained from the enterprise, and then only in general terms:

                                                            and you shall put
This night's great business into my dispatch,
Which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely soverign sway and masterdom.

(67-70)

The terms of simple domestic relationships dominate 4.2, in which Lady Macduff and her son are murdered. In this scene, the great world is in the distance, but not forgotten. What we are concerned with here is father, mother, husband, wife, babes, and, as always, natural, as well as man and woman. The point of the scene comes to focus in Lady Macduff's speech immediately after she is warned of the approaching danger by the “homely man”:

                                                            Whither should I fly?
I have done no harm. But I remember now
I am in this earthly world—where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly. Why then, alas,
Do I put up that womanly defense,
To say I have done no harm?

(73-79)

Perversely, “womanly defense” should be “manly defense.” Her defense—that only those who have done wrong need fear danger—is perfect logic, ideal logic: the kind of logic that reasonable men, rather than emotional women, supposedly use. But Macbeth has so perverted “this earthly world” that logic no longer obtains, and a reasonable defense, a “womanly defense,” is absurd. The innocent, and innocence, are destroyed in such a world.

Not a particularly attractive scene in performance (one wonders if Shakespeare had ever seen or heard a real child) because so much of it is dominated by Macduff's “witty” child playing straight-man to his mother, this scene more than any other concentrates on the familial relationships and the disruption of these bonds and relationships.

An equally difficult scene, both in reading and performance, immediately follows; it is an almost actionless scene likely to bore both a reader and a spectator, and yet it brings together all the values and concerns of the play. The scene divides into two halves, Malcolm's testing of Macduff's loyalty, and Macduff's responses (and reactions) upon being informed of the slaughter of his family. These scenic beats are separated by lines concerned with the king's evil (140-159).

In his testing of Macduff, Malcolm accuses himself in general terms of being as bad as Macbeth. Finally, he focuses on “The cestern of my lust” (63) as the defining sin of his viciousness. Macduff's reply—“Boundless intemperance / In nature is a tyranny” (66-67)—is as good a statement of the theme of the play as can be found, and yet it seems almost a throw-away line, hardly noticed. Scotland can absorb such intemperance: “We have willing dames enough.” The simplicity and honesty of women has given way to the pretentious dames in this debasing context.

Malcolm goes on to claim other vices such as avarice, but still Macduff raises no serious objection: “All these are portable” (89). Malcolm then disclaims all virtues, asserting—

                                                            Nay, had I pow’r, I should
Pour the sweet milk of concord into hell,
Uproar the universal peace, confound
All unity on earth.

(97-100)

And at this point Macduff proves his loyalty to Malcolm and to virtue in rejecting Malcolm as unfit to govern.

Is it the word milk that affects Macduff so strongly? The word has been used thrice earlier in the play, always by Lady Macbeth (“th’ milk of human kindness” [1.5.17]; “take my milk for gall” [1.5.48]; and “the babe that milks me” [1.7.55]), and in every case the image has amounted to a perversion of nature. Here, for the fourth time in the play—more than in any other Shakespearean play—the word appears again, and the equation is made through the image that peace is a feminine function and concern. Certainly the chief concern of Macduff's wife was peace.

Having convinced himself of Macduff's virtue, Malcolm denies all the intemperate desires of which he had accused himself as “strangers to my nature,” and goes on to assure Macduff that “I am yet / Unknown to woman” (125-26). Ludicrous as this statement seems to be in equating ignorance (or innocence—both words reverberate throughout the play) of woman with manly goodness and virtue, it cannot be ignored. Does it mean that sexual knowledge is the knowledge of good and evil? This is a simplistic answer, especially in this play, which aims at a much richer definition of man, but no better answer suggests itself.

As Ellen J. O’Brien says in an article on teaching Shakespeare, Macduff's “understanding of the ambiguity of things intensifies in this scene”; Malcolm's testing of him amounts to a development of the “fair is foul” theme.⁴ Following the clarification of his misconceptions regarding Malcolm, he is informed of the savage slaughter of his wife and babes, and the familiar terms of familial relationships come to the fore again, as do the terms of gender.

Momentarily reduced almost to inarticulateness and broken lines—in fact, after trying to forget the humanness of his wife and children by referring to them as chickens and their dam (218)—Macduff is urged by Malcolm to “Dispute it like a man.” His reply—“I shall do so; / But I must also feel it as a man” (220-21)—signals the broader definition of man as someone capable of sympathy usually conceived of as feminine. Macduff goes on to say that “I could play the woman with mine eyes” (230), countenancing tears as a legitimate part of a warrior's psyche. When, a moment later, upon Macduff's resolution to pursue Macbeth at once, Malcolm approvingly states “This tune goes manly,” he is of course referring to Macduff's warlike determination; but we sense also a larger and more encompassing definition of manly than had been present earlier in the play, even if Malcolm is not aware of the full implications of what he says. It is easy to agree with Robert Kimbrough, who says, “I would like to think that Malcom [sic] has understood the full significance of what he has seen and heard and intends ‘manly’ to mean more than bravely—but I doubt it.”⁵

Though the play belongs to the Macbeths, the assertion of the fuller and more complex values of peace and family and humanity are stated and dramatized most positively in the Macduffs, despite Lady Macduff's complaint that in leaving her and their children Macduff “wants the natural touch” (4.2.9). Macduff's willingness to regard as natural to man the possession and even the expression of emotion posits a richer definition of man than merely that of a male capable of unflinching courage in battle and in the face of death. This definition counters that implied by the First Murderer—“We are men, my liege” (3.1.90)—as beings capable of killing remorselessly out of mere envy and resentment. Lady Macduff's instinctive resort to the procreant birds in her desperate plight—

                                                            the poor wren,
The most diminutive of birds, will fight,
Her young ones in her nest—

(4.2.9-11)

alludes to the barren and unnatural Lady Macbeth whose castle bears the outward signs of a pleasant seat in providing safety for the marlet but no protection for humanity: indeed harbors no humanity.

In short, the norm against which Macbeth works is a traditional definition of man as valorous, firm, commanding, humane, and limited; and a traditional definition of woman as soft, maternal, nourishing, a help meet to her husband, humane, and limited. The proper man and the proper woman are both richer than the simplistic stereotype even in the fairly restricted world of this play; but essential to full humanity is limitation within that defined role.⁶

Notes

1. The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton, 1974). All quotations are from this edition unless otherwise specified.

2. Macbeth, Arden Edition (London: Methuen, 1962).

3. Shakespeare Quarterly 29 (1978): 366.

4. “Inside Shakespeare: Using Performance Techniques To Achieve Traditional Goals,” Shakespeare Quarterly 35 (1984): 629.

5. “Macbeth: The Prisoner of Gender,” Shakespeare Studies 16 (1983): 178.

6. After sending this paper off for publication, I read Laurence Olivier's autobiography, Confessions of an Actor (1982; New York: Penguin, 1984), in which, after telling us that he and his wife Vivien Leigh promised during the summer of 1954 to play Macbeth at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, he adds the comment that “as Sybil Thorndike always said, ‘You must be married to play the Macbeths’” (198).

   This paper had its genesis in a Seminar on Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender organized by Shirley Nelson Garner for the 1987 meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, and profited from the criticism of that group.