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> Shakespeare’s plays, according to Knights, were first and foremost “dramatic poems,” works of literary art unified through metaphor and language, rather than
by gumby 2y ago
> Shakespeare’s plays, according to Knights, were first and foremost “dramatic poems,” works of literary art unified through metaphor and language, rather than a record of interactions between characters. To treat Macbeth as the final episode in the life of Macbeth was to confuse literature and history, to take the figures of drama for real persons, with biographies that reached back before the beginning of the play and, if they survived, into its imaginary future.
While I'll agree with Knights that "How many children" is an absurd and pointless question, I otherwise disagree with his position.
For example, a King of Scotland (well, Alba) named Macbeth was a historical figure and people watching the play would know this. It doesn't make Macbeth one of the historical plays, but it's a deliberate call out to context (else he could have named the character "King Bob", as he did with the characters Romeo and Juliet, or King Lear).
Both art and discourse are full of such, often not even deliberately invoked by the speaker or author. We just swim in multiple contexts simultaneously.
- jfengel 2y agoIt's hard to take Macbeth seriously as a history... what with the witches and all. His source is a piece of propaganda that makes Richard III look like a documentary. As a drama, the fact that the Macbeths appear to have zero children is very important. Fathers and sons are recurring themes -- Duncan's rebuff of Macbeth as the next King, Macduff and his son, Siward and Young Siward, etc. The absence of a descendant for Macbeth is evocative, especially given Lady Macbeth's line that she has "given suck". It doesn't get a lot of attention past that one, but it appears that within the context of the play, they had a child who died young. These are facts about the play that inform an actor and director making character choices. They're free to ignore them and focus on other things. (Honestly, it's not clear that Shakespeare really thought that through, either.)
- AlbertCory 2y agoI tend to agree. It's not a meaningless question but definitely not one that the actor playing Lady Macbeth needs to answer for herself. As for "having multiple children leads to downward mobility" -- I'm not saying it's wrong, but I'd like to see some actual data on that. I thought the pattern was more "first son inherits, second son goes into the Army or Navy, third et al go into the clergy." And a clerical life was not bad at all, until 1850 or so. For multiple daughters: well, if they don't all have great dowries, then they don't get high born husbands. They still get married.
- eru 2y ago> I thought the pattern was more "first son inherits, second son goes into the Army or Navy, third et al go into the clergy." And a clerical life was not bad at all, until 1850 or so. At the time of the historical Macbeth the pattern would have perhaps been similar, but would not have involved the Navy. Especially not for a king of Scotland. Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadet_branch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadet_branch
- gumby 2y agoBack in the days of the kingdom of Alba no such convention existed — it was feudal.
- eru 2y agoWhich convention do you mean? If you have primogeniture in feudalism, you still need to figure out you do with the other offspring.
- gumby 2y agoThe problem was spare had to be good at fighting case heir kicked the bucket. Then you had to figure out how to keep spare from killing heir. Standard technique was to encourage them to go conquer someplace else. This was also an important driver of the crusades, which had the bonus of sending that heavily armed relative far away.
- AlbertCory 2y agoI was wondering that myself.
- gumby 2y agoI answered in a parallel comment.
- jfengel 2y agoIn Scotland at the time, there wasn't primogeniture at all. You got to be king by general acclimation -- you were king when everybody said you were king. The previous king might nominate a successor, and it might be his son -- any son. And if the thanes didn't like it, they'd fight about it. ("Thane" was an Anglo-Saxon context that's not really appropriate to Scotland at the time, but they had something kinda parallel.) Shakespeare hints at that, in an important scene were Mac expects to be named the heir. Shakespeare's audience would have understood that, because it had been roughly the same in England under the Saxons. (That was more than a half-millennium ago, but the history was well understood by the educated, using the same sources Shakespeare did.) There was a problem with offspring in general. Shakespeare actually discussed that one, too, in King Lear. Properties could be divided, but not indefinitely, and it often caused fighting. It's what led to the clan system, which really evolved after the Norman invasion but hints of it lay earlier.
- o11c 2y agoFor the lazy: The historical Lady Macbeth had a son from her prior marriage, Lulach, who was accepted as heir by her husband and succeeded him to the throne. But he was a weak king and got killed within a year.
- skybrian 2y agoI don't see it as being "absurd and pointless" when there's a perfectly good answer: it's not in the play. You can imagine what you like, but it's not "canon" in anime terms. You can imagine what you like, and people do. Stories invite us to imagine not just what's in them, but the world they're set in, including what happened before and after. They leave room for extension with other stories, including prequels and sequels. This doesn't mean confusing fantasy with real life, either. I think that's getting confused about how people read stories.