Robert Pacheco
“It was” — that is the name of the will’s gnashing of teeth and most secret melancholy. Powerless against what has been done, he is an angry spectator of all that is past. The will cannot will backwards; and that he cannot break time and time’s covetousness, that is the will’s loneliest melancholy.
…This, indeed this alone, is what revenge is: the will’s ill will against time and its “it was.”
(Z: 1 “The Creator” Friedrich Nietzche, Zarathustra)
The Shakespearean tragedies Macbeth (c. 1606), Othello (c. 1604), and Hamlet (c. 1599) illustrate the autonomy of Time and Fate as the rightful rulers of the world of man. The concepts of evil, destiny, and temporality are not just tools to heighten the dramatic element of a play but ubiquitous in both Elizabethan England and Shakespeare’s literary world. Macbeth,in particular, illustrates how supernatural beings, Time and Fate, are to be feared and avoided since the supernatural represents forces that cannot be understood by human logic. To Macbeth and King James, Time and Fate are not illusory concepts but real evils that shape human action and inhibit human ambition (Kermode 1307). The existence of the supernatural in Macbeth gives insight into a reality where the lines of good and evil are blurred; “fair is foul, and foul is fair” (1.1.9). Time is both a “destroyer” and a “redeemer” while everything and anything is justifiable, even disrupting the natural order as a means of obtaining power (Kermode 1310). Since the destiny of Macbeth is already pre-determined by Time and the absence of an objective good to restrain evil, Macbeth’s tragic flaw is not his ambition to become king of Scotland but his attempt to rule over Time. This essay will argue that in killing Duncan, Macbeth is exempt from moral judgement since he acts in accordance with the laws that govern his realm, and that Time and its servant, Fate, are not only central to the narrative but are Macbeth’s chief tormentors.
Chaos is already in motion at the beginning of the play with the introduction of Time and Fate. The Witches are the audience’s first impression of a world in which “figures” of “mysterious power” are “undeniably” real (Introduction 7). Witch 1 begins the play by uttering, “When shall we meet again” (1.1.1). The narrative not only calls ahead to the future, creating a sense of urgency that torments Macbeth throughout the rest of the play, but it also introduces Time as the omnipresent power of the play. The Weird Sisters may “stand outside society and nature” and hold a “kinship with the three fates” but must submit to the laws of Time. They plan towards the future, to meet Macbeth when the sun sets, unable to move without the permission of Time; that is, the Sisters cannot set their plans into motion without letting Time work its natural course. Yet, the witches are not completely subdued by Time. Their association with Fate allows them to glimpse into the future, bestowing them slight sovereignty and the ability to stand outside the realm of Man and Time (Introduction7). Many would argue that this ability allows the Sisters to manipulate Macbeth into immoral action; however, they are merely agents of Fate. Their job is to put disorder into the natural progression of Time in order to bring balance to nature and revitalize society by a process of destructive renewal. They want to begin their denaturalization of Time after “The hurly burly is done” (1.1.3), meaning after order is restored from the battle and Time progresses normally. The Sisters proclaim the battle is “won” and “lost” (1.1.4), affirming that two destinies are possible, and that they are merely messengers and not actors within the play.
Witch 1 continues “in thunder, lightning, or in rain” (1.1.2). The Witch, along with the narrative, is giving a prelude to the disorder to come— informing the audience not only of the chaotic nature of the world Macbeth inhabits but the ways that Time and the life of Macbeth will progress through the tragedy. The sequence in which the Sister utters “thunder,” “lightning” and then “rain” signifies that first there will be pandemonium, followed by destruction, and finally, renewal in the play. The opening lines by the Weird Sisters are essential to the structure and order of the narrative, which also highlights the importance of the role of the supernatural in Macbeth.
The immediate presence of the witches and the prediction of tempestuous weather ahead, both political and literal, signify Macbeth’s reality in a state of corruptive malevolence. Curtis Perry argues that both the supernatural and nature symbolize an element of unpredictability that affects the destiny of individuals: “The association between the witches and the storm makes thematic sense as well, for both represent a kind of threatening power beyond human control; whenever the witches reappear in the play, the stage directions call for thunder” (13). Perry implies that Macbeth is only a puppet, a tool, and even a victim of the machinations of higher beings. The influence of the witches creates a “crisis of conscience” and an interior “conflict” between personal gain and his powerful “sense of duty” (14-15). Perry mirrors the sentiments of other critics who argue that murdering Duncan unleashes Macbeth’s madness.
However, Macbeth is a manifestation of a culture that thrives on chaos, where being good is an abnormality: “[Macbeth] immerses its audience in a world presided over by enigmatic and terrifying forces, a world in which nature itself is violent and tempestuous” (13). Perry acknowledges the fickleness of Macbeth’s Scotland, which reflects the dangerous mindset of the powers that bind it, Time and Fate. The killing of a king, for example, is inconsequential in the presence of Time. The kings in both Macbeth and Hamlet arequickly ushered from the memory of all except those characters who are of good will. The good and the just who stand in the way of the ambitious are the ones who act unnaturally against the laws of their dangerous worlds and are therefore punished severely. In Macbeth, Banquo and Macduff oppose Macbeth’s will, which seals their black fate, while others who are not suspicious of the new king’s sudden change of fortune are kept safe from the wrath of the powerful forces of Macbeth, Time, and Fate. In Hamlet, no one in court except his son is suspicious about the death of King Hamlet and the abrupt shift of power.
King Hamlet’s death is trivial within the narrative just as is the death of Duncan in Macbeth. Those present at Claudius’s speech (1.2.1ff.) have just buried King Hamlet less than two months prior and are now in celebration of Time’s renewal of nature, Claudius’ coronation. However, Hamlet challenges the will of Time and ambition, like Banquo and Macduff, thereby suffering their fate—causing both his own death and the demise of his loved ones. In neither play is the king properly mourned. They are simply discarded, implying that death and revenge are just natural consequences of obtaining power. The lack of public outcry calls into question the nobility of the former kings. In both plays, their respective nations are at war, stressing that a king’s duty is neither glamourous nor beneficent; it is a bloody business: “We are given no hint in Shakespeare that Duncan’s reign was ever anything but bloody and chaotic” (Foster 321-322). Duncan is quietly killed off-stage, eliminating audience sympathy, while King Hamlet is caught in purgatory for past crimes. Duncan and King Hamlet could be as tainted as Claudius and Macbeth, guilty of their own power plays and victims of their own ambitions. These are worlds where powerful men fail to recognize their mortal limitations. Their triumphs delude them into believing themselves to be above Time and Space. They are not kings, but players in a cannibalistic game of power in the court of Time. One is either a competitor or a victim of the more dominant power. The good and the just are prey to ambition, as ambition is to Time and Fate.
However, Macbeth is a warrior with a fathomless hubris that forbids him to become a mere instrument of Time. On the battlefield, he carries himself with a vicious elegance and self-assurance that has seen him ascend to the top of both the social and military hierarchy. Therefore, when the Witches appear before Macbeth, revealing the future, they only reaffirm the warrior’s pride while furthering his perception of himself as a man of great destiny. He does not view the Sisters as evil agents of fate but as subordinates to his own greatness; they only speak of what he already knows to be true. Similarly, in Othello Iago only reflects the beliefs of Othello, thereby becoming a credible ally in the eyes of his commander. Othello is also a soldier and an extraordinary man, one who like Macbeth is not restrained by social and moral law. A soldier is “admired” for his “bravery” on the battlefield by society, one in which “bravery” is justified “cruelty” (Waith 262). The justification of murder has given Macbeth and Othello a heightened sense of elitism through social amnesty. Therefore, Macbeth and Othello do not distinguish the battlefield from society and politics. Macbeth views violence through his Machiavellian lens as necessary to obtain power; therefore, “death” and morality mean nothing to him (Waith 268). This society-given authority makes soldiers like Macbeth devoid of conscience since, like Niccolò Machiavelli’s Prince, a “conscience […] is irrelevant to political activity” and “impedes the acquisition of power” (Goehring 1527). Othello and Macbeth are not ordinary men who must adhere to the laws of society. When Barbantio requests that the senators hear of Othello transgressing social order, Othello welcomes the challenge. His heroic record and vanity give him assurance of his victory against Brabantio before the council (1.2.18-24; 31-32). Iago and the Weird Sisters only present alternative paths for the protagonists to choose.
Othello and Macbeth only follow the innate instincts that have made them both successful in the battlefields of war and society. Rather than recognize Time as an authority and his success as result of Fate, Macbeth views Time as a retainer and Fate as a woman that can be tamed by brute force: “A woman, and those wanting to hold her down and bully her” (Machiavelli 72). In order to defeat Fortune or Fate, a man must possess virtú in order to bend her to one’s will, since virtú represents both the ability to control the self and a “political man’s desire to challenge fortune and to impose his will on human affairs” (Goehring 1526). Macbeth demonstrates his unrelenting will in his attempt to kill Banquo’s legacy by killing his children. He attempts to rewrite history by tampering with the prophecies of the Weird Sisters, demonstrating his belief that he, too, stands beyond Time and space.
The attempt to control Time is evident through both the use of language and the manipulation of key events by Macbeth. In Act I, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth is the first to fall victim to Macbeth’s disruption of Time: “Thy letters have transported me beyond this ignorant present, I feel now the future in an instant” (56-58). Macbeth wants Time to skip, to bend it to his will, so he can “jump the life to come” (1.7.7). The Macbeths, too intoxicated with the idea of ascension, are living in the future, failing to realize that Time has begun its vengeance on them. The “rapid succession of events” that follows into “two action-packed nights” showcase that the “flow of Time” has been disrupted along with the Macbeths’ ability to sleep (Introduction 65). After Duncan’s murder, the Macbeths are in a state of perpetual disorientation where “sleep,” the source of human renewal, is taken away by Time. In essence, the plots to murder Duncan and Banquo cast them into a limbo of time. Evidence lies in the banquet scene in which the ghost of Banquo appears before Macbeth (3.4.42ff.). While the scene often is interpreted as Macbeth’s conscience working against him, one could argue that Macbeth is simply witnessing Time’s disorder in which Banquo is not the ghost of the deceased but a fusion of two separate timelines. Macbeth is haunted by the reality where Banquo still lives, while everyone else exists in the world Macbeth has created through his actions. Macbeth’s madness results from his mind being torn apart by two conflicting realities. Similarly, Lady Macbeth suffers her own purgatory by re-living the events of the murder in an endless cycle. Her body is present and tangible, yet her mind is trapped in stasis. Time denatures its flow to offset the unnatural acts caused by tyrannical men.
However, Time is incorrectly associated with liberation. Frank Kermode believes that Time is a benevolent power but a temporary prisoner of evil and an eventual emancipator of “virtue” (Foster 320). Evidence is found in Macduff’s proclamation that “time is free” as a result of the death of Macbeth, yet, Time, is the true “usurper” in the lives of men (5.9.21). Yet, Macduff views himself as an ally of time, and by assisting Malcolm in reclaiming the rightful order of kings, the world will once again “perform in measure, time and place” (5.9.39). However, Time’s fidelity is not guaranteed to Macduff. David Foster advises that one should remove the veil of optimism and view Time not only as Macbeth’s main adversary but as the enemy of mankind: “[W]e find that Macbeth is plagued by a persistent though largely unconscious impulse to take revenge on time itself, as the chief obstacle to the human will, as the very devil from which man must be redeemed” (324). The “will” that Foster refers to is the human desire of dominance, while the “obstacle” is the resentment of the will’s inability to move freely, which causes the will to rebel against the rules of Time. Macbeth cannot simply wait for Time and Fate to deliver his kingship. His will, or ego, will not allow him to be at the mercy of “chance,” to be a “slave” and “passively” wait for Time’s acknowledgement while his “mortal hands” can “actively” deliver the goods (328). In Macbeth exists a person whose determination exceeds his mortal shell. He does not want to be just the King of Scotland; he wants to be the king of kings, Time itself, immortal and everlasting.
Macbeth’s war against time reflects a poet’s desire for immortality. Kings and poets not only share the desire for eternal life, but a common enemy in Time. Both are forced to sit idly as Time strips everything they hold dear. Shakespeare’s Poet in the sonnets, like Macbeth, desperately attempts to hold onto a present that is quickly becoming the past. John Irwin argues, “All narration is to use the temporal medium of narration to take revenge against time, to use narration to get even with the very mode of narration’s existence in a daemonic attempt to prove that though the process of substitution and repetition, time is not really irreversible” (4). Irwin stresses that poetics is futile in its attempt to validate one’s existence. Since verse is an unnatural venture into denial, it can neither retain the past nor preserve the future. Similarly, in Shakespeare’s sonnets, the Poet hopes to conserve the beauty of his muse by sheer poetic will. Emily E. Stockard argues: “Presumably, the young man’s beauty shares this flaw of nature, since ‘every fair from fair sometimes declines.’ But when mutability is defined as a flaw, the ‘eternal lines’ of poetry can be said to make verse superior to nature’s ‘changing course’” (471). The laws of Time insist that beauty and power are only temporal, but Stockard’s analysis draws attention to the tempestuous personality of both nature and beauty that can be overcome by a Poet’s own mortal hand. Macbeth wields a sword while the Poet’s weapon is a pen, both instruments of immortality. Unlike the Poet, however, Macbeth does not want to be remembered in tales or scripture. He wants to usurp the usurper, Time, and rule over all existence.
While Hamlet and Macbeth share similar qualities, such as the theme of regicide and omnipresence of the supernatural, Hamlet and Macbeth differ in philosophies. Hamlet wants to be memorialized and celebrated upon his death because he is no longer wary of the untold future. He says, “When our deep plots do fall – and that should learn us / There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will” (5.2.9-11). Hamlet’s verse encapsulates the progression of maturity of the young prince since Act 3. He acknowledges the power of Time and Fate, displaying a self-control that Macbeth does not possess towards the end of the play. To be remembered will only taint his accomplishments, contradicting his wish to “mock the time with fairest show: / False face must hide what the false heart doth know” (1.7.94-95). The “false face” conceals the truth of his world, that kings are “slaves” and “fools” in the presence of Time (Foster 323).
Beyond the Machiavellian schemes of the protagonists, Macbeth is about the power of the human “Will.” The play demonstrates that the Will, like Time and Fate, is an immovable force. A rational being has the power to Will inclinations into reality, making horrors justifiable and desires a mandate. Therefore, Time and Fate are the chief conspirators against the human Will, as they regulate the Will through the inevitability of mortality.
It is not that humans fear Time because it decides their Fate. It is Time and Fate that are wary of humanity, for humanity’s Will has no bounds. Unlike their mortal shells, the Will looks to conquer everything in its path, even the gods themselves.
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