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Shakespeare and the criminal mind (through the play Macbeth)

Many ascertain that prisons across the globe are filled with people who think like the criminals found in Shakespeare (Bates, 2015) and there are many who believe Shakespeare’s canon largely addresses crime and its accountability. If this is true, then a reading of Shakespeare’s presentation of the criminal mind is important in understanding how and to a lesser extent why (as there is often no one reason why people commit crime) criminals in Shakespeare’s plays violate human rights. This affords the opportunity to analyse what lessons these depictions may be able to provide to participants of applied theatre projects who are accessing criminal characters in order to transform. Against a background of Renaissance resources and an investigative interrogation of the Elizabethan and Jacobean environments that influenced Shakespeare’s presentation of crime, the criminal mind will be explored.

Throughout Shakespeare’s plays ‘the reader is struck by the great number of crimes of different kinds that are part of the tragic structure’ (O’Hood, 1972). Obvious criminal behaviour can be seen throughout his canon of work. Thieves, rogues and vagabonds are found in Timon of Athens. Forgery, embezzlement and false pretence can be found

156 in Richard III, and adultery is found in Cymberline and The Winter’s Tale.18 _{It would be}

beyond the remit of this thesis to consider all of the criminals found in Shakespeare’s work however it is acknowledged that of the more serious crimes Goll (1938, p.492) selects six criminal types from Shakespeare’s plays and explains that:

‘In Brutus and Cassius he gives us what he terms the political criminal, Macbeth he presents as the man of ambition, while Lady Macbeth, as a type of the woman criminal, does not commit crime for her own benefit, but to elevate her husband to power, in Richard III, we have the born criminal, due in some way to his deformity; and as for Iago, he is the personification of the criminal of pure malice’.

Criminals therefore exist in a range of social, religious, governmental, business, military and familial settings and a range of Shakespearean criminals are seen to plan and commit crime for a range of reasons- always criminal in nature- but linked to ideas of political power and/or rivalry, war, revenge, murder, ambition and betrayal.

There is a long history of using Shakespeare’s literature ‘for pleasure and instruction’ (Ko, 2014), however one of the complications of this area of practice is founded in the extent to which Shakespeare’s characters are used in applied theatre to capture moral lessons and promote transformation as this:

‘interpretive tradition has sometimes found the tension between straight moral instruction and sympathy for evil difficult to reconcile. This difficulty clearly gets ratcheted up in unpredictable ways when actual inmates who are in prison for violent crimes, including murder, perform [something similar] in prison’ (Ko, 2014).

18 _{Although they are false charges, the charge of infidelity takes a leading part in Shakespearean}

157 The importance here lies in questioning whether complex characters the likes of Shakespeare’s criminals are helpful in promoting transformation amongst communities exploring his play texts, or whether in fact further damage can ensue when exploring or re-exploring the mind of a criminal. The implications here are not only specific to the historical implications of the play text, but also hold significance within the often therapeutic intentions of applied theatre projects (See 7.1). Therefore it is important within the consideration of this chapter to be consistently mindful of the tensions that play a role when exploring Shakespeare’s criminals for the purpose of moral instruction and transformation.

Although Lady Macbeth does not physically commit a crime, and is regarded as an ‘accessory before and after the act’, her explicit articulation of criminal behaviour and intent are some of the most intense and detailed of any of the criminal characters within Shakespeare’s canon (Orten, 2003). Her thoughts and interactions regarding criminal behaviour are referenced throughout her monologues and soliloquies and appear to point to a very specific crime that can only be fully understood in relation to its historical placement and significance. This is the crime of patrilineal castration and its links to maternal agency, patrilineal identity and infanticide which are consumed in Lady Macbeth and presented throughout her soliloquies. The purpose of this chapter is to therefore establish an understanding of how Lady Macbeth’s interactions with these crimes help to present an explicit interaction with issues that are firmly embedded within Renaissance history. The reading will also demonstrate that although applied theatre projects present Shakespeare’s characters as a tool to explore moral change and promote instructive transformation, the lessons are limited if they only seek the similarities to today’s understanding of crime, and may be

158 dangerous for a participant if the issues are not explored from a safe distance away from their personal experiences.

Lady Macbeth’s character throughout the play is attached to chaos, both political and social, but she does not attempt to seize masculine power instead she follows the female construct that means she does not lift a dagger but is able to consider criminal behaviour in explicit detail. At a time in history where patrilineal order was to be rigorously maintained, and masculine anxiety regarding the power of the female in relation to maternal authority existed, the character of Lady Macbeth speaks clearly to her Renaissance audience in regards to their cultural fears. Chamberlain states that ‘although many academics have read Lady Macbeth’s invocations relating to maternity and motherhood as a desire to seize masculine power; her power is in fact conditioned on maternity, an ambiguous, conflicted status in early modern England’ (2005, p.73) and ‘perhaps no other Shakespearean character better represents the threat of maternal agency than she does’ (Chamberlain, 2005, p.79).

In Act One, Scene Five upon receiving Macbeth’s letters before his return from war, Lady Macbeth is so encouraged by the letter’s contents that she summons spirits:

‘That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood.

Stop up the access and passage to remorse, That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances

You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark To cry “Hold, hold!”

159 In very quick succession throughout the speech Lady Macbeth subverts the early modern period’s expectation of motherhood. Within this speech alone she asks for her milk to be ‘turned to gall’, ‘to be ‘unsexed’, and for her body to be filled ‘from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty’ (Shakespeare, 1991, 1.5, pp.849-850). Two significant things are referenced within her speech. Firstly, Shakespeare mentions breastfeeding, which was regarded by the early modern period as a fundamental and biological trait of woman, and then Lady Macbeth turns it into something evil. Secondly, Lady Macbeth asks to be unsexed so that her body is unable to reproduce, again a subversion of female expectation but simultaneously a suggestion that would put a stop to Macbeth’s lineage. Garber (1997, p.154) explains that ‘heirs are important to political as well as social outcomes is too apparent throughout this play […] the play is as urgently concerned with dynasty, offspring and succession as any in Shakespeare’. Shakespeare therefore plays on the cultural fears of his audience that are different to those held today.

Lady Macbeth’s second speech goes even further in referencing her criminal thoughts. She states:

[...] I have given suck, and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me. I would, while it was smiling in my face,

have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this.

(Shakespeare, 1991, 1.7, p851)

Although this is a speech predominantly interpreted as a method to persuade her husband to murder King Duncan, the references in her speech to motherhood and

160 infanticide cannot be underestimated or ignored. They again link to specifically-placed cultural fears and Sokol and Sokol (2000, p.233) explain that historically:

‘No other early modern crime better exemplifies cultural fears about maternal agency than infanticide, a crime against both person and lineage. Treated as a sin in medieval England, one punishable through ecclesiastical penance, infanticide, by the early modern period, had been deemed a criminal offence, one punishable by hanging’.

Lady Macbeth is seen in the image of a lactating mother who goes on to brutally kill her baby. This use of juxtaposition is important in showing the:

‘loving image of nurturing mother […] which immediately gives way to one of absolute horror, as a demonic mother butchers her yet-smiling infant […] that this savagery surfaces at a moment of greatest intimacy between mother and child only adds to its incomprehensible brutality (Chamberlain, 2005, p.82)

It matters little whether Lady Macbeth actually ever nursed children, it is more prevalent that ‘Lady Macbeth uses and appeals to the maternal [by] calling up the chilling image of infanticide’ (Chamberlain, 2005, p.81). This may be referencing the cases of infanticide that led to the ‘1624 Infanticide Act which made it a criminal offense to secretly bury or conceal the death of their [lewd women’s] children’ (Fletcher, 1995, p.277). Between 1558 and 1688 there were 230 recorded cases of infanticide (Spence, 2010). The play Macbeth was written in 1606 by which point the rate of infanticide was 3 per 100,000 (Sokol and Sokol, 2000, p.236). What is interesting about this figure is that ‘the passage of the 1624 statute that targeted infanticide represents unusually severe punishment, and the exceptionally high execution rate for convicted infanticides that punctuated the seventeenth century’ (Copeland, 2008, p.16) appears at odds with the low number of crimes being committed. This is significant as it highlights not necessarily how common infanticide was as a criminal

161 act, but rather how significant the fear of the population was in attempting to control maternal agency, whilst simultaneously fearing it. Maternal agency is explored throughout the speech and suggests that Shakespeare is attempting to ‘reveal much […] about the early modern anxiety surrounding mother’s roles in the perpetuation of patrilineage’ (Copeland, 2008, p.16). Botelho (2008, p.114) suggests that ‘murder and the forgetting of maternal duty serve as a way for any women to resist or subvert subordination or confinement’. Her empowerment is instead based on the dependent:

‘Loving relationship with the one she will shortly slaughter: a lamb sacrifice. That a mother could lovingly nurture her infant one moment and spill his brains the next underscores the uncertainties; if not the danger of unchecked maternal agency’ (Chamberlain, 2005, p.82).

Other literature of the period is not the only source demonstrating the subject of power through mothering; historical sources also depict ‘the fear of, fascination with, and hostility toward maternal power in early modern England’ (Dolan, 1994, p.283). One aspect of this power links to the assurances of matrilineal identity, of which the father lacks similar assurances. The most important aspect of this power however is the ability for a woman to undermine and/or control the patrilineal process. Chamberlain (2005, p.77) states:

‘the infanticidal mothers represented in the assize records are all Lady Macbeths, who would lightly dash out the brains of the babes entrusted to their care […] In doing so, these accounts communicate existing early modern anxieties about the inherent dangers of maternal agency both to helpless children as well as to the patrilineal system dependent upon women for its perpetuation’.

Therefore, Lady Macbeth ‘embodies both her society’s expectations and its anxieties about motherhood by showing motherhood to be at once empowering and destructive’ (Staub, 2000, p.345). Shakespeare therefore uses Lady Macbeth’s speech to evoke

162 fear in the audience which is relative to early modern England’s desire to protect patrilineal rights. Ultimately by dashing the babe’s brains, ‘Lady Macbeth is happy to kill Macbeth’s progeny to secure his succession; but in killing the progeny she must likewise destroy his patrilineage, rendering his short-lived reign a baron one’ (Chamberlain, 2005, p.82).

The role of Lady Macbeth as evil is clear, but the clarity is only absolute when it is regarded in the historical vernacular in which the play was created. As Adelman (1987, p.105) observes ‘the play becomes […] a representation of primitive fears about male identity and autonomy itself, about those looming female presences who threaten to control one’s mind, to constitute one’s very self, even at a distance’. By using infanticide Shakespeare highlights how Lady Macbeth may be able to ‘undermine patrilineal outcomes’. Therefore, although Lady Macbeth never wields the dagger, it is her infanticidal fantasy that culminates in Macbeth brooding upon the disappearance of his name (Burnett, 2002). Chamberlain (2005, p.83) forces forward the point that:

‘It is this loss of name, of a protected patrilineal identity that proves so destructive to this man who would be the father of kings. For what Lady Macbeth’s frightening maternal agency renders is not a coveted line, but rather a barren reign, one which quickly disintegrates when confronted by legitimate political authority’.

Lady Macbeth’s crimes are not water tight, although appearing indifferent to her insinuations of infanticide:

‘what she fails to notice is what will become of her husband given the failure to produce a living heir […] at no point does she express a concern for Macbeth’s extinguished patrilineage […] and merely cautions ‘what’s done is done’’ (Chamberlain, 2005, p.84).

163 It is this indifference which is bred from the negative impact maternal agency provided early modern England, which aroused cultural fears regarding the patrilineal process and thus makes Lady Macbeth one of the most feared criminals in Renaissance England.

Taking into consideration the ideas of maternal agency, patrilineal identity and lineage, and infanticide the extent of Lady Macbeth’s crimes can be understood. It is clear that a historical reading of the work is needed when exploring this character’s thoughts on crime, as the true extent of her evil is only comprehended when an understanding of cultural fears and traditions are explored. It has been important therefore to undertake an historical and critical reading of Lady Macbeth generally and her references to crime specifically. This may be the case for a range of characters accessed as part of applied theatre. Therefore, one must use the lessons of this play cautiously and tread carefully when suggesting that Shakespeare’s plays can provide transformative encounters when engaging with the lessons of the work, as such lessons are complex and can remain tied to beliefs pervasive during the Renaissance which are different from our own.

The findings of this chapter will be drawn upon more specifically in chapter eight, which brings together the provocations of practice that will be informed by all of the plays analysed alongside the method of new historicism and Brecht’s historicisation and verfremdungseffekt.