The royal disease in Scotland,

a look into the theme of the unnatural in Macbeth

Octavio Prez Snchez

In Shakespeares play, Macbeth, many of the images and symbols are divided into pairs, often

opposites, and by means of these dualities is that the play advances through its tragic events. One of the

main themes that runs throughout Macbeth, which is also dual in its essence, is that of the natural as

opposed to the unnatural, and how the intervention of the latter may be a trigger for chaotic events. In

the case of Shakespeares play, both these elements are expressed, at least in part, by means of the

imagery and symbols used by the characters in their speech. There are some characters, such as King

Duncan, whose speech is infused by pastoral images. On the other hand, the witches diction and actions

are more inclined towards ambiguity and the unnatural. Macbeth is situated between these two poles,

and when he yields to his ambition and kills Duncan to usurp his place, a corruption is triggered that

spreads throughout the play and that ultimately leads towards Macbeths tragic fall.

This sickness, as it appears in the play, is also dual. On the one hand, it is a sickness that takes

hold of Macbeths mind (and of Lady Macbeths mind as well). However, this chaos, as it is triggered

by thoughts of ambition and murder, and as it takes place within the mind of these characters, is an

internal one. But in the play the sickness spreads externally as well as internally. The setting, in

addition to being the struggle within Macbeths mind, is also the kingdom of Scotland. This, together

with the fact that the ownership of the crown is central to the play, demands for an additional symbolic

interpretation; that of the king as a keeper of the wellbeing and natural order of his land, and whose

corruption can be a trigger for disease spreading throughout the kingdom. In this present work, I will

analyse some examples of speech in some of the characters of the play, as well as some of its events, in

an attempt to demonstrate the role that this theme has in it.

 The play opens with thunder and lightning and the appearance of the three witches. These

seemingly supernatural beings speak in riddles. In the first scene, they gather and agree to meet When

the battles lost and won (Shakespeare, 1.1.4); and before exiting the stage they chant that Fair is foul

and foul is fair (1.1.12). They are the first agents of duality to appear, as both their speech and their

appearance seem ambiguous. They are agents of the unnatural. This can be seen when they gather

again; one of them says that she had been killing swine (1.3.2). The natural, which is embodied

throughout the play in the form of the pastoral language of planting, harvesting and taking care of

cattle, is thus transgressed here. Then, when Macbeth and Banquo appear on stage, while the former

says that So foul and fair a day I have not seen (1.3.36), unknowingly echoing the language of the

witches, Banquo instead asks

What are these,

So withered and so wild in their attire,

That look not like thinhabitants othearth,

And yet are ont? Live you, or are you aught

That man may question?

[] you should be women,

And yet your beards forbid me to interpret

That you are so. (1.3.37-44)

Unlike Macbeth, he doesnt echo their language, but instead finds himself unable to interpret them. To

him, the witches are not like thinhabitants othearth, that is, they are unnatural, seemingly both

male and female (which is something they share with another of the agents of the unnatural, Lady

Macbeth). When he asks to be told about his future, after the witches announced that Macbeth will

become king, he asks them in a language related to farming to look into the seeds of time / And say

which grain will grow and which will not (1.3.56-57)

 Even though the plays opens with the witches, with the unnatural, and their presence is of great

importance throughout the first act, the setting of the play, in the kingdom of a Scotland ruled by king

Duncan, is equally important. Duncan, whose speech is also infused with images of farming, is the first

agent of nature to appear in the play. Marjorie Garber, in her book Shakespeare after all, comments on

this:

Duncan is for this play the opposite of the witches and of Lady Macbethhe is a benevolent

figure of order and trust, evoked regularly and insistently in images of light and of fertility

associated with the land. (Garber, 569)

Indeed, his speech has nothing of the ambiguity present in the witches, being direct and simple, and a

reflection of the natural. When Duncan first sees Macbeth, he says to him, as if he were a farmer and

Macbeth the crop,

Welcome hither.

I have begun to plant thee and will labour

To make thee full of growing. (Shakespeare, 1.4.27-29)

When Duncan includes Banquo in his praises, the latter again speaks in that same manner;

There if I grow,

The harvest is your own. (1.4.32-33)

It is noteworthy to mark that not only are both Banquo and Duncan agents of the natural, but they are

also characters associated to the crown; Duncan being the rightful king and Banquo having been

foretold by the witches that he will father a line of kings (which is said to follow down to King James I,

the king of England and Scotland at the time of the play being written). Other characters thus

associated to the crown are Duncans rightful heir, Malcolm, who I will discuss later, and Macbeth;

although I maintain that, in killing Duncan, Macbeth becomes an agent of the unnatural and thus unfit

to be the king.
 I say this because, as I mentioned before, the king can be seen symbolically as the keeper of the

natural order in the kingdom. To justify this argument, I will make a brief mention of J.G. Frazers

work, The Golden Bough. In it, Frazer gathers many examples of the beliefs and superstitions of

pastoral communities throughout Europe, for he claims that

In spite of their fragmentary character the popular superstitions and customs of the peasantry

are by far the fullest and most trustworthy evidence we possess as to the primitive religion of

the Aryans. (Frazer, viii)

And it is this, and other primitive religions that are the focus of his work. In them, he says, there were

several instances of kings being an incarnation of the god of nature, and also of practices in which the

king was put to death and his killer would become his successor. I find that this is of importance when

discussing Macbeth, for many of the symbols that appeared in those old practices, namely the

relationship between the wellbeing of king and country, and that of the killer of a king taking his place,

are echoed throughout the play. As theses beliefs have been preserved by popular culture, mainly in

vegetation rituals and in peasant superstitions which are common up until this day, and even more so in

Shakespeares time, I think it is not much of a stretch to suppose a relationship between the symbols of

the play and primitive religion is possible.

I will begin by addressing the first of these symbols, the one related to the role of the king.

According to Frazer, in ancient cultures the subsistence of the world, as well as the weather and fertility

of the land and cattle, and in general, the prosperity of the community, was thought to depend on a

spirit of vegetation, or god of nature. When this god later was believed to come incarnate in a person,

making him a human-god, or a king, the same subsistence was transferred into him and believed to be

dependent on his wellbeing. Frazer says that, in the eyes of the primitive man, the king is seen

as the dynamical centre of the universe, from which lines of force radiate to all quarters of

the heaven; so that any motion of his the turning of his head, the lifting of his hand

instantaneously affects and may seriously disturb some part of nature. He is the point of
 support on which hangs the balance of the world; and the slightest irregularity on his part

may overthrow the delicate repose. (110)

The king, then, was a preserver of the natural order. He was thought, according to Frazer, to provide

rain and fertility and thus was seen as the father figure of the community. This then evolved into the

belief that the kingdom was a reflection on the king, and that if the king was not well, his country

would suffer in kind. In Macbeth, this parallelism is seen clearly.

If the kingdom is a reflection of the king, as Frazer said, then Duncan is reflected in the

situation of his country. He is a king whose benevolence is paired with naivety, and the situation of the

kingdom is that of an uprising against him which was made possible because of the treason of a trusted

man to the crown, the Thane of Cowdor. Duncan says of him that He was a gentleman on whom I

built / An absolute trust (Shakespeare, 1.4.13-14). As was mentioned earlier, the king is symbolically

a father figure of the community, hence treason against him is an example of metaphorical parricide,

only one of the many which appear throughout the play. As Marjorie Garber states in her book

Shakespeare after all,

The theme of killing the father, whether parricide or regicide, is everywhere in Macbeth.

Parents killed by children, and also children killed by parents. The play presents, as an

emblem of the socially unnatural, a pair of fictive parricides. (Garber, 580)

Then, as parricide is an emblem of the socially unnatural, the Thane of Cowdor, through his actions,

becomes an agent of the unnatural. And after he is declared a traitor and sentenced to death, Duncan

rewards Macbeth with the traitors title and gives him his trust, which again will be abused. Macbeth,

who was already in conflict of whether to fold to the unnatural influence of the witches (and later Lady

Macbeths), and to his own ambition (which in the play is also seen as unnatural), soon follows in the

steps of the previous Thane of Cowdor, and thus assassinates Duncan in his sleep to take the crown for

himself (note that this is another of the beliefs that Frazer discusses in his work, that of the successor

having to kill the king in turn to then take his place).

 This theme of the natural as opposed to the unnatural is enforced by the motif of blood, which

appears several times in the play and is also of a dual essence. Blood in Macbeth refers to both lineage

and murder; blood as in the issue of children, and the issue of blood as in bloodshed. As Garber says;

Where some have blood in the sense of family, issue, children, and lineage, others like

the childless Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have blood in the sense of bloodshed, ultimate

disorder rather than orderly sequence, death rather than life, the end of a line rather than a

line without end. (581)

In one way, blood is a natural symbol, associated with fertility and continuity of life. In the other, it is

an unnatural symbol, associated with death and corruption. Indeed, Frazer writes that one long standing

aversion in various cultures was for blood to be shed on the ground, in particular royal blood:

The explanation of the reluctance to shed blood on the ground is probably to be found in the

belief that the soul is in the blood, and that therefore any ground on which it may fall

necessarily becomes taboo. (Frazer, 183)

This is because bloodshed was considered unnatural. Frazer even adds examples in which some

communities refused to shed the blood of animals as well as of people. Therefore, if a king had to be

executed, this would be done by strangulation or by other means in which bloodshed was not involved.

And even if a non royal person was to be killed, it would be done over a platform or something

equivalent to avoid drenching the ground in blood. So when Macbeth, of whom Macduff says at one

point that He has no children (Shakespeare, 5.3.218), that is, he has no bloodline (which is natural),

and instead gets to the throne by means of spilling blood (which is unnatural), he becomes the king of a

diseased country. Malcolm describes this situation in saying,

I think our country is sinks beneath the yoke;

It weeps, it bleeds, and each new day a gash

Is added to her wounds. (4.3.39-41)

The kingdom, in being a reflection of the childless and blood-shedding Macbeth, has become a place of

death and corruption because of its unnatural king. And bloodshed becomes the main expression of the

unnatural in the play.

One character in whom this motif is expressed clearly is Lady Macbeth. She is a strong

character, also affiliated with the unnatural, who at one point asks the spirits that tend on mortal

thoughts to be unsexed (1.5.38-39), and who Macbeth himself sees so masculine as to ask her to

Bring forth men-children only, / For thy undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males

(1.7.72-74). When Macbeth assassinates Duncan and becomes ridden with guilt, Lady Macbeth tells

him that A little water clears us of the deed (2.2.70). However, later on, the guilt will catch up to her,

and at the beginning of the fifth act, it will overcome her. Lady Macbeth then turns into a ghostly figure

who sleepwalks around the castle, speaking to herself:

Out, damned spot! Out I say! [] Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much

blood in him? (5.1.30-34)

And also:

Heres the smell of blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

(5.1.42-43)

Lady Macbeths incapability of washing her hands becomes a symbol of her madness; and this same

madness that haunts Lady Macbeth haunts the king, whose torment he cannot shed. Garber comments

on both these things as well;

Duncan's principal symbols were light and fertility. In the sleepwalking scene these are

reversed, so that we have not fertile blood, progeny, but spilt blood, death; not day but night;

not sleep but wakefulness; not natural light but artificial light. [] The king's evil that

afflicts Macbeth is not so easily cured, because he is himself the sickness in the state, the

disease that must be purged. (Garber, 582)

The scene, then, with its incessant yet fruitless washing of hands, are reflected in the state of the

kingdom. The unnatural has set upon Scotland, and with it, guilt, madness and blood seem to be

everywhere, and they seem impossible to remove.

As I mentioned before, Malcolm is another one who, in addition to being an agent of the

natural, has a rightful claim to the throne besides Duncan and Banquo. He is one who, in the

apparitions that the witches invoke before Macbeth, is symbolized as a Child crowned, with a tree in

his hand, who prophesiezes that

Macbeth shall never vanquished be until

Great Birnam Wood to high Dunsinane hill

Shall come against him. (Shakespeare, 4.2.91-93)

That is, until Nature returns to the castle where Macbeth reigns. Indeed, it is Malcolm who makes this

happen. When he and Macduff are planning an invasion to Macbeths castle before Birnam Wood,

Malcolm comes up with a plan to hide their numbers, unaware that in doing so he is fulfilling the

prophesy of the third apparition:

Let every soldier hew him down a bough,

And beart before him; thereby shall we shadow

The numbers of our host and make discovery

Err in report of us. (5.5.4-7)

By these instruction, not only does Malcolm become the apparition of the crowned child with a tree in

his hand, but he also becomes an incarnation of the symbol of nature that returns to Dunsinane hill to

take back the crown and, in doing so, vanquishes the unnatural that was embodied in Macbeth (with the

help of Macduff, who is the one who actually kills Macbeth). This return of the natural is what cures

Scotland of its disease, and thus restores the natural order. At the end of the play, Malcolms speech in

which he calls for a restructuration in an attempt to restore it, similarly to Duncans and Banquos, has

the presence of natural imagery in it:

 My thanes and kinsmen,

Henceforth be earls, the first that Scotland

In such an honour named. Whats more to do

Which would be planted newly with the time,

[] By the grace of Grace

We will perform in measure, time, and place. (5.9.29-40)

Just as Duncan had done before him in the first act, Malcolm redistributes nobility titles and takes the

role of a farmer that will plant the measures that he needs to take in order to restore order to the

kingdom. In a similar fashion to what Duncan had said: I have begun to plant thee and will labour / to

make thee full of growing, Malcolm claims that these actions we will perform in measure, time, and

place. That is, in an ordered way, with the patience of a farmer, instead of rushing them as Macbeth

did.

Macbeth is a play in which the role of a king and the conflict generated between natural and

unnatural elements are of utmost importance. In it, many symbols appear which have been part of

European culture since primitive religions, and that strengthen the play, which remains valid even to

this day. It is a play of how the presence of the unnatural can corrupt a country. In it, the main character

begins the play in a state of heroism. However, the unnatural soon seduces him by means of the

prophesy he is given by the three witches and by the intervention of Lady Macbeth. This unnatural

element is expressed in the play in the form of ambition and bloodshed, and results in Macbeth

becoming an illegitimate king, and by means of it, the kingdom of Scotland, that under Duncan had

been a reflection of him (noble yet troubled by rebellion), becomes an unnatural setting under

Macbeths rule. Scotland, in becoming a reflection of Macbeth, who is both childless and bloody, turns

into a wasteland where corruption and blood spread like a disease. It is not until Malcolm, who is an

agent of the natural and the legitimate heir to the throne, returns to Scotland, bringing Nature back with
him (both literally and metaphorically, in the form of the boughs from Birnam Wood), that Macbeth

can be defeated by Macduff and the country restored to a natural order.

Bibliography

Frazer, J.G. The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, Vol.I. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1890.

Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare after all. New York: Anchor Books, 2005.

Shakespeare, William. MacbethThe New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1997.