Macbeth: Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow; thy nature is too full of the milk of human kindness

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Macbeth

    A powerful, disturbing meditation on guilt, retribution, ego and the lust for power.   For added measure, there are some thoughts on marital manipulation and gender issues included but it requires some sang froid to read this as a male.  I can’t help thinking that the violence I see and resist on TV, as much as I decrie it, is as relevant and ubiquitous today as it was 400 years ago.  Fargo, House of Cards, Game of Thrones pale in comparison…everything, that is, except The Andy Griffith Show.  I guess these shows are in actuality reality TV.   A portrayal of our human condition with all its myriad manifestions. 

     Despite the depth of these dark, Dantesque emotions, I still find gems of wonder and humor unsurpassed in all of literature for their elegant eloquence:   alcohol that increases the desire but decreases the performance; sleep that “knits up the raveled sleave of care;”  wife and children as “strong knots of love;” my struggles as a physician so elegantly summed up as I pursue that “sweet oblivious antidote” so that I can  “pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, raze out the written troubles of the brain;” the sometimes unanswerable pathos of life (“tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury”)  and the goal of old age (“honor, love, obedience, troops of friends”).   It is well worth the ride reading this tragedy and experiencing “life’s fitful fever.”

Vocabulary

Avaricious, lily-livered, rhubarb (as medication)

Quotes:

“Yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness.”  Lady Macbeth to Macbeth.  1.5.16-17

“The moon is down.”  Fleance.  2.1.2

“I have done the deed.”  Macbeth.  2.2.19

“ – the innocent sleep

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”  Macbeth.  2.2.49-52

 

 “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? “  Macbeth.  2.2.78-79

“drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things.

nose-painting (drinking), sleep, and urine.

Lechery, sir, it provokes and unprovokes. 

It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. 

…it sets him on, and it takes him off.”  Porter to MacDuff.  2.3.25-34

 

“What’s done is done.”  Lady Macbeth.  3.2.14

“life’s fitful fever”  Macbeth.  3.2.26

“Double, double, toil and trouble.

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”   Three Witches.  4.1.10-11

…wife and child… those strong knots of love.”  Malcolm.  4.3.33-34

 

“…avaricious, false, deceitful,

Sudden, malicious, smacking of every sin.”  Malcolm speaking of Macbeth.  4.3.71-72

 

“…as a sauce to make me hunger more.”  Malcolm.  4.3.96-97

(Similar to Cervantes’ ‘hunger is the best sauce’ from Don Quixote)

 

“Uproar the universal peace, confound

All unity on earth.”  Malcolm.  4.3.15-116

“Yet who would have thought the old man

to have had so much blood in him?”  Lady Macbeth.  5.1.41-42

 

“Here’s the smell of the blood still.  All the perfume of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.  O, O,O!”  Lady Macbeth.  5.1.53-55

“More needs she the divine than the physician.”  Doctor about Lady Macbeth.  5.2.78

 

“Those he commands move only in command,

Nothing in love.”  Angus about Macbeth.  5.2.22-23

 

“And that which should accompany old age,

As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends.”  Macbeth.  5.3.28-29

 

“Cant thou not minister to a mind diseased,

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

Raze out the written troubles of the brain,

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart?”  Macbeth to the Doctor about Lady Macbeth.

“Therein the patient must minister to himself.”  Doctor’s reply.   5.3.50-57

 

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.  Out, out, brief candle!”

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more.  It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”  Macbeth, upon hearing of Lady Macbeth’s death.  5.5.22-31

“we’ll die with harness on our back.”  Macbeth.  5.5.59