Banquo's Ambition

Whoever first suggested that Banquo is a ‘Good’ man obviously did not engage with this speech:

Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,
As the weird women promised, and, I fear,
Thou play'dst most foully for't: yet it was said
It should not stand in thy posterity,
But that myself should be the root and father
Of many kings. If there come truth from them--
As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine--
Why, by the verities on thee made good,
May they not be my oracles as well,
And set me up in hope? But hush! no more.

Now let’s be clear that, just like Macbeth, Banquo has selfish ambition: he wants to believe that the witches might truly be able to ‘set [him] up in hope’.

The energy of the openly ambitious thought which starts in line three ('yet it was said...') - and runs through to the final line ('...in hope?') - is akin to anything that Macbeth experiences when under the witches spell.  And then there is the urgent need for secrecy which follows; Banquo is as ensnared as Macbeth ever was.

 

And look at the use of rhythm:

• in line seven the iambic rhythm offers a natural focus on the syllable 'up' of 'upon' - almost splitting the sound into two words where the first one ('up') is all about Macbeth's higher status (indicative of Banquo's jealousy?);
• in the final line the rhythm of 'up on' is echoed in the words 'up in' - and draws a direct auditory parallel between Macbeth and Banquo;
• And then, again in the final line, there is the iambic rhythm which leads to emphasis on the word ‘hope’ – a positive, almost religious, concept which is here inspired by the machinations of the evil witches. The irony highlights Banquo's darker side.

And, if you return to consider his intended meanings, it becomes very clear that Banquo is absolutely not a religious goodie-goodie who believes that evil must be rejected per se; this is a man who – despite his words on the heath – is quite prepared to accept anything the forces of Evil put his way.  In short, he is as unscrupulous as Macbeth and – arguably – no more trustworthy.

For we are obliged to note that Banquo clearly has strong suspicions concerning Macbeth’s actions but he has so far done – and will henceforth do – nothing about them.

The strength of his suspicions can surely be in no doubt - he has, after all, been given all the pieces of the puzzle that are needed to know Macbeth’s guilt:

·         He knows Macbeth well,

·         He is the only one who met the witches with Macbeth,

·         He is aware of something of Macbeth’s mood in the moments before the murder, and,

·         On the morning after the murder, he was there to witness all Macbeth’s dubious ‘innocent’ acting. 

So when exactly did Banquo decide that Macbeth might have played ‘most foully’?  Unless you think he has only just put two and two together in this speech (which I don’t) then it has to have been some time before he speaks these words. Before the coronation, in other words.

So why has Banquo not spilled the beans?  Because he is too cowardly to speak up?  Or perhaps because he is secretly keen to see if Macbeth will become King because – if he does – that increases the likelihood of Banquo becoming father to a line of kings.

In other words, it is quite possible that Banquo says nothing because of his own secret ambition - ambition which Shakespeare allows because he has no thought in his head that Banquo is intrinsically ‘Good’.

And let’s face it – is Banquo’s secrecy any better than Macbeth’s who, at least, shares his darker thoughts with the audience the minute he has them?

The fact is that we are not meant to mourn for Banquo.  He is not a ‘Good’ man. He is a soldier, like Macbeth, and – like Macbeth – he carries human ambitions and desires in his soul.

This is not to say he is a ‘bad’ man either.  He is simply human.  And this is why – when he dies (as die he must) – he is condemned to walk the world again in purgatory.  If he was in any way a ‘saint’, this fate would not befall him.

In summary, it is easy to see how appealing the argument must be that says ‘Banquo was an ancestor of James I - who was effectively one of Shakespeare’s patrons when the play was written - so therefore Banquo must be presented as a Goodie’. But this is quite simply a fallacy and no-one should be misled into thinking it has any relevance to Shakespeare’s play.

Banquo is not the Good man in this play.  (Macduff, incidentally, is).

Banquo is just a man, with his own ambitions and desires and faults (and strengths) – who gets caught in the wrong place at the wrong time… outdone by one of his peers in the battle for survival.

He is an interesting character.  He has some intriguing features.

But Banquo is categorically not ‘Good’.

Macbeth's Secret

When Macbeth is in discussion with the murderers, he explains why he cannot kill Banquo himself.

... though I could

With barefaced power sweep him from my sight
And bid my will avouch it, yet I must not,
For certain friends that are both his and mine,
Whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall
Who I myself struck down; and thence it is,
That I to your assistance do make love,
Masking the business from the common eye
For sundry weighty reasons.

It is a paltry explanation, based on no more than ‘sundry weighty reasons’.  But at its heart is an implicit belief that the act must be kept secret.  Secrecy is vital in Macbeth’s mind.

But why?

We know that in Duncan’s Scotland there was a constant threat to all kings and leaders from those who would-be king.  These threats – as in the start of the play – were effected and acted out through combat and a physical fight for supremacy.

Macbeth, it would seem, is fantastic at fights for supremacy – he is fearless and strong; a fantastic soldier and fighter.

So what’s with the secrecy?

Perhaps Lady Macbeth encourages secrecy because she understands that her husband is not going to have enough popular support if he tries to make himself King by open means.  Perhaps she believes that no-one will accept him as king unless he appears to be crowned by divine providence and that, since this is a lie, he must keep the truth secret.

But for Macbeth to give in to fear is a flaw; as a soldier, he should stand up for what he believes in.  And he says as much when he recognises that ‘against the murderer I should bar the door, not bear the knife myself.  Yet still he goes ahead with a secretive murder instead of either an honest defence of the king or an open coup d’etat.

Macbeth WANTS to be king.  But he is afraid of doing the necessary thing to make him King.  He is afraid of taking control and challenging the status quo as a soldier and a leader.  So he tries to avoid conflict by taking the crown secretly so that no-one realises he has taken it.

It is not only foolish, it is the act of a coward; Macbeth, the Thane of Cawdor, is a coward.  The anagram fits, and it fits because - ironically - the soldier has sought to avoid the battlefield.

Left to his own devices Macbeth would have to decide whether to overthrow Duncan in battle or stay loyal to him in peace; either would be courageous for a soldier.

His wife, however, presents him with a third way.  A doomed way.  A way that destroys him.

The path of secrecy is not one that comes naturally to Macbeth, the great soldier; it is a path that he is not comfortable with – at any stage.  However great he might be as King - and there is much evidence that he might not be too poor in the role if he stood up and claimed it openly - it is the secrecy which destroys him, not the crown.

By taking the path of secrecy he undermines everything he is.  And only in the final moments of the play does he reclaim his proper self by throwing his armour on and standing up to be counted on the battlefield.  Only in the final moments of the play does he eschew secrecy and walk out into the light.

There are many keys to understanding The Tragedy of Macbeth.  Secrecy is one of them.

 

Two Daggers - One Macbeth

There are two ways of playing the dagger scene in Macbeth - Stanislavskian and non-Stanislavskian.

In the Stanislavski version, of course, the actor is absorbed in the world of the play and really only sees the dagger and the space around him.  He literally 'speaks his thoughts aloud' and the audience overhears them from outside the scene.

This is the way this scene has been played in every production I have seen of the play.

But there is an alternative mode of playing the scene.  In this non-Stanislavki version, the actor asks the audience a direct question: 'Is this a dagger I see before me?'  Of course it is not necessary for the actor to be looking directly at the audience as he says this specific set of words, for he can quite naturally speak to the audience while still looking at the dagger.  But at some point he will definitely break his eye contact with the dagger to look out into the audience to see/hear their reaction to his question.  And this is how the scene develops: the actor explores the issue of the dagger's appearance in full sight of the audience and with a clear line of communication between him and them.

Perhaps the skill of the actor and the choices made in terms of focus/eye level - more so than in the Stanislavski version - will determine the tone of this speech, but the effect will be quite different to that other version.  For now the audience is not overhearing from outside; now the audience is INSIDE the scene with the actor.  Now the audience have an immediate presence which - strikingly - makes them complicit in the drama.

When we tested these two modes of playing - in schools - by offering up the soliloquy performed in both styles, we found interesting results.  Firstly, there was a predictable reaction based on which version the (inexperienced) students saw first.  For, whichever order we played them in, the "first seen" was invariably the one judged to be most effective by the students (generally GCSE) - as if they could not adapt to the second once they had seen the effectiveness of the first.  But there was a different response among their more experienced teachers: here the clear favourite was the non-Stanislavskian version.  And the accompanying comments were common:

 

'I have not seen it played like that before'

'It was so much more immediate'

'It was more emotional'

'It was more effective as drama'.

 

 

The trouble is that we have become so used to seeing Stanislavskian acting in our theatres that we appear to have almost forgotten that there really is another form of acting - and one which predates Stanislavski by millennia.  Confronting modern audiences with both forms demonstrated that Stanislavski is definitely not the only way and, quite probably, is not even the best way.

 

But which of these two versions was best for the actor?  I can answer that from personal experience as I was, on many occasions, the actor in question...

 

Firstly, I found that the Stanislavskian version was tremendously technical - for I had to maintain a wholly unnatural thread of emotional angst across a whole speech - but it allowed me to make all the decisions myself.  In other words I was the boss of the speech and could decide where to go next and then fly there (e.g. I often felt the emotion driving me towards smashing my fist on a table at a climactic moment, so I would give in to that urge and enjoy the emotional intensity which followed). 

 

But the non-Stanislavski version was entirely different.  For now I was NOT the boss of the speech; the situation was.  And the situation involved the audience, the dagger, the other people off-stage at the 'feast', and more.  Now I never felt an emotional urge to bang my fist on a table, but I often did still bang my fist on the table!  Why?  Because the action of banging the fist was now an attempt to change the situation; to shake off the madness which was clearly in danger of envelopping me.

 

Two versions, of one speech, in which I would usually bang my fist on a table.  But this action in each version - from its cause to its execution to its aftermath - was wholly distinct.  In the first, it was driven by emotion, shaped by my embrace of that emotion and expressed that emotion; in the other, it was driven by a situation, shaped by my attitude to the situation and it changed the situation... however briefly.

 

And there were other differences too.  But none more unexpected than my discovery of a simple, theatrical, truth: moving round the stage, in the Stanislavski version, as I worked to communicate to the audience my state of emotional angst (and, by their reactions, my work was pretty convincing) seemed somehow unclean; a petty lie.  But moving round the stage exploring the immediate current situation - a situation in which we all knew the audience existed as much as I did - seemed not only pure but a play in which all the roles offered cathartic opportunity.

 

For we were collectively journeying through a shared experience and my contribution as the actor was far more open, generous and imaginative than Stanislavski allowed me to be.