“FAIR IS FOUL AND FOUL IS FAIR” – REVERSED ARCHETYPES IN SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH 

The intention of this article is to depict the archetypal patterns which are present in Shakespeare's Macbeth, with respect to the canon of Jungian literary criticism and more so, with personal accounts based on the frame of thought initiated by Carl Gustav Jung. In order that the analysis of the archetypes in relation to the characters of the play be succinct, there must be made a few accounts on what these (i.e. the archetypes) represent.

Archetypes are defined nowadays not only as meanings and symbols, but also as carriers of cultural implications forged in time at the humans' perception and creation fire, standing out as formed models on which knowledge of individuals' nature is based and which find a good lodging in the lines of a written work or another as well. In Humanities, these models, or prototypes as they were often called, have an established importance and have helped in understanding typologies of characters, especially through their representations in literature. Carl Gustav Jung and series of literary critics, have enlarged the view on these archetypes, the first by tracing the main lines/ characteristics of them and pointing a connection to literature, the latter by developing this connection, namely identifying the manifestation of these archetypal patterns in different pieces of literary creation.

More precisely, Jungian archetypes have been accepted largely as valid and rightfully connected to general representations of human character in its diversity, including in their embodiments found in literary characters. The pattern which an archetype carries “finds worldwide parallels, either in cultures (...)or in individuals (a child's concept of a parent as both heroic and tyrannic, superman and ogre).” ¹

In Jung's vision, these images and ideas are inherited on a subconscious level from our ancestors and preserved throughout generations, despite cultural or geographical separation, etc.

Through the concepts of archetypes, Jung marked thus a new vision in the literary criticism, based on these archetype structures, also known as archetypal criticism which connects literature with the “collective unconscious of the human race” (as he called it in his major work Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious ). Notable names in literary critique, such as Northrop Frye and Maud Bodkin, point at these archetypes as unifying elements in the sense that readers from different cultures and areas can relate to these archetypes (or motifs), breaking the barrier of differences when reading important works, such as the one in discussion in this paper (i.e. Macbeth).

In consequence, Jungian Literary criticism relates fiction and the symbols contained in them with the the mythical models pertaining to mankind's past, as being rooted in it. The manifestations of the collective unconscious in literature offers a perspective in examining the archetypes and their variations and Shakespeare's works abound in such archetypes explored in their evolution or involution by the Bard, embodied by characters of major complexity. The tragedies particularly, through their complex and strong characters offer the best possibilities for such identification, or echoes better said, some of the archetypes described by Jung, main or secondary.

My aim is to highlight these exact archetypes and their variations as mirrored in Shakespeare's Macbeth, following the categorization of the archetypes described by Jung : the Self, the Shadow, the Anima, the Animus, the Persona and some of their variations. Some of Shakespeare's darkest characters from the play portray a reversed image (archetype) that mustn't be neglected and that is stressed in what follows.

The Self, embodies the centre which regulates the psyche and coordinates the personal development of an individual. A person (or in this case, a literary character) is on archetypal level made up of all the archetypes and the sum of all learning which belongs to the collective unconscious, but it differs from other individualities through what defines it's own self (I). There's a interdependence between the existence of all the other archetypes and the Self, and they manifest through reciprocal influences. It may also represent the strive to an ideal individuality.

The most powerful Self in Shakespeare's play is Macbeth himself, who in his individuation is influenced by other archetypal characters (illustrating the interdependence between archetypes) and who proves himself the opposite to the ideal Self, reversing this archetype's characteristics.

Macbeth's individuation is most unnatural to what could mean ideal: in the beginning of the play he's shown as a noble general in the army, who proves himself brave and efficient in the battle, rewarded by King Duncan with another title which makes him the Thane of Cawdor ( the second scene of the first act) exactly as the witches had predicted to him before he met the King. That episode of most unnatural source awake in him the latent potential (the true nature of his id) of his true and dark self: he becomes the slave of witches' prediction and force events in order that his ascension as king produce, by assassinating King Duncan and taking the crown which is not rightfully his. He's in huge measure influenced (thus vulnerable and unstable) by his wife, lady Macbeth who wishes his ascension badly and sets him to the murder of the King. Ambition is the tragic flaw he carries and which led him to the discovery of the unideal, dark Self: greedy for power and with the ''support'' offered by his wife who poisons his head with twisted encouragements, he kills others as well with his hands or sends his men to do it (as in the case of Banquo and his son, Fleance, and also Macduff's entire family). He ruins all he has gotten already, by despising his good fortune and position:

“For brave Macbeth - well he deserves that name -
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,
And fix'd his head upon our battlements. “ (1.2.19) 

 

The interdependence of archetypes mentioned before appears in Macbeth's case in the form of evil influence: his reversed Anima (Lady Macbeth, who keeps his interest aroused for power, making appeal to his masculinity and lack thereof when he's doubtful) and the Shadow (the witches, who reveal his fate and set him the series of murders; the temptation to listen to them in fact, denote his real nature, the Shadow inside him who now had the opportunity to manifest: Macbeth serves as a fertile soil for the seeds of evil planted by the witches. Here opposes Banquo, who even if he had his share of prophecies of ascension, he doesn't take seriously what the witches have said to him about the fate of his kin, thus revealing a good nature, an invulnerable one).

Macbeth is not an isolated archetypal character of the Self in this play: his wife, Lady Macbeth follows him closely in a similar involution throughout the play; their opposite could be Malcolm, King Duncan's eldest son, who will restore the order of things as it will be shown in what follows.

The Shadow:

“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes. “ (4.1.43)

This archetype is identified with possibilities which lie within oneself, with traits that the ego doesn't identify with, but which doesn't cancel the Shadow's existence or the possibility that those deep within traits won't or can't manifest at some stage, if chance offered.

In full, the Shadow comes to life in Macbeth's case, his wife, Seton (the only remaining loyal officer in Macbeth's army, who commits crimes for him), even Malcolm (in his talk with MacDuff, when he's doubtful of his good nature and leaves in his speech come out some of the dark traits of character to be shown).

But representative for this archetype are the witches coven. The Three Witches are the strongest personification of negative feats, being identified with the evil and it could be said that their words/prophecies forged the cauldron in which brewed the most awful thoughts Macbeth had. They bring the unknown, the unmapped realm of future prophecies and superstitions, witchcraft and spells, irrational and uncontrollable; they connect this world with a world of spirits that allows imagination to interpretations of various degrees of evil. They are the personification of the Shadow:

“What are these,

So withered, and so wild in their attire,
That look not like th' inhabitants o' the earth,
And yet are on 't?” (1.3.39)

They bring out to those weak at heart and mind luring images of future through their language. “Fair is foul and foul is fair” (1.1.13) comes as a paradox as “evil speaks a pleasant language”, dragging Macbeth's mind to a territory most humans don't go, or let the Shadow take their minds, leading him to the fall from a status which brought him consideration ans respect. The Witches' knowledge of the truth is that bate with which Macbeth is caught up in the whirl of madness and frenzy for power, even if initially he seems only astounded by the words they speak and still oppose some resistance to unnatural creatures:

“What! can the devil speak true?” (1.3.107)

“And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray ’s
In deepest consequence. “(1.3.132)

The Witches use a cryptic language, one that does not have a mortal sound in its invocking:

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble. (4.1.10)

But the meaning of the language has double sense, and it does not allude to the pure truth, but use the information in a wicked way, as in the scene where they encourage and assure Macbeth that his end will not come from a mortal (or so it is interpreted by Macbeth himself):

“Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth. “(4.1.79) 

 

The Anima is described as being the sum of mysteries that constitutes the femininity. It also is that which permits a man to be in touch with a woman, being represented in dreams as a method of communication with a person. The Anima possesses all female encounters with men to help the relationship between the two better.

In the play, the Anima also is a reversed archetype, just like all others: instead of bettering it, the husbandry of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth brings to life the worst atrocities, fuelled by greed, blind ambition, hate, resulting in murder, madness and lost of feminine identity (or transcendence of gender identity) in Lady Macbeth's case ( Act I, scene V:

“The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements. Come, you 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 murdering 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!' “ )

This transgression to feats of the opposite gender, or even more, to a sort of non-gender as she wishes only to become the personification of cruelty itself, makes Lady Macbeth to stray from the path of bettering her relation to her husband, and reversing that, she encourages him to lose himself the traits of a good man and become a tool of evil deeds. She advices shim to fake emotions and scorns him when he seems to back off or doubt from their bloody purpose:

“Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't.” (1.5.63) 

 

The hesitation and mad actions of Macbeth are fuelled by Lady Macbeth's unnatural influence, an obvious distorsion of what a natural relation between a man and a woman should be: “She turns his temptation to greatness into a test of his masculinity, willfully deforming her own femininity in the process. She attempts to share his greatness and mitigate his psychic horror at his action but falls, in the end, to mental torment and death, leaving him to the final, futile, solitary stand against inevitable defeat.” ²

The Animus, similarly to Anima stands as its counterpart being the masculine representation in a woman's psyche, allowing a female to understand communication with a man, playing the same function if bettering the relation between the two.

In the play, it it reversed again: Lady Macduff, fails to understand the actions of her husband who is set to save the country out of pure honour and patriotic feelings: “What had he done, to make him fly the land?” (4.2.1739)

In the dialogue she has with her son about Macduff's leave to England, she judges him in haste and no sooner speaks words of most gravity:

“Son: Was my father a traitor, mother?

Lady Macduff: Ay, that he was.

Son: What is a traitor?

Lady Macduff: Why, one that swears and lies.

Son: And be all traitors that do so?

Lady Macduff: Every one that does so is a traitor, and must be hanged.

Son: And must they all be hanged that swear and lie?

Lady Macduff: Every one. “ (Act 4, scene 2)

She fails understanding his true nature and intentions , and she dies convinced of his treason, failing thus more in what their communion should be. Although, better that Lady macbeth, she does not have in common with the latter the admiration for her husband (much too exacerbated in Lady Macbeth's case).

The Persona is viewed by Jung as "functional complex ... by no means identical to the individuality"; it has been said that it function as a mask, usually one that protects the Ego from negative images or it can be viewed as the opponent of the self. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth again correspond as the most relevant characters for the manifestation of this archetype in the play, but Malcolm isn't too far from it in the talk he has with Macduff about returning to Scotland and and become a good king.

A relevant example for this archetype's manifestation is to be found in the in Act I, scene v, as Lady Macbeth instructs her husband into the art of pretence and falsety when expecting King Duncan's arrival, hiding their cruel intentions and prove to be indeed fair on the outside (persona) and foul in their nature, thought and feelings (individuality) :

“Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't. “

The symbolism carried by the serpent is full in meaning: it might be herself, being the one who leads Macbeth into the act of murdering King Duncan. She could signify the source of evil and Macbeth only the tool through which the crime is done.

Banquo sees under these pretences and masks and that will bring him his own death at the order given by Macbeth.

Besides these main archetypes, some variations of them which surge throughout the whole corpus of literary creations must be mentioned as they reflect themselves (or their opposites) in Macbeth. They cannot be left aside, especially through the importance they bring to form a whole broader and perhaps more complete perspective of what the play presents; these archetypes, complete the main ones and they carry new information so to say, as they are the base of some of the actions the main characters perform. From their multitude, in Macbeth can be identified the following ones: the Child, the Hero, the Old Wise Man/Woman, the Martyr and the Warrior.

The Child: as an archetype is closely related to to the hope and the trust in new beginnings. In the play, Macbeth couple do not have a child, a heir who could be a factor in slowing their bloody deeds: it is most present through his absence, thus bringing no hope into the murderers of King Duncan and no streak of humanity, which always arises with a child's birth. Another tragic presence, this time physical, is the young son of Macduff, who is violently murdered by Macbeth's loyal executors, bringing an even darker input into the tragic atmosphere of the play. Another killed hope, one of noble descent himself and proven in fight, is young Siward, the son of Siward Earl of Northumberland: he follows his father to fight against Macbeth in Scotland, but he is killed in battle, adding a minus more in the economy of good versus evil: only the good die young. The only two characters of this archetype to survive are Banquo's son and Malcolm, the rightful heir to the throne of Scotland.

The Hero: is an archetype of transformation, the hero being subjected to a quest, an initiation and fulfilling the role of a sacrificial scapegoat. In the play, Macduff is the real hero: he performs the journey to England and its symbolism lies in his attempt to save the Kingdom of Scotland by this; he leaves his family at home, unguarded, becoming thus the scapegoat by attracting Macbeth's fury and ends in having his family killed by the latter's ''emmissaries''. Macduff is the figure which embodies honour itself, loyalty to the country and its rightful king (although with some flaws himself) and courage. He is having his most dear people in the world sacrificed on the altar of common good, for the welfare of his nation, and in the end he restores the natural order of things by being the one to end the life of the usurperer Macbeth. Macduff can also be seen through his actions as another version of the archetype of the Martyr. King Duncan as well, can be identified as a martyr.

In the literary critique, some opinions are formed towards Macbeth in the sense of a tragical hero, but even so, it's not corresponding to the classical acceptance of the term or to the frame of the archetype. His character indicates towards an anti-hero, more than anything; suffice to say only that weakness and vulnerability or cowardly killings cannot sustain a position of hero.

The restaurative or helping figure of the Old Wise Man lacks as archetype and presence in the play, but it must be mentioned in relation to the next archetype discussed here. There's no such a figure, except if considering the initiative of Macduff as pertaining to a wise man, yet Macduff is made out of more hero material than philosopher who gives advice or guides others .

The Old Wise Woman/Women appear in the play , as a representative of the collective unconscious. But it appears in the reversed form of it: there's no wisdom, but superstitions and popular believes and a whole corpus of dark witchcraft practices. The Three Witches illustrate yet another reversed archetype along Macbeth couple, functioning in close relation to the two. The coven of witches have also traits which belong to the archetypes of the Trickster and also to the Evil. An individuality belonging this archetype, could be considered Hecate, the queen of the witches, but her advices function also in a negative sense, thus reversing the ''normal'' archetype.

The Warrior's archetype finds in the play a few types (typologies) of warriors: Macbeth is one of them, at the same rank with Banquo, yet his falling into mischief and murder disqualifies himself from the belonging to this honourable category; he's the total opposite of those all brave who once fought along him: next killing he performs is a shameful one, it doesn't happen on the battlefield, and that dishonours him, by breaking a code of honour, not only a human law, as he kills the good King Duncan like a coward, at night, with a dagger.

In opposition there's brave men and embodiments of true warriors like Macduff, Banquo Lennox, Ross and Siward Earl of Northumberland and his son, Siward. To exemplify how this archetype function in its course of action, it deserves to look at the death of the Young Siward: it is seen by his father as an honourable one - he asks how his son died and then says there's no time for mourning (though not without pain), as his son gave his life in battle and for a good cause of his country. This is the real nature and trait of a true warrior. Macduff personal sacrifice, besides his deeds in battle is again taken as a real warrior would and does: he swears to revenge against Macbeth and he goes all the way through by beheading him during battle, not like a coward.

The play is filled with supernatural and unnatural and that is revealed not only in the events contained in it, but reading in depth the nature of the characters, it is full of darkest images. The characters and they archetypes they represent are a sum of the darkest traits of human nature, all gathered in a plot of hyper-stressed greed for power, dehumanisation, loss of morals, vulnerability and blind trust in inhuman forces, distorted relations, imploding madness followed by death, social disorder caused by the actions of disordered minds.

One of the best exploits of the Scottish play has been done by the German band, Rebellion. (All credit goes to the band.)

WORKS CITED AND REFERENCES:

McLuskie, Kathleen- Macbeth, the Present, and the Past, page 393, in A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, Vol. I-The Tragedies, Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture, 2003, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, USA

Sanders, Andrew -The Short Oxford History of English Literature, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, 2004

WEB REFERENCES:

http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/views/plays/playmenu.php?WorkID=macbeth (used for the quotations)

www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/

MULTIMEDIA (DVD): Macbeth - Directed by Jack Gold (1983), BBC Shakespeare disc box set.

1. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia® Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press.

2 Kathleen McLuskie-Macbeth, the Present, and the Past, page 393, in A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, Vol. I-The Tragedies, Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture, 2003, Blackwell Publishing Ltd, USA