DUNCAN
Dismay'd not this Our captains, Macbeth and Banquo?
CAPTAIN
Yes; As sparrows eagles, or the hare the lion. If I say sooth, I must report they were As cannons overcharged with double cracks, so they Doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe: Except they meant to bathe in reeking wounds, Or memorise another Golgotha, I cannot tell -
The tension added by the new attack is quickly dissipated, with the assurance of Macbeth and Banquo’s confidence. What is interesting throughout the Captain’s speech is that he does not distinguish between the efforts of either; it is “Macbeth and Banquo” and “they” who collectively show bravery. Both begin as noble, with equal potential to rise, and it is the witches’ prophecies which separate them. The Captain recommences his praise with sarcasm (an impressive feat, given his current state of injury), comparing Macbeth and Banquo to “eagles” and “lions”¸ animals of physical superiority and ferocity, as well as their obvious royal connotations. Their war efforts are “doubly redoubled”, heroic but also overblown – exaggerated too by the way the unnecessary “doubly” adds two more syllables to line. They are “like cannons overcharged with double cracks”, strong, physical and dangerous to opponents, but there is also a sense of recklessness underpinning this image – “overcharged” presents the risk of backfiring, an impulsiveness which will threaten Macbeth later in the play. The speech’s final image of “Golgotha” and the intent to “bathe in reeking wounds” is a confusing one: it is both impressive and repulsive. The imagery of blood spills into horror here, but “bathe” suggests cleansing and (when spoken alongside the religious imagery of “Golgotha”) a sense of being purged and born again through a kind of perverse baptism. They are redeemed through war, a tension between destruction and salvation which runs throughout the play. Here, blood (and an excess of it) serves to strengthen Macbeth – a sharp contrast to Act 2, Scene 2. The Captain seems to intend the allusion to “Golgotha” (the ‘place of the skull’ and site of Christ’s crucifixion) to convey the epic nature of the battle, but it confuses the speech by its lack of clear frame of reference. On the one hand, it implies that Macbeth and Banquo are, like Christ, sacrificing themselves for mankind, and that this battle will redeem a nation and lead to peace. On the other hand, it suggests Macbeth’s hubris in considering his human actions as comparable with the divine. Yet this battle is clearly political, human and destructive, so there is a sense in which Macbeth and Banquo are not Christ-like redemptive figures, but the remorseless soldiers who pierce Christ’s side. The sheer number of comparisons in this section are overwhelming, placing a cognitive pressure on the audience to unpick them, so much so that it comes as a relief when the Captain breaks off his speech mid line. The speech creates poetry from the brutality of war – necessary to conjure the battlefield without staging it, but (at least to a modern audience) unsettling in the way it glorifies violence.
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