Captain
Mark, king of Scotland, mark:
No sooner justice had with valour arm'd
Compell'd these skipping kerns to trust their heels,
But the Norweyan lord surveying vantage,
With furbish'd arms and new supplies of men
Began a fresh assault.
The Captain’s speech (like the battle) takes on new energy as he points us to “mark” his words. In the common-place rhetoric of war, he extends the semantic field of heroism, aligning Duncan’s side with “justice” and “valour”. It is not just Macbeth’s sword skills which defeat the enemy, but “justice”. Legally, Macdonwald is a traitor and criminal justice will punish him, but “justice” here is personified, elevating Duncan’s status by suggesting he is under the protection of the goddess and establishing him as a righteous and fair ruler. In the face of such forces, the rebellious Macdonwald is passive – he is “compelled”, forced to retreat without any control – and the Captain dismisses them with the contemptuous “kerns”, trivialising their battle attempts with the childish “skipping” to describe their retreat. A moment of stability is denied – the line runs on so that the “but” conditions the victory immediately. It is now the Norwegians who attack, with the somewhat grandiose “surveying” and “furbished” romanticising the battle (the foreign enemy is perhaps here treated differently to the internal one). The speech pauses on a half line, where “assault” belies the menacing nature of the physical, sudden attack.
- Hannah, Joe and Raquel
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