LADY MACBETH
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.
There is, presumably, a pause at the start of this line for Lady Macbeth – and, with the cue, the audience – to register Macbeth's reaction to Lady Macbeth's suggestion of murder that night. The line shows that he has jolted, physically reacting as though this suggestion is a surprise – we can "as a book... read strange matters" on his face. Lady Macbeth's fear is that Macbeth is too honest, unable to separate out thought and speech, gesture and action. To some extent, Lady Macbeth's concerns seem legitimate: as a soldier, Macbeth's drive is to physical, public action. Yet Macbeth seems already able to check his reactions and we have seen in his asides the tension between his "black and deep desires" and his measured "worthy" façade. Lady Macbeth's ability to "read" Macbeth's mind from his face is in conversation with Duncan's resigned acceptance in 1.4 that it is not possible "to find the mind's construction in the face", a contrast which sets the naïve trust of Duncan against the scheming manipulation of the Macbeths. Lady Macbeth instructs her husband to "beguile the time"- to spend it pleasantly, but also to trick or deceive it, a word which perhaps also recalls the metaphysical beguiling of the witches. Macbeth must "look like the time"; he must match the mood of the present situation "in your eye, your hand, your tongue". The metonymy draws the focus back to the physicality of the body and makes the deception seem almost workman-like. Lady Macbeth moves seamlessly from the physical to the symbolic and her instruction to "look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under't" takes on an almost religious significance. The symbolism of gardens and serpents conjures Edenic imagery, aligning Lady Macbeth with the temptress, Eve, and making clear her culpability for their own fall. It also lends a universality to the play: the story of a couple driven by ambition, with capacity for evil, has been played out since the Fall of Man. The Arden edition notes that the image of the serpent would also recall the medal commemorating the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, which featured a serpent hidden ominously behind flowers. Whether or not an audience would make that connection, the image is clearly unsettling in the way it conceals threat. The language, too, is designed to conceal; the layered and rapidly-shifting similes are themselves a form of deception, complicating the audience's ability to find a 'truth'.
- Reuben, Desmond and Tom
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