The Early Scenes of MacBeth: Preface to a New Interpretation

Abstract

as lawful and beneficent,' has been peaceful, and orderly under his rule, and it is Macbeth who disrupts the harmony in the Scottish state. play deals with the overthrow of the balance of royalty, with the development of all the evil implicit in that overthrow, and with the restoration of natural order under Duncan's rightful successors.' The fertility of the land and the health of the body natural or body politic are dependent alike on the recurrent rhythm of times and seasons. Macbeth suffers in his single state of man all the disorder he has brought upon the greater organism of the state .2 The play shows how evil naturally destroys itself-or else, in a slightly different version, it shows how divine providence again and again offers Macbeth chances to reject temptation, to repent, to regain what one writer calls his Christian self-esteem. Critics who espouse this view generally emphasize the traditional, tribal, or medieval character of the society depicted in the play. Commenting on Duncan's address to his subjects as Sons, kinsmen, thanes, G. Wilson Knight states that Scotland is a family, Duncan its head. A natural law binds all degrees in proper place and allegiance.3 The individual's sense of self, status, and role in this society, his sense of the world, his sense of others-these are deeply structured by his position in the order; they are, as an

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