Lady Macbeth as an Antichrist

In some sense, anyway

Over the weekend I reread most of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and (this is a hallmark of really great literature) a line popped out at me that I hadn’t really noticed before. When Lady Macbeth first exhorts her husband to murder their king for the throne, she says, “look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't.” (Act I sc. v).

On a context-free level, that’s effective dramatic writing, handing over images that are vivid and emotionally charged. It really specifically reminds me of the end of the epic of Gilgamesh, when the hero has secured a flower that restores youth: “Gilgamesh saw a well of cool water and he went down and bathed; but deep in the pool there was lying a serpent, and the serpent sensed the sweetness of the flower. It rose out of the water and snatched it away, and immediately it sloughed its skin and returned to the well.” (This is from N.K. Sanders’ translation, which, shooting from the hip here since I don’t know the original language, I think is supposed to be more English-readable, since another translation that seems to hew closer to the text just speaks of a “plant,” even though it gets likened to a boxthorn, which is a “flowering plant,” though which I wouldn’t immediately recognize as a flower—but I’m getting far afield.)

But the exhortation also brings to mind a command of Jesus’: “Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” (Matthew 10:16, quoting from the King James Version here, which seems apposite since it not only came out within years of Macbeth’s debut but was commissioned by and named for the same King of England and Scotland that Macbeth was written to gratify.)

Shakespeare twists this around, much like the ancient dragon is known to twist Scripture (“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose” - also Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice), in a really economical way.

Jesus tells his followers that they are to be “wise,” which I take to mean knowledgeable and crafty, interested in the effects of their actions (trying to know, for example, when they should say something like “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s,” and when they should respond to insincere questions with probing questions of their own, and when remaining perfectly silent is the appropriate answer) and understanding what makes other people tick. But they are also to be innocent as doves—sincere and truthful and earnest. It’s something of a hard line to straddle, which I’m sure is why these two in-tension exhortations were given right next to each other.

Shakespeare spins this with Lady M’s commandment to be the serpent while looking like the flower. (“Be the serpent” would make for a great family crest motto, or team rallying cry.) Jesus says to be like both in two different respects; Lady M introduces an element of fraud (“beguile the time,” she says in an earlier line). And of course, by insisting that Macbeth be the serpent, the commandment to “look like the innocent flower” becomes really pointed—to not be innocent.

Lady M channels that imagery and swaps out two comparisons for an order to be one wicked thing and merely seem innocent, which corrupts both individual order while making the whole enterprise deceitful. It’s a pretty slick line and a half of blank verse.

~

Also Macbeth was something of a historical figure, though his life story as we have it is pretty legendary. His wife was too, complete with a real name never actually given in the Shakespeare play: Gruoch.