Macbeth's Act 4 Scene 2 is in my humble opinion, Shakespeare's most pessimistic, and it's not even because Macduff's family is savagely slaughtered at the end, but rather what the characters speak of before the onslaught.
When Ross says, "Cruel are the times when we are traitors and do not know ourselves; when we hold rumor from what we fear, yet know not what we fear, but float upon a wild and violent sea..." (lines 18-21), it is as relevant today as it was then. Every day we are set upon by troubles so plentiful that we can only feel helpless. We feel as if there is some enemy to fear, but have no idea who it is, so we are helpless to avoid it and often misappropriate it.
For Ross and Lady Macduff, the enemy is real and swiftly coming to murder them. Before the murderers' arrival, Lady Macduff says, "Whither should I fly? I have done no harm. But I remember now I am in this earthly world, where to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly" (lines 69-73). She would play the part of hopeless victim, but this cruel world in which evil is rewarded and good deeds punished pays no attention to such pitifulness.
Of course, the entire scene is about Macduff's absence. Lady Macduff is afraid because the father of her children has abandoned them. She fears for her children who will have no leader, no protector, no provider. Extrapolate these desperate feelings to the much larger implication--the absence of the Heavenly Father. Shakespeare is illustrating that we are all helpless and lost in a cruel, Godless world. The end result is loss of innocence and pointless death.
This is why I consider the scene to be so bleak.
No comments:
Post a Comment