The pace established in this passage is set through the characters tone and setting. They are not present at a meal they should be at; therefore time is short for Lady Macbeth to convince Macbeth of her plans. The tone is especially urgent as she has to try many ways to get through to Macbeth. At first Lady Macbeth is startlingly angry pleads with Macbeth for an explanation for his change of heart “was the hope drunk wherein you’d dress’d yourself? Hath it slept since?”. Macbeth’s tone begins as clear “we will proceed no further in this business”. Despite this Lady Macbeths ideas eventually poison him and he decides to proceed, his excited tone at the end indicates this state of mind “away, and mock the time with fairest show: false face must hide what the false heart doth know”.
The mood of the passage progresses from doubtful and contemplative to decisive and scheming. Macbeth is the only character present at the start, his mood is influenced by his own thoughts and logic of mind so much that this really establishes the mood. With the introduction of Lady Macbeth we see how the coming together of these two characters with different moods has an effect overall on the play. Essentially Lady Macbeths mood, completely overpowers any of Macbeth’s feeling or logic and he has no choice other than to follow her in the matter of decision making. She breaks down his mood to “...live a coward in thine own esteem” and the scene can be then seen to be changed to be more decisive “...screw your courage to a sticking place, and we’ll not fail.”
Many motifs and symbols are used to convey deeper meaning in this passage. For example Shakespeare refers to the image of a “babe”, this contrasts the more aggressive and argumentative mood in this passage. Also “like the poor cat i’ the adage” is used to convey a sense of deeper meaning as Macbeth here is related to the image of “the cat who would eat fish but would not wet her feet”, this proverb refers to Macbeths state of mind and by contrasting his decisions to the cat in the proverb it gives a greater sense of meaning in the passage because the characters state of mind is conveyed.
The diction of certain words, how they sound, highlights the meaning further. For example harsh words such as the “dagger”, and “...marked with blood” are used, these reiterate the darker and evil ever present in the passage, and the effects this has. In contrast to this, references to “milk”, “children”, “love” and “golden opinions” give a different insight into Macbeth’s varying state of mind, the diction of these is very soft, and highlights the softer emotions present.
Also present in the construction in this passage is the underlying rhythmic structure. Most is written in Iambic Pentameter, an example of this is “I dare do all that may become a man”. This contains five Iambic feet in a row: I dare | do all | that may | become | a man. The vertical lines (|) represent the pause between each Iambic foot. This Iambic structure gives the passage a better flow and conveys Shakespeare’s meaning to a deeper level. Also to end the scene a rhyming couplet is used, this indicates and end of scene and indeed end of act 1, “...the time with fairest show:..What the false heart doth know.”
As a passage, it is very important to the play as a whole, it marks the start of a chain of events by which after killing Duncan, and we see demise in Macbeth and especially Lady Macbeth’s state of mind. From here on Lady Macbeth begins to lose her grip and the confidence she shows in this passage can no longer be attributed to her afterwards. Without this scene we would not have the same understanding of Macbeth’s motives to kill King Duncan, and the severity of Lady Macbeths influence over him would not have been delivered to the audience/ reader. We wouldn’t have the same understanding of how she influences his decisions in all ways and how dangerously powerful Lady Macbeth really is at this point of the play.
Haytham Chernov, Cuthy Page