Lady Macbeth is a witch. To practise her witchcraft, she must first unsex herself to be asexual (or bisexual) same as the three witches with beards.
Banquo.
you should be Women,
And yet your Beards forbid me to
interpret
That you are so.
The witches prophesy that Macbeth shall be
King of Scotland. However, Lady Macbeth knew her husband lacks the “illness” to
attend that, for his nature is “full of the milk of
human kindness.”
This play assumes that milk will affect a
person’s nature. To support her husband, Lady Macbeth summons murthering
spirits, milks a baby bat, dashes its brain out, makes a drink with the bat’s brain
for Macbeth, who then waits for the bell to activate his evil power: “Go bid
thy Mistress, when my drink is ready, She strike
upon the Bell.”
The murthering spirits transfer to Macbeth
via the drink and overwhelm his human kindness. However, Lady Macbeth fails to expect
that the bat’s nature also transfers to Macbeth and affects him.
Macbeth becomes a bat-man. He fears light
and noise and possesses other bat’s features. This design can reason some seemingly
tedious or odd lines by Macbeth:
• when every noise appals me?
• they pluck out mine Eyes.
• O, full of Scorpions is my Mind,
• I have a strange infirmity,
• Strange things I have in head;
• I 'gin to be a-weary of the Sun.
Dark night gives Macbeth dark power.
Darkness of this play comes from his bat nature. He is the third murderer in the assassination of Banquo and Fleance.
He can find the pit of Acheron from Hecate’s summons. This design is hinted by the riddle “a Rat without a tail.”
Bat in Shakespeare’s Time
• “The Bat is no bird, but a winged
mouse.” — Shorte Dictionarie for Yonge Begynners (1553) by
John Withals
• “Nay, are they not generally, as blinde,
as moules, or bats, the very caterpillers of heresie, and the bondslaves
or vassals of Beelzebub?” — A Discoursive Probleme Concerning Prophesies
(1588) by John Harvey
• Michael Drayton, The
Owl (1604):
Then picke they forth such Theeves as hate
the Light,
The black-eyed Bat (the Watch-Man
of the Night)
That to each private Family can pry,
And the least slip can easily descry;
• Edmund Spenser in his Faerie Queene
published in 1596 made a list of birds that men abhor and hate by nature, and
called the leather-winged bat the Day’s Enemy.
Even all the Nation of unfortunate
And fatal Birds about them flocked were,
Such as by nature Men abhor and hate;
The ill-fac’d Owl, Death’s dreadful
Messenger,
The hoarse Night-Raven, Trump of doleful
Drere,
The Leather-winged Bat, Day’s Enemy,
The rueful Strich, still waiting on the
Bier,
The Whistler shrill, that whoso hears,
doth die;
The hellish Harpies, Prophets of sad
Destiny.
“Single state of Man”
The three witches hail Macbeth Thane of
Cawdor. Macbeth doubts that and tells them Thane of Cawdor lives. Right after
the witches vanishing into the air, Rosse and Angus come to announce the death
of Cawdor. Macbeth hesitates to accept the prophecy that he “shalt be King
hereafter.”
Macbeth. [Act 1, Scene 3]
My Thought, whose Murther yet is but
fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of Man,
That Function is smothered in surmise,
And nothing is, but what is not.
Macbeth’s “single state of Man” cannot
execute his murdering thought. He would need both the state of bat and man to
do that.
“I cannot fly”
Before encountering Macbeth in the battlefield, Macduff
orders his troops to blow all the trumpets, the noise Macbeth fears
the most after the bat’s nature being transferred to him.
Macduff. [Act 5, Scene 6]
Make all our Trumpets speak, give them all
breath
Those clamorous Harbingers of Blood,
and Death. [Exeunt.]
[Alarums continued. Enter Macbeth.]
Macbeth.
They have tied me to a stake, I cannot
fly.
But Bear-like I must fight the
course. What’s he
That was not borne of Woman? Such a one
Am I to fear, or none.
The term “clamorous Harbingers of Blood, and
Death” alludes to bats. Macbeth is not tied to anything physical but his bat
nature. He cannot escape (“fly”) by flying as a bat at night. Macbeth compares
himself with a bear chained to a stake to fight dogs, probably inspired by the
term bear-baiting, a sound play or imperfect anagram of bear-batting, to suffer
(bear) striking (batting), or to sustain (bear) fluttering (batting). Bat is
called flutter-mouse or flitter-mouse in Shakespeare’s time.
A Headless Death
Lady Macbeth is not dead on the stage but by
an announcement. Macbeth’s death is shown in the stage direction: “Enter
Macduff, with Macbeth’s head.”
In Measure for Measure, Claudio
escapes the death sentence by cheating the deputy duke with the head of a
pirate called Ragozine. Ragozine is a perfect
anagram of organize; organize
has the usage of to furnish with organs (such as head) in Shakespeare’s time.
In The Tragedy of Cymbeline, the headless Cloten renamed to Richard du Champ is mistaken to be Imogen’s husband Leonatus Posthumus. Imogen is a perfect anagram of I’m gone; her alias Fidele of defile; Leonatus of to-unseal. Posthumus is a variant of posthumous. The name Imogen and Leonatus Posthumus tell the world at the end of the 1623 folio, that she is being defiled. “I’m gone, posthumous to unseal.”
In an alternative reading, Macbeth is the surrogate of Christopher Marlowe in the drama world; and Lady Macbeth of Mary Sidney, patroness of Wilton Circle. The audience will not see directly Macbeth and Lady Macbeth die on the stage. Players die in the drama world will live in the real world, which is the reason Macbeth compares Lady Macbeth’s death with “a poor player” on the stage.