Goodbye, Macbeth

Ridding Ourselves of Macbeth by Lisa Low (1983) is an interesting essay on how we, as theatergoers, relate to the evil that is murder, by placing ourselves in Macbeth’s shoes throughout the duration of the performance. The act of “ridding ourselves of Macbeth” isn’t to be taken literally—that is, it’s not meant to assume Shakespeare’s attempting to right the many wrongs of this sinful man by killing off his character. Instead, the phrase is meant figuratively and alludes to the idea that when the audience watches the play, each audience member places himself directly in the play through his own imagination. When a theatergoer, or reader, is able to place himself within a piece of work, the piece then comes to life and the person is able to feel every emotion the character feels. This act of “assuming a role” is the type of behavior that allows the audience to offer reader-response criticism, as Low has done.

It is said that, “The role of the reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature, and that readers do not passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary text; rather they actively make the meaning they find in literature,” (Purdue Owl). What this means is that the audience does not sit idly by and refuse to be engaged in the text in some way. As Low has shown in her essay, this also applies to play performances in which the audience also becomes engaged with the action that takes place on the stage. Once the play is over the audience can then disengage; and that’s when the reader-response theory begins to take over. Low says:

“We come to the play and our imaginations are tethered to Macbeth as to our own guilt. We leave the play, after having ripped ourselves free of him, with imaginations redeemed. The play teaches us how to become what we can become, for we live . . . When the play is done, when vapors vanish and light is restored, Macbeth lies, titanically defeated, within the vast circumference of the audience’s redeemed and redeeming imagination,” (835).

What this means is that the audience is, for a short period of time, is imagining to participate in the same bloody evils as Macbeth—slaughtering children, killing Kings, murdering innocents—right up until their heads are sliced from their bodies, like Macbeth’s, and all for the sake of forcing a prophecy to come true. The audience, however, with the finality of Macbeth’s death at the hands of Macduff, will soon come to the realization that Macbeth’s death was the result of his evil actions, and that to ignore the conscience is to basically buy a one-way ticket to eternal damnation. It is within this final moment they are able to rid themselves of Macbeth once and for all.

There is no official count of secondary sources included by the author in her research. However, there are a couple worth mentioning as they relate directly to Macbeth’s character traits. First, Low includes a secondary resource by Andrei Kuznetsov in which he claims the German soldiers at Babi Yar were able to disassociate themselves from the Jews by “[Severing] hand from eye and act from conscience,” (829). Low then takes this information and compares it to Macbeth in that his imagination and conscience, like the imaginations and consciences of the Nazis, was severely lacking. Low also makes note of George Buchner’s Woyceck, Edvard Munch’s The Scream, and Van Gogh’s self-portrait as a way to study and consider the deep, inner-working and albeit panicked mind of Macbeth as he is wrapped tightly by his own guilt.

Low uses these sources to emphasize that for the duration of the play, the mirrored images and troubled self-portraits not only belong to Macbeth, but to the audience as well and lasting until after the moment Macbeth is killed. This is similar to the Mirror of Erised in Harry Potter in which the mirror reflects the deepest desires of the heart to its user. It’s been said that many people wasted away their lives in front of the mirror rather than living the lives they were given. The Mirror of Erised in relation to Macbeth is shown through the prophecies made by the witches. Though Low didn’t use this in her research, she does refer to Macbeth as “a painted devil before a mirror,” (834). The audience of Macbeth resembles those who are not taken prisoner in their own minds by the false images presented to them by the Mirror of Erised, which is seen in their ability to rid them of Macbeth once the play is over.

Works Cited

“Reader-Response Criticism (1960s –present).” Purdue Online Writing Lab, Purdue University. owl.purdue.edu/owl/subject_specific_writing/writing_in_literature/literary_theory_and_schools_of_criticism/reader_response_criticism.html. Accessed 10th, Nov. 2018.

Low, Lisa. “Ridding Ourselves of Macbeth.” The Massachusetts Review, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 826-837. www.jstor.org/stable/25089505. Accessed 10th, Nov. 2018.