v This tiny scene of conversation among allies of Malcolm is part narrative update and part character analysis – or character propaganda. We learn that “The English power is near, led on by Malcolm, | His uncle Siward, and the good Macduff,” and that only Donaldbain is absent from “their dear cause” (1-11). Meanwhile “the tyrant . . . strongly fortifies” his castle; those who hate him call him “mad”; those who “lesser hate him, | Do call it valiant fury” (11-14). No one admires Macbeth now, though some still fear and follow him: “Those he commands, move only in command, | Nothing in love” (19-20). Intricately, Shakespeare intermixes images of sickness, vegetation, and ill-fitting garments to describe a “distempered” country out of control – unbuckled and swollen with dropsy (15-16). The “giant’s robe” of state is worn ever more loosely by “a dwarfish thief” (21-22). This latter image presents the sad, shrunken conclusion to Macbeth’s confused response to the conferral of the title Thane of Cawdor upon him in 1.3: “The Thane of Cawdor lives. Why do you dress me | In borrowed robes?” (106-107). In that encounter, Banquo had attempted to explain Macbeth’s “raptness” by arguing that “New honors come upon him | Like our strange [new] garments, [which] cleave not to their mold, | But with the aid of use” (1.3.143-145). But Macbeth’s use – or rather his misuse – of his new honors has made the discrepancy ever greater between what he has become and what he ought to be. The robes of achievement are no longer borrowed with promise or conferred in exchange for valiant service, but stolen and obviously ill-fitting. Likewise, from this same early scene of the witches’ initial prophecy derives the imagery of germination, healthy and aborted, which is pursued in various paths by way of Lady Macbeth’s barrenness and Fleance’s escape. Banquo has demanded of the witches: If you can look into the seeds of time And say which grain will grow and which will not, Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear Your favors nor your hate. (1.3.56-59)And in the following scene, a victorious King Duncan has promised Macbeth that “I have begun to plant thee and will labor | To make thee full of growing” (1.4.28-29). But Macbeth has become a noxious weed that chokes his country and a parasite that preys upon “the sickly [common]weal.” Like the blessed King Edward III of England, Malcolm, on the other hand, is Scotland’s “med’cine,” and only his sovereignty and remediation hold promise of a restored land. Caithness, Menteith, and Lennox pledge their blood to “purge” the country of its evil and “To dew the sovereign flower and drown the weeds” (27-30). Voyager \Palex \]Voyager ]`Palex `aVoyager aaPalex acVoyager cäPalex äåVoyager åæPalex æ¿Voyager ¿ÎPalex ÎÌVoyager Ì
