Imperfect Speakers: Macbeth and the Name of King

English Studies
Vol. 87, No. 4, August 2006, 415 – 425

Imperfect Speakers: Macbeth
and the Name of King
David Lucking

It has more than once been remarked that Macbeth can be read as a play about names
and naming, and also about the deeply problematical status of the identities that
names are presumed to designate.1 Viewed in such terms, the tragedy can be seen to
reflect a concern with the ambiguities inherent in names and identity that constitute
an abiding preoccupation in Shakespeare’s drama, and that have been extensively
examined in connection with other works in the canon as well.2 What has received
somewhat less attention than might appear to be warranted, however, are the
implications of the fact that the most conspicuous ‘‘name’’ around which this
particular play revolves happens to be that of king, a circumstance that throws into
particularly vivid relief some of the more troublesome issues involved in the process
of naming. The reason why what is repeatedly denoted in Shakespeare’s drama by the
formula ‘‘name of king’’ should be invested with such paradigmatic importance in
this play as in others has to do with the unique position that the king occupies with
respect to his society. To a degree much greater than is the case with any other
individual in his realm, a king is characterized by his singularity, by his peculiar pre-
eminence among men. Yet at the same time there can be no kingship without
community, for the monarch’s distinctiveness can be defined as such only in relation
to that social matrix of which he is inseparably a part. The ‘‘name of king’’ therefore
exhibits both an individual and a collective dimension, tacitly implicating not only
the specific human being endowed with the title but also the entire social organism of
which he is at the head, creating a potential tension between the two even as it insists
on their indissoluble interconnection.
   Notwithstanding its apparently unique status, however, what is referred to as the
‘‘name of king’’ has a great deal in common with other titles, and indeed with all
other names, as well, and for this reason may be regarded as emblematic of the

David Lucking is Professor at the University of Lecce, Italy.
1
 For discussions of naming in Macbeth, see Di Biase, 23 – 44; and Willson Jr., 29 – 34.
2
 For general discussions of the relation between names and selfhood in Shakespeare, see Spevack, 383 – 98; and
Manfred Weidhorn, 303 – 19. G. Wilson Knight teases out the referential meanings conveyed by various personal
names in Shakespeare, thereby implicitly denying the thesis that the name bears a merely arbitrary relation to the
individual it designates, in ‘‘What’s in a Name?’’, in The Sovereign Flower (163 – 201). Also relevant to the issue
of names are works by Donawerth, Mahood, Elam and Lucking.

ISSN 0013-838X (print)/ISSN 1744-4217 (online) Ó 2006 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/00138380600768247

416    D. Lucking
phenomenon of names generally. Richard II’s haughty exclamation ‘‘Is not the king’s
name twenty thousand names?’’,3 reflects his view that there is a qualitative difference
between the regal title and those names borne by ordinary citizens, that the two
species of name cannot be placed on the same footing. What Richard himself
eventually learns to his cost, however, is that even if they are not precisely equivalent
there is a clear line of continuity between the ‘‘name of king’’ in particular, which
designates a position of primacy within a system of which it is nonetheless an integral
part, and that more general category of proper names which designate the individual
and affirm his distinctness within the context of a language that is also necessarily a
social phenomenon.4 What we are dealing with in each case is what might appear to
be a kind of paradox lurking at the very heart of the concept of identity. Not only the
monarch, but every individual, is defined as unique—as being an individual, as
possessing a discrete identity—in terms of a system of conventions that are
necessarily communal in character. In other words, the singularity of the individual
depends on his being essentially social.5 The paradox is only an apparent one, of
course, because even on a comparatively superficial level most people would be
prepared to acknowledge that the individual and the society to which he belongs are
mutually dependent. On a somewhat less superficial level, the paradox might be
resolved by suggesting that the relation between the individual and the social
environment within which he is constituted is analogous in certain respects to that
between parole and langue in Saussurean linguistics. Just as specific utterances—
however original they might be in form and content—would have no meaning in the
absence of a linguistic code that makes them intelligible to the members of a speech
community, so would individual identity be unthinkable if there did not exist some
sort of system of conventions that gives meaning to the concept of identity and
furnishes the grammar of its articulation.
   The linguistic metaphor is used advisedly here, for Shakespeare’s dramas often seem
to imply that the mechanisms through which selfhood is constituted are in some ways
akin to linguistic codes, and that they might be represented through linguistic
analogies. What makes the situation of Macbeth particularly illuminating from this
point of view is the fact that he is an individual who, not content with any of the names
he is merely given, seeks to augment his status in the world by assuming a name on his
own account, an act that clearly exhibits a linguistic as well as a social dimension.
Macbeth is not of course the only character in Shakespeare’s works to manifest such an
aspiration. On the contrary, personages as diverse as Romeo, Helena, Bolingbroke and
3
 Richard II, 3.2.85 (the Arden edition edited by Peter Ure).
4
 ‘‘I have no name, no title; / No, not that name was given me at the font, / But ‘tis usurp’d.’’ (Richard II,
4.1.255 – 7).
5
 Cf. Burton Hatlen’s observation that ‘‘Identity is born at the interface between the public and the private realms.
But because it is ambiguously both personal and social, identity is inherently flawed, vulnerable . . . [I]dentity is
not only problematic but ‘impossible’, simply because any form of selfhood is always already implicated in
otherness’’ (394). For an earlier account of ‘‘basic paradox in Shakespeare’s conception of character’’, according
to which ‘‘the identity of a person and the relationships of that person are interconnected and that it is out of their
interconnection that each must help to constitute and define the other’’, see Weimann, 23.

Macbeth and the Name of King   417

Coriolanus, together with a host of other characters besides, are all in their various
ways bound upon quests for new or regenerated identities, and in almost every
instance these quests take the form of a more or less explicit pursuit of new names. The
name that is sought is not necessarily that of king, but the principles operating in this
process of identity-construction are essentially the same in all cases, as are the
problems deriving from them. Chief among these problems is the assumption—ill-
founded, as it invariably turns out—that names are subject to the volition of the
individuals who bear them, that they can be chosen or manipulated or discarded
according to exigencies that have nothing to do with the nature of language itself. The
crux of the matter consists in the fact that what the individual is essentially doing in
assuming a title that is not his by birthright or otherwise vouchsafed him by society is
naming himself, something that is a contradiction in terms given the communal nature
of the language of which names comprise a vital element. What he is attempting to do
in the final analysis is appropriate not only a title but the entire network of codes and
conventions by which society establishes its own corporate identity and the identities
of its constituent members, and this is something that has implications in spheres well
beyond that of official titles as such.
   In the case of Macbeth, the contradictions latent in what, to adapt Stephen
Greenblatt’s term,6 might be described as linguistic self-fashioning make themselves
felt by degrees. At first there is nothing in the least unorthodox about the manner in
which the protagonist of the play seeks to aggrandize his own social status, and
his acquisition of new names is accomplished in complete conformity with the
conventions reigning in his community. Through a series of spectacular feats of
valour, he enhances his reputation as a warrior and as a loyal subject in the eyes of all
who observe him, and the attribution of new names follows as a matter of course. The
first mention of his name in the play—if we except a portentous anticipatory allusion
by one of the three witches in the first scene—occurs in the epithet ‘‘brave Macbeth’’
pronounced by a captain in a vivid report of his exploits. Significantly, this epithet is
immediately followed by the parenthetical observation on the part of the same
character that ‘‘well he deserves that name’’ (1.2.16).7 Evidently the captain considers
himself sufficiently qualified, by virtue of his own military standing and the wounds
he has sustained in defence of the realm, to bestow such laudatory ‘‘names’’ without
being accused of overstepping the bounds of decorum, and indeed no one calls his
authority into question. Titles of rank however are another matter altogether, as
becomes evident when King Duncan expresses his appreciation of Macbeth’s valour
and loyalty by transferring to him the title of the rebel he has vanquished:

     He bade me, from him, call thee Thane of Cawdor:
     In which addition, hail, most worthy Thane,
     For it is thine. (1.3.105 – 7)

6
Greenblatt.
7
All references to Macbeth are in the Arden edition of the play edited by Kenneth Muir.

418    D. Lucking
While it cannot be disputed that, according to the martial value system prevailing in
his society at least, Macbeth once again fully deserves the new title with which he is
invested, it is also made clear in the play that this title is by its very nature something
that must be bestowed upon him by his sovereign rather than something he can
arrogate to himself or be awarded by his peers. If Rosse and Angus hail him by a new
name, it is only in the King’s name that they can do so. The power to confer new
names that transform the public identity of the individual is the prerogative of Duncan
alone, and it is a function that the play goes to some trouble to emphasize. When
Duncan designates Malcolm as his successor, for instance, he follows this up with a
gesture of naming:

      We will establish our estate upon
      Our eldest, Malcolm; whom we name hereafter
      The Prince of Cumberland. (1.4.37 – 9)

Not content with this, he goes on to promise that others will also be accorded ‘‘signs
of nobleness’’ commensurate with their deserts (1.4.41), as of course has already been
the case with Macbeth himself.
   It is perhaps not without relevance that Duncan’s name-conferring function is
represented as being an exclusively public one, and that he fails abjectly when he
attempts to transpose it into the purely private sphere by bestowing names that he
believes reflect the personal qualities of their referents. The names he is competent to
dispense designate positions in society, not human individuals or whatever distinc-
tive traits they might possess. If the bloody captain can pronounce the epithet ‘‘brave
Macbeth’’ with complete propriety, it is his own status as a soldier steeped in the
ethos of warfare that gives him the authority to do so. It is his professional experience
that enables him to recognize a valiant warrior when he sees one, and that entitles
him to assign names accordingly. But Duncan does not possess the ‘‘art / To find the
mind’s construction in the face’’ (1.4.11 – 12), and when he instructs Banquo to greet
Lady Macbeth on his behalf ‘‘By the name of most kind hostess’’ (2.1.16), his choice
of phrases could hardly be less fortunate. What the play is investigating then are
different kinds of naming and the different sets of conditions that must be fulfilled in
order for these naming activities to be valid. From this point of view, as one critic has
suggested in a recent discussion of this play,8 Macbeth might fruitfully be analyzed in
terms of speech act theory, and particularly in the light of its emphasis on the
circumstances that must attend performative acts in order for these to qualify as
‘‘appropriate’’.9 Various characters in the play—most notably Macbeth himself—fail

8
 Di Biase, 24 – 5.
9
 The terms I am employing here are borrowed from J. L. Austin’s description of performative utterances: ‘‘The
uttering of the words is, indeed, usually a, or even the, leading incident in the performance of the act . . . , the
performance of which is also the object of the utterance, but it is far from being usually, even if it is ever, the sole
thing necessary if the act is to be deemed to have been performed. Speaking generally, it is always necessary that
the circumstances in which the words are uttered should be in some way, or ways, appropriate’’ (Austin, 8). For a
suggestive account of how speech act theory might be applied to literary analysis, see Pratt.

Macbeth and the Name of King   419

to distinguish adequately between these different kinds of naming, or between the
different sets of conditions under which the act of naming might appositely be
performed, and the results are disastrous.
   As the legitimately constituted monarch of his realm Duncan represents the
collective voice of his people, and his authority to confer official names is a function
of that symbolic role. He is empowered to distribute titles according to his own
pleasure because he has received the tacit endorsement of his society to do so, and his
privilege is therefore not a private matter but one that has a public sanction. The
spectre of self-defeating paradox arises when the possibility occurs to Macbeth that
he can acquire a new name by means other than through Duncan’s edict, by cir-
cumventing the mechanisms through which identities are fashioned in his society.
It is the weird sisters who—hailing him by the name of Thane of Cawdor before he
has actually been informed of the King’s decision to grant him that title (1.3.49)—
have suggested that this particular name is one for which he is predestined, and
not a matter of royal fiat alone. Since the news that Duncan has awarded him
the title of Thane of Cawdor only comes as confirmation of what the witches
have already given him to understand is foreordained, the inference would seem
to be unavoidable that Duncan is merely the instrument of a Destiny that bes-
tows names rather than the actual source of those names or the authority that
undergirds them.
   It is the fact that the weird sisters do not confine themselves to addressing Macbeth
as the Thane of Cawdor alone that brings the issue of names and their status to a
head. When they go even further, intimating that the acquisition of the title of Thane
of Cawdor is only one step in a progressive sequence that is yet to be concluded, a
fatal rift opens up between names and the conventions that give names their
meanings:

     1 Witch. All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!
     2 Witch. All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!
     3 Witch. All hail, Macbeth! That shalt be King hereafter. (1.3.48 – 50)

There is more than one sense in which, as Macbeth himself points out, the weird
sisters are ‘‘imperfect speakers’’ (1.3.70). Not only do they express themselves with a
notable want of clarity, as is not unbefitting creatures invested with something
resembling an oracular status, but the language they employ does not partake of the
world of ordinary words and meanings in which Macbeth’s own mind is still
anchored. When Macbeth later says that it is the weird sisters who ‘‘put the name of
King upon me’’ (3.1.57), he is implying that the source and authority of names reside
outside the human world altogether, that they originate in some supernatural or
transcendent realm. Paradoxically enough, however, it is in terms of those very names
that Macbeth seeks to define his position within the human world, and so it is that he
too becomes an imperfect speaker inhabiting a universe in which words have been
cast adrift from the only kind of meaning they can ultimately be said to possess.

420   D. Lucking
   It is hardly surprising therefore that at this point names should appear to take on
an almost preternatural reality of their own, uprooting themselves from the structure
of conventions to which they only formally refer as Macbeth begins to perceive
himself exclusively in terms of the titles he has already acquired and may yet acquire:
‘‘Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor: / The greatest is behind’’ (1.3.116 – 17). Ironically, in
being made the recipient of Cawdor’s title in recognition of his loyalty Macbeth has
inherited the traitorous instincts of his predecessor as well,10 as if it is the name itself
that exerts a malignant influence overruling the promptings of allegiance, morality,
and even personal inclination. Viewed in a perspective consisting solely of names,
Duncan’s appointed heir Malcolm comes to be seen not as a flesh-and-blood human
being but merely as the bearer of a new title that interposes itself as an almost
material obstruction between Macbeth and his goal: ‘‘The Prince of Cumberland!—
That is a step / On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap’’ (1.4.48 – 9).11 Lady
Macbeth becomes caught up in the same universe of disembodied names, both real
and potential, which seize hold of her imagination as compellingly as they do her
husband’s: ‘‘Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be / What thou art promis’d’’
(1.5.15 – 16). It is the talismanic value of these names in themselves, and not what
those names signify in terms of social relationships and obligations, that becomes the
determinant of their actions. Although both Macbeth and his wife might believe for a
time that it is Destiny that realizes itself through the awarding of names, the truth is
that it is names that fashion destinies.
   The paradox latent in Macbeth’s ambition becomes manifest in the fact that the
only means by which he can secure the loftiest title that the realm affords, that of king
itself, is to murder the man who alone has the authority to confer titles. When Rosse
conjectures that with the death of Duncan and the precipitous flight of his sons the
crown will devolve upon Macbeth, Macduff remarks that ‘‘He is already nam’d’’
(2.4.31), the inadvertent implication of this comment being that there is a sense in
which Macbeth has named himself. But this is essentially a contradiction in terms, for
what Macbeth has in fact done in assassinating his monarch is disrupt the coherence
of the universe of names that has hitherto constituted the matrix of his identity. By
seeking to possess himself of the greatest name of all he has ironically exiled himself
from the realm of names and rendered himself and his deeds indefinable by any. The
crime of regicide is itself unnameable, as Macduff intimates when he says of the
‘‘horror’’ he has witnessed that ‘‘Tongue nor heart cannot conceive, nor name thee!’’
(2.3.63). Like the necromantic rites engaged in by the weird sisters it is ‘‘A deed
without a name’’ (4.1.49), an act that falls outside the domain of names because it
consists in the negation of what names really represent. Within the walls of Macbeth’s
castle names can only become the demonic parodies of themselves, travesties such as
those that appear in the porter’s invocation of ‘‘th’name of Belzebub’’ and ‘‘th’other

10
 A point that is noted by Willson, 31.
11
 Willson points out that ‘‘in his active imagination he has disembodied his potential opponents by focusing not
on their persons but on their names’’ (31).

Macbeth and the Name of King      421

devil’s name’’ in the immediate aftermath of the murder (2.3.4; 2.3.8). Although
Macbeth has perceived his own identity in terms of a succession of ever more
resplendent names which he believes will complement and complete one another—
the first two titles serving as ‘‘happy prologues to the swelling act / Of the imperial
theme’’ (1.3.128 – 9)—the truth is that those names can never co-exist within the
same referential frame. They are incommensurate by their very nature, and will
therefore inevitably clash with one another to the infinite confusion of their bearer:
‘‘Glamis hath murther’d Sleep, and therefore Cawdor / Shall sleep no more, Macbeth
shall sleep no more’’ (2.2.41 – 2).
   The play makes it clear that Macbeth’s contradictory relation with the world of
names is only one aspect of the contradictory attitude he evinces with respect to
the world of language generally. His determination to appropriate a name without
acknowledging the social realities implied by the existence of names amounts to a
desire to exploit language without submitting himself to the demands of language.
While he is struggling to muster the courage to murder Duncan he deliberately
curbs the impulse to give verbal expression to his own misgivings—the voice of
social authority and of common morality that continues to speak through him—
on the grounds that ‘‘Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives’’ (2.1.61).
Having forsworn words as a means by which his course of conduct might be
charted he effectively puts himself beyond the pale of language, an ironic fate for
a man who is about to sacrifice everything he holds dear for a name. After this
symbolic repudiation of language in its social dimension the play becomes
increasingly dense with references to failed or aborted speech, to words used for
purposes of deception rather than illumination, to thoughts and passions that
dare not speak their names. During the banquet scene Macbeth demands that
Banquo’s ghost speak—‘‘If thou canst nod, speak too’’ (3.4.69)—but no words are
forthcoming. On the same occasion, witnessing the distraction of her husband,
Lady Macbeth enjoins the other members of the company to ‘‘speak not’’, since
‘‘Question enrages him’’ (3.4.116 – 17), an imposition of silence that is emblematic
of Macbeth’s self-induced estrangement from the human community. Macbeth
dissembles before the wife who has formerly been his closest confidante, and she
in her turn does not reveal her innermost feelings to him, becoming instead one
of those ‘‘infected minds’’ who, as a physician says, ‘‘To their deaf pillows will
discharge their secrets’’ (5.1.69 – 70). Cut off from the human world around him,
Macbeth becomes aware that the flattering words addressed to him by his retainers
are hollow: ‘‘Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath, / Which the poor
heart would fain deny, and dare not’’ (5.3.27 – 8). In this climate of linguistic
disintegration, in which the circuit of communication has been interrupted and words
drained of their significance, Macbeth realizes that when he is most in need of
language he is quite literally at a loss for words. ‘‘She should have died hereafter’’, he
says of his wife’s death: ‘‘There would have been a time for such a word’’ (5.5.17 – 18).
If words fail him it is because he has failed words, and it is therefore inevitable that
his final vision of life, conveyed through a bleak extension of the linguistic metaphor

422   D. Lucking
that informs the entire play, should be that of ‘‘a tale / Told by an idiot . . . Signifying
nothing’’ (5.5.26 – 8).
   Within such a perspective as that delineated here, the events of the play might be
construed as reflecting a struggle not only for the possession of names but for the
power to legislate names and, ultimately, to arbitrate meanings within language.
Even during the first encounter with the witches Banquo has invoked ‘‘th’name of
truth’’ as a standard transcending the brutal logic of forcible appropriation which
governs Macbeth’s conduct with respect to names (1.3.52). Remembering this
episode, Macbeth determines that Banquo must die because ‘‘He chid the Sisters, /
When first they put the name of King upon me’’ (3.1.56 – 7), and is likely to remain
sceptical as to the legitimacy and permanence of the title. Banquo constitutes a threat
to Macbeth’s possession of the name of king in another respect as well, because the
weird sisters’ prophecy that it will be his descendants who occupy the throne
effectively calls into question Macbeth’s power to nominate his own successor, a
power that the play represents as being one of the essential prerogatives of kingship.
As Macbeth himself complains, the witches have placed a ‘‘fruitless crown’’ upon his
head, one that is to all intents and purposes no crown at all (3.1.60). But merely
resorting to the crude expedient of having Banquo murdered does not render his title
any more secure. Other characters also refuse to acknowledge Macbeth’s status as
monarch notwithstanding his having been formally crowned as such, but persist in
referring to him either by his clan name or by such name-denying circumlocutions
as ‘‘This tyrant, whose sole name blisters our tongues’’ (4.3.12). It would perhaps not
be too much of an exaggeration to suggest that the title of Shakespeare’s tragedy itself
implies a commentary of sorts, for although other plays by the same dramatist
dignify their protagonists with the name of king even if they too are usurpers
Macbeth is pointedly denied this courtesy. More than in any of these other plays, the
‘‘name of king’’ is viewed in Macbeth merely as an external appurtenance, a stolen
vestment too ample in its dimensions for the man attempting to wear it:

      . . . now does he feel his title
      Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
      Upon a dwarfish thief. (5.2.20 – 2)

  Names, and the world of words at large, continue to deceive Macbeth to the end,
mendaciously lending themselves to interpretation in a ‘‘double sense’’ (5.8.20),
generating the illusion of security where in fact there is none. One of the omens by
which Macbeth is haunted in the final days of his life is that contained in the pro-
phecy that he cannot be assailed until ‘‘Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill /
Shall come against him’’ (4.1.93 – 4). Since place names would seem to be fixed almost
by definition, Macbeth deludes himself into believing that he is proof against any
possibility of attack, only to be savagely mocked by events when Birnam wood actually
does march upon Dunsinane. Perhaps in an effort to escape the morass of duplicitous

Macbeth and the Name of King    423

words in which he has become mired, in the final hours of his life Macbeth sheds all
titles and reverts to the name that seems least susceptible to challenge, the name under
which he has achieved his greatest and most unequivocal victories. But even this name
has been shorn of its original meaning. When young Siward encounters Macbeth on
the battlefield the following exchange takes place:

     Yo. Siw. What is thy name?
     Macb.                  Thou’lt be afraid to hear it.
     Yo. Siw. No; though thou call’st thyself a hotter name
              Than any is in hell.
     Macb.                  My name’s Macbeth.
     Yo. Siw. The devil himself could not pronounce a title
              More hateful to mine ear. (5.7.5 – 9)

As young Siward’s reaction suggests, if Macbeth is in some way seeking to recapture
an essential identity that is represented by his unadorned name it is by now too late.
The name has effectively undermined itself, been converted into its own antonym, the
esteem which it was once capable of inspiring having been replaced by universal
detestation.
   Macbeth finally meets his nemesis in the person of an individual who, in a curious
parallel to his own vexed relation to the world of words, runs up against the
limitations of language and on several occasions renounces it altogether. In Macduff ’s
case this diffidence respecting language originates not in the fear that it might give
voice to the promptings of conscience and thereby divert him from his objective,
but in the awareness that it can often prove hopelessly unequal to the realities it is
called upon to represent. The most dreadful of those realities is Macbeth himself,
whom Macduff describes as ‘‘thou bloodier villain / Than terms can give thee out’’
(5.8.7 – 8)—something that eludes definition by any name or word that his language
contains. This is not the first time that Macduff has had to deal with the unnameable.
It is he who earlier says of the murder of Duncan that ‘‘Tongue nor heart cannot
conceive, nor name thee!’’ (2.3.63), and who subsequently enjoins other characters
present on that occasion ‘‘Do not bid me speak: / See, and then speak yourselves’’
(2.3.71 – 2). Later, when he learns of the murder of his wife and children, he refuses to
voice his anguish notwithstanding Malcolm’s exhortation to ‘‘Give sorrow words; the
grief, that does not speak, / Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break’’
(4.3.209 – 10). Having embarked on his project of revenge against the man who has
committed this atrocity he vows that he will not play the ‘‘braggart with my tongue’’
(4.3.231), and when he finally encounters Macbeth on the battlefield persists at first in
this policy of silence, declaring that ‘‘I have no words; / My voice is in my sword’’
(5.8.6 – 7). In the course of his final confrontation with Macbeth, however, he seems to
undergo something of a transformation, discovering in effect that words are not after
all entirely impotent even when they are obliged to grapple with the unspeakable.
Notwithstanding his initial resolve not to parley he responds to Macbeth’s boast about

424    D. Lucking
being invulnerable to all of woman born with the information that he was ‘‘from his
mother’s womb / Untimely ripp’d’’ (5.8.15 – 16), and thus it is that the language that
Macbeth has sought to subdue to his own purposes exacts a crushing revenge:
‘‘Accursed be that tongue that tells me so, / For it hath cow’d my better part of man!’’
(5.8.17 – 18). But language, though it has dealt a deadly blow, has not yet finished with
Macbeth. Following up on his advantage Macduff taps an unexpected vein of
eloquence in himself, and manages to goad Macbeth into what will prove to be a fatal
trial at arms by holding out the prospect of a unique revenge if he allows himself to be
captured:

      We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
      Painted upon a pole, and underwrit,
      ‘‘Here may you see the tyrant.’’ (5.8.25 – 7)

The man who sought to name himself is thus threatened with the most humiliating
fate he can imagine, that of having a name forcibly imposed upon him by those who
hold him in detestation, and at this point he prefers death.
   After the decisive victory he gains over Macbeth with the aid of an English army,
Duncan’s son Malcolm is unanimously acclaimed King of Scotland by the assembled
company of noblemen and soldiers. The authority of the new sovereign, in pointed
contrast to that of the usurper he has deposed, is thus fully legitimated by the willing
consensus of those he is about to govern. It is Macduff, significantly enough, who
takes it upon himself to give voice to the will of the people, and to hail Malcolm by
his new name:

      I see thee compass’d with thy kingdom’s pearl,
      That speak my salutation in their minds;
      Whose voices I desire aloud with mine,—
      Hail, King of Scotland! (5.9.22 – 5)

With the restoration of Duncan’s issue to the throne, moreover, the name-conferring
function that the play represents as being intrinsic to the institution of kingship is
also reinstated, as appears when Malcolm celebrates his triumph by renaming his
supporters en bloc:
      We shall not spend a large expense of time
      Before we reckon with your several loves,
      And make us even with you. My Thanes and kinsmen,
      Henceforth be Earls; the first that ever Scotland
      In such an honour nam’d. (5.9.26 – 30)12

12
  It might be possible of course to argue for an ironic implication to this speech, since the new title of Earl is one
that has been imported from England, and that is apparently destined to supplant the native title of Thane. The
suggestion might be that with the intervention of the English sovereign in Scottish affairs the power of naming
that is the prerogative of kingship has to some degree been compromised, and that in the long term it is fated to
pass out of Scottish hands altogether.

Macbeth and the Name of King        425

What Macbeth has sought to do in the course of the tragedy that bears his name is
usurp the language of his society and transform it into a private instrument, a venture
that is ironically self-defeating for the simple reason that a language which has been
divested of its public character is no longer truly a language at all. Macduff on the
other hand has endured a kind of ordeal by silence which enables him in the end to
vindicate the power of language in the face of everything that tends towards linguistic
anarchy. With the accession of Malcolm at the conclusion of the play, the king’s voice
once again merges with that of the people whose nomination he has received, and the
name of king is therefore restored to the possession not only of the particular
individual who bears it, but of the entire community in which he participates.

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