Macbeth and the midair dagger

A Google search on Shakespeare brings up more than 47 million entries. Keep in mind this staggering figure accounts for virtual space, and then consider the millions of physical books and articles about the Bard and his work, occupying miles and miles of library shelves. Shakespeare is undoubtedly one of the most-studied authors in history, meaning nearly every line of his works has been analysed with forensic intensity. In this context, finding something new about a Shakespeare play is akin to finding a dagger in an immense haystack. 

Professor Iain Wright believes he has made such a discovery, having uncovered a likely source for the enigmatic floating dagger in Macbeth. The scene in which the guilt-ridden Scottish king attempts and fails to grasp the midair dagger is one of the most enduring in the play. But until now, no one has suggested a contextual origin for this ghostly blade. Could it be, as Wright argues in the latest edition of Heat magazine, a case of smoke and mirrors?

“Macbeth is a great enigma,” Wright says. “It’s a bigger mystery than Hamlet. We’ve got no record of its first production. There was no text published in Shakespeare’s lifetime. The only text is from the posthumous First Folio. There are no contemporary accounts to date it.”

Drawing on his professional interest in New Historicism (an approach to literature that emphasises the cultural and historical context in which a text is produced), Wright proposes that the play was written and first performed around 1606, soon after James I assumed the throne of England.

“This has a very direct impact on Shakespeare’s company. Within a few days of arriving in London, James I makes them the King’s Men. They become for the first time an official royal company, and technically Shakespeare is a Groom of the Chamber, a member of the court.”

Wright argues this heightened royal patronage undoubtedly would have influenced the kinds of work Shakespeare would write, pointing out the Bard’s apparent desire to please his new master in Macbeth with the wronged character of Banquo, who James I believed was his own ancestor. But it now appears Shakespeare may have gone to even greater lengths to amuse (and perhaps even subtly chide) his patron.

Apart from his great appetite for plays, James I also enjoyed a love of spectacle, and had a passion for witch hunting. The love of spectacle was most apparent in the amounts drained from the royal coffers to pay for the masques, elaborate musical stage productions that employed the latest special effects to amuse the aristocracy. Wright says the
court at this time went overboard in its enthusiasm for these showy displays, which later evolved into modern opera.

“Almost every other dramatist of the moment, seeing how masques were the flavour of the month, started writing them. Shakespeare’s great rival Ben Jonson stopped writing ordinary plays and turned to royal masques.

“It is typical of Shakespeare and the distance he kept, he never did write masques. There is no evidence whatsoever that he collaborated directly in writing or performing in a masque. It’s as though he wasn’t going to sell out to the fashion. But of course he knew about them.”

Wright argues that Shakespeare, ever the showman, did acknowledge the masques in his plays, most obviously by reproducing one in miniature during The Tempest. But now, Wright believes that the Bard may have harnessed the period’s love of spectacle and illusion within Macbeth too.

“We’ve thought too exclusively about Macbeth as an outdoor play. Let’s imagine a small, indoor production of Macbeth in a dark room. You notice at once that the play is full of optical illusions. There’s no other play of Shakespeare’s like it. There are floating daggers, the ghost of Banquo, ghostly kings, and ghostly cauldrons. I thought, surely if that’s the case, Shakespeare is going to say to himself, ‘What sort of special effects are available to make some of these more spectacular?’.

"This train of thought took Wright to the library at the University of Cambridge where, on the off chance, he picked up a copy of Euclid’s Geometry with a commentary by John Dee. A contemporary of Shakespeare, Dee is now regarded as one of the fathers of the modern age because of his talent for what was then called natural magic – science. Apart from interpreting Euclid and founding the Royal Navy, Dee was also interested in how specially modified mirrors could create tricks of the light, making things appear as if by magic.

Wright argues that Shakespeare would undoubtedly have been aware of such tricks of the light when writing Macbeth, and may even have used a device like Dee’s to create the effect of a floating dagger. Similar optical effects might also have been deployed to create the many ghosts who pop up during the play. For Wright, the significance of these possibilities is much greater than mere staging techniques. He says the possibility that Shakespeare wanted to trick the senses could also speak about the Bard’s own engagement with nascent modern science, which sought natural explanations for seemingly supernatural phenomena.

“From the Romantics onwards, Macbeth has been seen as a vision of potent metaphysical evil,” Wright says.

“The witches are usually played as powerful demonic figures. We’ve got to remember that the play is happening at the height of the witch craze in Europe. There had not been too many killings in England at this stage but there had been in Scotland, in some of which James I had been personally involved. It’s a frightening moment for the attitude to witches, and I resist the idea that Shakespeare has this belief in the literal reality of these powers.”

Instead, Wright floats the possibility that Shakespeare may have been commenting on the ambiguity of illusions and how easily people can be fooled, and hence manipulated into believing in magical forces.

“I’m not going to claim that Shakespeare will never be the same again and we’ll have to revisit all the plays. But this discovery makes a connection between his work and the discourses and debates of what was then called natural magic, and what we call science, quite important. The idea that Shakespeare was ignorant of the main intellectual currents of his day, was an unscholarly figure, is really wrong.

“I think he had an extraordinary sense for the way some of these things were going. In this case it seems to me that there is a relatively direct line between the people who within a few years would set up what we regard as the modern scientific worldview, and Shakespeare. It seems to me he was up with some pretty avant garde stuff, even if only instinctively, in ways which do change our picture of him.” 

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