Thread by @GCSE_Macbeth

I'm really obsessed with the moment that Macbeth sees Banquo's ghost.
(Act 3 Sc 4 l.44)

1/

M: The table's full.
LENNOX: Here is a place reserved, sir.
M: Where?
LENNOX: Here, my good lord. What is't that moves your highness?
M: Which of you have done this?
LORDS: What, my good lord?
M: Thou canst not say I did it: never shake
Thy gory locks at me.

2/

At first Macbeth doesn't even register -- or doesn't want to register? -- the Ghost. Then there's an excruciating, heart-rending moment when ignorance gives way to denial gives way to horror.

It's the moment Macbeth realises he can never be free of his bloodshed.

3/

When he told the murderers in 3:1 "I require a clearness", or called on the "bloody and invisible" hand of night in 3:2, did M think he could commit more murder and not be stained by it? For a desperate second, maybe he's sincere when he says "Thou canst not say I did it."

4/

And then l.48, "Never shake thy gory locks at me" is just brilliance. It's the consonance of Ks and a G (these are "velar plosives", linguistics fans). It's Shakespeare's very deliberate choice of LOCKS because "gory locks" has such a tangible feeling of disgust in the mouth.

5/

DIGRESSION: Hair in Macbeth.

Banquo's "gory locks" are gory because of the "twenty trenched gashes on his head" that the First Murderer describes.

Is also echoes Macbeth's first reaction to the witches' prophesy: "that suggestion / Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair"

6/

"Unfixed" hair was once a symbol of Macbeth's own fear of murder -- now bloodied hair represents those same bloody deeds returning to haunt Macbeth.

In the witches' final prophecy, Banquo's golden hair tortures Macbeth by being the sign of his continuing bloodline:

7/

"And thy hair, Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first." (4:1)

And "hair" is one of the images Macbeth returns to in 5:5 -- "My fell of hair / would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir."

This concludes my discussion of HAIR in Macbeth.

8/

And a final shout-out to the word GORY. Why GORY and not BLOODY? Remember Macbeth's description of Duncan's grooms in 2:3 -- "Their daggers unmannerly breeched with gore."

In a play with so many mentions of BLOOD, GORE, is only used twice, for the blood of Macbeth's victims.
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