No Rest for the Wicked
when all is revealed and her love for Orsino is returned. Again, though very different, I thought of "Twelfth Night" while reading "Macbeth". I thought of Viola's "patience on a monument," and contrasted it with the impatience of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and how they were ultimately unable to escape their crimes.
To rise in power as quickly as Macbeth did, one would think that he'd be satisfied to let the future come to him. He was rewarded honestly the titles of Thane of Glamis and Thane of Cawdor, only to throw it all away to become king in an instant. Why? His two previous titles were given willingly, out of thanks, not wrested away through force. To return to "Twelfth Night," though she loved him, Viola could not make Orsino love her back; it simply had to happen. And in "Macbeth," though he desired the crown, it would seem that Macbeth could not forcefully take it for himself, for to do so would mean death, disorder, and tragedy:
Alas, poor country,
Almost afraid to know itself. It cannot
Be called our mother, but our grave, where nothing
But who knows nothing is once seen to smile.;
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not marked; where violent sorrow seems
A modern ecstasy. The dead man's knell
Is scare asked for who, and good men's lives
Expire before the flowers in their caps,
Dying or ere they sicken.
(Ross, 4.3.165-73)
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Shakespeare, William. "Macbeth." The Norton Shakespeare. Stephen Greenblatt. ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. 2564-2617.
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