Porter Scene In Macbeth: C.U. English Honours Part-II Notes

Porter Scene In Macbeth

Conservative critics object to the idea of inserting a comic scene within a tragedy and consider it as a stylist as well as an aesthetic defect. But the comic scenes are useful and serve certain purposes. It can act as a break in the tragic momentum and prepare the audience for a richer store of tragic action. It can also reflect a more realistic appraisal of the life by bending comic and tragic elements. On the other hand, as Act II and III of Macbeth shows, it may not be comic at all; it can be used to intensify the tragic effect. Act II Sc II of Macbeth is usually referred as the porter scene, though the porter remains on the stage only for a small part of the scene.

The scene opens with the repeated knocking at the gates of the Macbeth’s castle, which links up with the preceding scene (Murder Scene). The knock that send Macbeth and his wife scurrying to bed after Duncan’s murder, awakens the porter. In his opening words the porter is identifying himself with the traditional figures of the Morality plays- the porter of the hell-gate, who was expected to make jest, but who was more than a jester. He fancies himself admitting the sinners through the gate of the hell, and at every knock he tries to describe what sort of a sinner is seeking admission. The first one, he thinks is farmer whose greedy ambition is not fulfilled and as such, he has committed suicide. The greedy farmer had hoarded up the corn on the expectation of scarcity. He expected the price to rise and fetch him a huge profit. But a good harvest frustrates his hopes, and he by committing suicide, has come to hell for his sin.

The second sinner, according to the porter, is a Jesuit who is a believer and practitioner of equivocation and swearing glibly with an easy conscience. The third sinner who wants admission is an English tailor who has for years stolen clothes in the cutting out of an ampler garment of his customers and tries to trick one too often in the making of French hose, as the fashion changed, became so tight fitting that any loss of cloth would be instantly detected. This implies that the farmer, the equivocator and the tailor go to the hell not only for their sins but they were “caught out by over-reaching themselves.” 

The gates of the Macbeth’s castle are flung at last and the knockers- Macduff and Lenox admitted. They have come to take the king back. Macduff enter Duncan’s bed chamber and discovers the devastating truth. Macbeth then rushes to the spot and kills the chamberlains smeared in blood to wipe out the evidences of his crime. Lady Macbeth comes to the stage and pretends to swoon in order to take away the attention of people from Macbeth’s rashness of action to herself. Duncan’s son, Malcolm and Donalbain suspect that the murder was committed not by the guards but by the body-guards of Duncan but by someone who is feigning to be innocent, and they leave for Scotland. The scene ends with Malcolm’s decision to retire to England and Donalbain desire to escape to Ireland.

A number of critics including Coleridge had doubted the genuineness of the scene probably because of an offend in the nineteenth century tastes. Most modern critics, however, not only asserts its genuineness, but find it dramatically significant. This scene is theatrically necessary because the actor who plays the role of Macbeth is about to change his costume and wash his hands, and it is necessary to give him some time “for the discharge these actions” (Capell). So there must be some scene between the exit of Macbeth and the entrance of Macduff. But the scene of the drunkard porter is introduced, the critics think, to provide comic relief, though it does not seem to be the real reason. Bradley rightly remarks, “The porter does not make me smile; the moment is too terrific”.  The porter does not really take away the present horror from the scene rather he intensifies it with his grotesque tinge of irony.

The porter thinks himself to be the keeper of the hell-gate as Macbeth’s castle has already become a hell. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have transformed their castle into a hell because Macbeth has called on the stars to hide their fire and Lady Macbeth has called on the murdering ministers. The reference to treason in the porter’s looks back to the executed Thane of Cawdor , on whom Duncan had built an absolute trust; and looks forward to the dialogue between Lady Macbeth and his son and to the long testing of the Macduff by Malcolm—which shows distrust and suspicion that grows from equivocation and hypocrisy. Equivocation links its up with the main themes of the play. Similarly, the unnaturalness of the avaricious farmer is contrasted with the natural growth and harvest, which are scattered through the play. Even the tailor has his place in the scheme of the play because of the clothing imagery which is so abundant in Macbeth.

The style of the scene is not un-Shakespearean. The porter had answered to the Macduff’s question: “What sinner things does drink especially provoke?” Drink “provokes desire, but it takes away the performance”; and the contrast between the “desire” and “act” is repeated several time in the course of the play. The porter’s words on lechery have significance. They are written in an antithetical form and are tune with the general see-saw movement of the play.

Thus the porter scene is not alien to the root of the play, it possess the antithetical characteristics of the verse suitably “transposed” for semi comic purposes. The whole scene is closely linked to the rest of the play in content as well as in style. In fact, it is an integral part of the play, not barbarous interpolation of the characters as Coleridge suggested.  De Quency knew better and let us conclude with the often quoted but brilliant remarks on the scene: “When the deed is done, when the work of the darkness is perfect, there……..the knocking of the gate is heard and its mate known audibly that the reaction has commenced; the human hath made its reflex upon the fiendish, the pulses of life are beginning to beat again, and the reestablishment of the going on of the world in which we live, first makes us profoundly sensible of the awful parenthesis that has suspended them. ”

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