![]() ![]() I believe drink gave thee the lie last night. Consider, for instance, Lady Macbeth’s question to her husband: ‘Art thou afeard / To be the same in thine own act and valour / As thou art in desire?’ (emphasis added). Like so much in the Porter scene, this comic exchange about how getting drunk makes men lustful, but removes their physical ability to perform in bed, has more in common with the central themes of the play than we might first realise.Īs Kenneth Muir notes in his excellent introduction to “Macbeth” (Arden Shakespeare: Second Series), there are many references to the gap between the ‘desire’ and the ‘act’ or performance of something in Macbeth. Lechery, sir, it provokes, and unprovokes it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance: therefore, much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery: it makes him, and it mars him it sets him on, and it takes him off it persuades him, and disheartens him makes him stand to, and not stand to in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him. Marry, sir, nose-painting, sleep, and urine. ![]() What three things does drink especially provoke? The Porter is often played as hungover, clutching his head as if suffering from a headache: he was up late drinking (‘carousing’) till three o’clock in the morning (‘the second cock’, i.e. ’Faith sir, we were carousing till the second cock: and drink, sir, is a great provoker of three things. Was it so late, friend, ere you went to bed, ![]() The Porter decides to leave off his play-acting that he’s the porter at the gates of hell.Īnon, anon! I pray you, remember the porter. The ‘primrose way’ (compare Hamlet’s ‘primrose path to dalliance’) is a flowery, beautiful, pleasant path – but it leads to ‘the everlasting bonfire’ of hell. The Porter cleverly reminds us where we are meant to be: up in Inverness, in the far north of Scotland, where it is indeed ‘too cold for hell’. I’ll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire. Knock, knock never at quiet! What are you? But this place is too cold for hell. A ‘goose’, as well as being a tasty bird, is a tailor’s pressing-iron: so ‘roast your goose’ is a joke, because of the fires of hell. This time, an English tailor has arrived at the Porter’s imaginary ‘hell’ (there are lots of old jokes against tailors like this). Yet another ‘knock, knock! Who’s there?’ line from the Porter. Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there? Faith, here’s an English tailor come hither, for stealing out of a French hose: come in, tailor here you may roast your goose. The Porter’s reference to ‘treason’ alongside ‘equivocator’ makes it highly likely that these lines from the Porter scene, if not the whole scene itself (and maybe the whole play) were written in 1606. For instance, one might say ‘no priest lies in my house’ (because they are standing up and hiding behind a cabinet at that precise moment, for instance, so not technically lying down). Garnet had advocated that Jesuits, if interrogated about whether they had harboured a Catholic priest in their house, should ‘equivocate’: lying without lying outright, if you will. It predates Shakespeare’s play, but in early 1606 it was ‘in the news’ because of the high-profile trial and execution of a Jesuit priest, Father Henry Garnet (who was known, oddly enough, as ‘Farmer’: recall the Porter’s previous mention of a farmer who hanged himself). when being interrogated by the authorities), in order to serve some greater cause. ‘Equivocation’ is the idea of lying when under oath (e.g. Another ‘knock, knock’ joke from the Porter – and a very topical one.
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