Shakespeare’s Psychological Extremes in Macbeth through De Quincey’s On

the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth

In one of his essays concerning dramaturgy, the famous 18 th century essayist De Quincey,
gives a list of the various plot devices and elements of the play Macbeth, in which William
Shakespeare had demonstrated masterful usage in awakening and highlighting various
psychological actions which stem from his characters and his audience as well, acting like a
reaction upon it. The very subject of the essay, indicating as it does the recognition of a subtle
dramatic device of singular psychological import, is proof of rare discernment, and if De
Quincey had done nothing more than print the words upon a blank page he would even thus have
strongly appealed to the imagination and convinced us of his sympathetic
understanding of Shakespeare's genius (Weir,2010: 618).

The first effect that had been proved effective in achieving this emotional and
psychological awakening as De Quincey mentions in this essay, seems to be the knocking at the
gate, which he explains its influence on him in the beginning sentence: “From my boyish days I
had always felt a great perplexity on one point in Macbeth” (Gross, 35).The reader of De
Quincey will recall how he interprets the knocking at the gate as the poet's device for making
known that the pulses of life, after the awful parenthesis of the murder, are beginning to beat
again, and the goings-on of the world in which we live have been reestablished (Weir,2010:
619). “Beethoven, who knew the human soul well, and the entire gamut of its emotions, felt
doubtless the very thrill that moves the play-goers listening to the knocking of Macduff and
Lenox, when he wrote the opening bars of the Fifth Symphony” (Weir, 2010: 619).

After numerous murders conducted by the Macbeths, we are reminded by Quincey of

Shakespeare’s motifs to provoke pity and sympathy among the audience over his protagonist’s
deteriorated inner psyche. Ultimately Macbeth realizes his ghastly sin. “No experience in the
world could bring him to glory in it or make his peace with it, or to forget what he once was.
There is nothing left for him but the despair of his speech:” (Islam; 186).
 To-morrow, and to-morrow and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day;
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage.
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
(Shakespeare, Macbeth V.V.19-28)

Readers and listeners become evident of his evident misfortunes and begin to sympathise
with him, mainly through his soliloquies and other actions. For the plot ought to be so
constructed that, even without the aid of the eye, he who hears the tale told will thrill with horror
and melt to pity at what takes place (Aristotle, 15). Such an effect is best produced when the
events come on us by sunrise; and the effect is heightened when, at the same time, they follow as
cause and effect (Aristotle, 12).

Another psychological mode that Shakespeare had never failed to disturb and explore is
the traumatic aftermath and transformation Macbeth and his wife had went through, as a result of
their gradual transformation in that of a nature of murderers. In act III, scene IV, after the murder
of his ally Banquo, appearing in hallucinatory visions in Macbeth’s eyes, the guilt-struck
Macbeth announces to his wife: “returning were as tedious as go o'er” (Shakespeare, Macbeth
III.IV.144). Macbeth portrays “the paralyzing, almost complete destruction of human spirit”
(Shanley,307). Afterwards, Macbeth steadily moves further and further from God and from his
fellow human beings. His bond with nature is thus weakened. (Islam,187).

To conclude, Shakespeare’s Macbeth is one of his fewest tragedies which manage to

capture the tragic downfall of a character coming from such noble degrees, to a person vexed by
the corrupt nature of pure instinct and murder. Despite his grim actions, the playwright designed
his play in a way it experiments with our psychological state with connections of its characters
and plot.

References:

Butcher, S. H. (2008) “The Poetics of Aristotle by Aristotle”, A Translation by S.H. Butcher, The
Project Gutenberg EBook of Poetics by Aristotle.

Gross, John (2002) “The Oxford Book of Essays”, Oxford University Press, USA (first published
1991).

Islam, Md. Saiful (2012, December 13) “The Evil in Macbeth”, University of Dhaka, The Arts
Faculty Journal, pp. 186-187.

Muir, Kenneth (1985) The Arden Shakespeare: Macbeth. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd, Print.

Shanley, J. Lyndon (1961, February) “Macbeth: The Tragedy of Evil”, National Council of
Teachers of English, pp. 307.

Weir, R. Stanley (2010) “The Knocking at the Gate. A Psychological Study of the Dramatic
Impressions of Religious Ritual”, The Open Court: Vol. 1903 : Iss. 10, Article 5, pp.
618,619.