Abstract
This chapter uses metaxology to argue that Shakespeare’s Macbeth offers a deeper way to understand the importance of Augustinian soliloquy. It brings together Saint Augustine and William Shakespeare, with whom William Desmond converses as he considers how to appreciate, investigate, and act in the between. For both the saint and the playwright, a soliloquy enables self-knowledge only when porous to a divine hearer and interlocutor. This in turn establishes the foundation for metaxological communities. After establishing and exploring these ideas within Augustine’s Soliloquies and Desmond’s corpus, the chapter analyses a key moment in Macbeth as a reversed Augustinian movement of discovery. Lord Macbeth’s inability to say ‘Amen’ after killing Duncan signifies his isolation from communities of the human and the divine. His speechlessness is a sign that he does not know himself, and that he is unable to communicate with others—true community is no longer possible for him now, and it will become even more impossible in future. Having already begun to “steep” themselves in blood, he and his wife are caught in what Desmond calls ‘Sticky Evil’. Their further unwillingness to acknowledge a breach of communal order entails their shared clogged porosity.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See, for instance, Augustine, City of God, XIV, 28.
- 3.
See ISB 51–56, where Desmond speaks of the possibility of double-speak to be both revelatory and duplicitous.
- 4.
The Latin terms can be found in the original text published by James J. O’Donnell at: http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/latinconf/latinconf.html. I am referring to these throughout, to emphasize the way in which Augustine is playing on the double of mental and physical health.
- 5.
For the implications of being brought to nothing, or zero, see in particular: GB 28–30 and 33–35; Köhler-Ryan (2017).
- 6.
For a similar moment, see Augustine (1997, VIII.12,28).
- 7.
For the significance of overdeterminacy, see in particular: EB 163–177; GB 35–40 and 128–134; BB 63–75; ISB 38–43; IU 400–404.
- 8.
As Desmond points out, Nietzsche has “contempt for the criminal who cannot live up to his deed” (2002, p. 146). The unrelenting Nietzsche demands self-knowledge that is at the same time knowledge of the deed. Simultaneously, he leaves no possibility for repentance. This is another way of thinking about a closure to transcendence, and at the same time to Augustinian movement.
- 9.
See also Garber (2004, pp. 700–771), on details of equivocation in Macbeth, and in particular on the use of ‘double’ in the play.
- 10.
For some of the political implications of saying ‘Amen’ in a religious context in the time that Shakespeare was writing, and with particular discussions of Richard III, see Targoff (2002).
- 11.
Also see BB 254n.
- 12.
Editors of the Arden Shakespeare edition of Macbeth note that while some assume those who cried out to be Malcolm and Donalbain, “it is more likely that they are the sleepy grooms referred to later [at 2.2.51], and subsequently made Macbeth’s scapegoats” (Shakespeare 2015, p. 180). If this is the case, and these are the sleepy grooms, then a breakdown of community is even more evident here. While they can pray, the inability of another to echo their prayer, or pray with them, is a foreshadowing of the violence that will be done to them by that same outsider.
- 13.
Macbeth’s dramatic situation could be compared with Augustine’s use of the structures of theater in the Soliloquies. For a discussion of the latter, see Foley 2014.
- 14.
This is evident in several ways. There is a parallel between Lady Macbeth and Eve as temptress; the way that sin infects the whole world, about which Macbeth is very aware, as discussed, is another parallel idea. For more on this, see Colston (2010).
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Köhler-Ryan, R. (2018). On Speaking the Amen: Augustinian Soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Metaxu. In: Vanden Auweele, D. (eds) William Desmond’s Philosophy between Metaphysics, Religion, Ethics, and Aesthetics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98992-1_17
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