"To be wrenched with an unlineal hand" The Temporality of Legacy in Macbeth

Abstract

Why does Macbeth order the murder of Macduff’s family? Macduff is a threat to Macbeth’s power, and Macbeth has been warned to beware Macduff. Although the murder of Macduff’s family serves as an act of revenge for Macduff’s resistance, Macbeth’s order is an exercise of tyranny over the people and lineal successions—over the present and the future. Macbeth’s tyrannical desire for greater power is a shared characteristic with Shakespeare’s other tyrants. Particular to Macbeth, however, is the focus on inheritance and lineal succession. Macbeth’s attempts to prevent the lineal rule of Duncan and Banquo, while simultaneously trying to establish his own hereditary dynasty, suggests the desire to extend his rule and power to a longer stretch of time—to a new scale. In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the different scalar operations of time—temporality and eternity—are reflected in the different scalar operations of politics—the individual and the body politic. Macbeth’s tragedy lies in his attempt and ultimate failure to cross the scalar threshold of temporal politics.