ABSTRACT
Resolving to take his rest at Macbeth’s castle in Inverness, Duncan says of his new Thane of Cawdor, “[i]t is a peerelesse Kinsman” (TLN 346; 1.4.58).1
Duncan’s compliment could not be more prophetic, although it does not prophesy as Duncan would have wished. Duncan means to call Macbeth “matchless,” “unequalled” (OED “peerless” a.). Even this meaning for “peerless” may signify danger for Duncan since it could foreshadow Macbeth’s ascent to the kingship. As we shall see, however, Duncan’s word may also prophesy Macbeth’s rejection of “peers,” his rejection of family and friends in their premodern senses. Macbeth proves himself “peerless” in his inability to keep or make peers, if “peers” means noblemen, the only meaning that Shakespeare acknowledges. Shakespeare consistently uses “peer” to mean “[a] member of one of the degrees of nobility in the United Kingdom” or “[i]n generalized sense . . . a noble” (OED “peer” 4a., 5). The Oxford English Dictionary documents a broadening of meaning for “peer” beginning at the end of the seventeenth century, one that seemingly culminates in the sociological sense of “An equal; a contemporary; a member of the same age-group or social set” (2b), the sense often intended in late-modern usage of the word. As the dictionary’s categorization of usages documents, this usage evolved from an earlier sense that coexisted with the meaning “noble”: “an equal in any respect” (2a). But, as the usages the dictionary collects under each category suggest, these senses are not identical. Prior to the end of the seventeenth century, when “peer” is used about people to mean “an equal in any respect,” the people in question are generally nobility. Macbeth will be a king without nobles, a king without peers.
