ABSTRACT
Macbeth represents the tragic consequences of the Macbeths’ increasingly habitual speech acts of unethical figuration, acts which lead them to murder and madness. The shared figuration within a marriage is an ethical concern. To Shakespeare, marriage is, in great part, a rhetorical enterprise, especially the associative deliberation that defines so much of that marital life. That deliberation’s figuration is both solitary (in aside and soliloquy) and associative (in dialogue), and it is not merely accidental clothing to naked thought; figuration is constitutive of personhood and marriage. The Macbeths are not villains, but otherwise admirable people who err in deliberation, choice and action. Their tragic error is the result of figuration: the Macbeths become figures unethical by practicing unethical figures.
There are three parts to the case. Part I concerns Shakespeare’s education in ethics and Part II, his education in rhetorical figuration: both will rely heavily on the early modern fascination with Cicero, here his ethical and rhetorical works. At the King’s New School, Shakespeare would have studied Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties), an important part of its curriculum. Cicero’s moral philosophy is founded on duties made evident by the bond shared by human beings as such, the recognition of which activates virtue. The rhetorical instruction at the King’s New School and from his adult reading was also Ciceronian, including instruction in and reflection upon figuration. Part III interprets the play, especially Act 1.
Shakespeare’s ethics of style is Ciceronian in precisely this way: during ethical deliberation, a character’s understanding of the social bond with other characters will influence his or her figuration, and his or her figuration will influence that understanding. Figures of speech which recognize and take their bearings from an honorably pragmatic grasp of the human bond are ethical; those which do not are unethical.
