Porter Scene in Macbeth
Many critics have assumed that so called Drunken Porter Scene (Act2,sciii) was inserted for comic relief.It is funny but it has a serious purpose.The porter has to explain where there has been such a prolonged knocking at the gate.What is important is the knocking when the porter finally opens the gate. In Act II, Scene ii, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth after assassinating Duncan had heard a knocking at the south entry of their castle. With scarcely a break the drunken Porter appears in Act II, Scene iii. The scene begins with repeated knocking which links it up with the previous scene. He has gone to bed late at gone to bed late at night and is reluctant to get up so early to open the gate. Imagining himself to be the Porter of Hell he swears at the knocker.
Here's a knocking indeed! If a
man were porter of hell-gate, he should have
old turning the key.
Finally he opens the door and allows Macduff and Lenox to enter.
The sordid, tense and serious atmosphere of conspiracy and murder is slightly eased by the humorous speeches and incidents of the porter. It is woven into the drama in such a way that they have widened and enriched, rather than weakened, the tragic significance. Alike the gravediggers in Hamlet, the speeches of the Fool in King Lear, the Porter’s nonsense verbatim aims to relieve the tension and heightens the tragic element by contrast.
The porter who has the duty to guard the gate and welcome the visitors is in drunken state and imagines in the Hell Gate. The castle of Macbeth is alike hell and villainy of Macbeth has invested it to its utmost notoriety. Thus the irony in Porter’s speech can well be read. The porter next fancies that three men, a farmer, a Jesuit equivocator and an English tailor knock for admission. Commenting on the farmer, the porter says: “Here’s a farmer, that hang’d himself on th’ expectation of plenty: come in, time-server, have napkins enow about you; here you’ll sweat for’t”. A farmer who hoarded corn expecting to make money, committed suicide as the price of the crops dropped due to bounteous harvest. The porter asks him to bring many hand kerchiefs to wipe away the sweat because the hell is very hot. The porter imagines the second applicant for the entrance into hell to be a believer in equivocation who can say yes and no to the same question to suit his purpose. But the equivocation has not opened the gate of heaven i.e. pleased God, and he has to knock at 6the gate of Hell. The porter next, imagines the third knocker as the English tailor come to heat his iron. Finally, the porter finds the place too cool for hell and says, “I’ll devil porter it no further”.
But what the porter says in his drunken state is true. Macbeth’s castle is symbolically turned into a hell because Duncan, the earthly representative of God, is murdered. This scene transports us from Inverness to Inferno without violating the unity of place. Here the devil of hell are Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, who has a high ambition .The Farmers and the equivocators are symbols of Macbeth. The three sinners are the victims of the same ambition like Macbeth. Thus all of them are but the self projection of Macbeth’s self suffering from the disappointment of vaulting ambition. The career of Macbeth has been precisely summed up by the porter in the phrase
“ The prime rose way to the everlasting bonfire”
But De Quincey ‘On the knocking at the gate in Macbeth” observes that this episode increases the power of the preceding scene and finds the scene all Shakespearean but denies the part of comic relief. In fact, in his views it intensifies the tragic impact in the play. He believes that both Lady Macbeth formed to ‘the image of devils’. The next world is getting prepared for this message. In this intermingling period, the porter appears in the scene. Like a great artistic skill here is the hell-gate compared to Macbeth’s castle. The one a tipsy, tip soliciting menial whose language is vulgar, whose jests are filthy but who after all is not a murdered; the other, Macbeth, a valiant warrior speaking poetry and yet a murderer. Thus the contrast between the porter and his master is also established. The imagination of the porter is also of hell minus tragic pangs, but a continuation of a tragic suspense.
No doubt the drunken porter evokes a great deal of laughter especially of a talented clown had the role.
The porter’s speech had a number of allusions. The reference to the farmer recalls the plenty of corn and the consequent fall in the price of corn in 1606 that ruined many a farmer. The equivocator refers to Henry Garet , a Jesuit who was charged with complicity in the gun powder plot that took in the reign of James I.The reference of the tailor refers to the English practice of imitating foreign fashion.
Thus, the Porter scene has wide range of functions from buying time for changing clothes to comic-relief to allusion to mystery plays to the major themes of the play, but there is no need to discuss the necessity of the scene if we once hear the sound of knocking and see obscure figure staggering from darkness in actual performance. It comes immediately after the murder scene in which all of us - including Macbeth and his wife - are afraid of the revelation of the crime, and the tension filling auditorium is at its height, and suddenly comes the knocking. Theatrically, the effect of this sound is immense. The knocking comes at the time when heart beats are increased and the stage is filled with hashed silence. In this situation, it is extremely difficult to invent a sort of bridge-character not violating its diabolic mood and integrity of the play. Shakespeare had done it. In terms of style and content, better character than the Porter can not be thought of, and thus it is impossible to regard this scene as being interpolated. On the contrary, this scene is one of the finest examples to verify Shakespeare's genius as dramatist.
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