Thick and Thin: Changes of State in Macbeth

Abstract

t his essay attends to the rich sensuousness of Macbeth : fi rst as the play generates an affectively polyvalent atmosphere in which to immerse its audience and characters, and then as bodily changes overtake those characters. Those changes mark the threshold between affect and emotion as a change in state for the characters ’ embodiment — from liquid to solid, or solid to gas — and the vividness with which those changes are realized in staged bodies ’ transactions with the atmosphere guides the audience ’ s emotional engagements with that atmosphere. In this way, Macbeth generates a model for the interrelation of material, social, and preternatural causes upon human feeling and of feelings upon each other — or, in fact, two interlocking models. Through the dynamics be-tween choler and fear, the play offers a model of individual agency, and through those between envy and trust, it offers a model of social agency. The two pairs interact complexly, but the question of priority between them is left irresolute — as a matter of inchoate feeling rather than of solid certainty.