The Accursed Tongue

The Rhetoric of Macbeth's Rage

Abstract

In what turns out to be one of his last moments, right after learning from Macduff that the prophecy of the Weird Sisters is finally fulfilled, Macbeth curses the tongue. But why does he direct his anger towards "that" tongue, instead of "thy," that is, Macduff's tongue? And why does Macbeth curse the tongue at all, instead of Macduff himself? This six-line curse is an inventory of all of Macbeth's misapprehensions. For his misfortune, he accuses the "juggling fiends" who "palter . . . in a double sense." This paper is a study into how Macbeth's intentional misdeeds and mistakes in thinking become evident in the formulation of his speeches. By examining Macbeth's metaphors and sentence structures, the paper presents how Macbeth (with the help of his wife and the Weird Sisters) drives himself into more and more impenetrable paradoxes. The last of those being that his death is brought about by his recognising one of his misapprehensions: when he becomes aware of the performative force of words, that recognition kills him, in the form of Macduff's accursed tongue.