Lady Macbeth

The appearance of Shakespeare's characters is left largely to the producer's or the reader's judgment; and this was necessary; for though the playwright doubtless wrote often with particular actors of the stock company in mind,1 yet repeated revivals would necessitate new castings of any given role and so vitiate detailed descriptions of face and stature and voice. He could not, therefore, make great use of the current pseudo-science of physiognomy, which associated the particulars of physique with faculties of mind and character; and, indeed, the chief authorities on the subject disagreed on so many matters as to limit its usefulness in any case. Occasionally, however, Shakespeare allows himself an epithet or a phrase that, like Chaucer's “gat-tothed” Wife of Bath, seems to make a physical property betoken an inner state; and perhaps Lady Macbeth furnishes a case in point. Duncan calls her “fair”,2 probably in the twin Elizabethan senses of blond and beautiful; and she herself refers to her “little hand”.3 “A fayre colour” and especially red hair4 were associated with the choleric disposition proper to royalty and well exemplified in Queen Elizabeth; choleric persons under the influence of the planet Mars, moreover, were thought to be handsome and “sturdy”;5 and “hands small” were supposed to reflect a mind “unconstant and wilye”,6 or “craftie and subtile”:7 Lady Macbeth is certainly wily and subtle, though not inconstant; and, as the