Babies and Children reference in the Scottish Play

William Shakespeare is until these days the most praised playwright of all times. In order to be able to analyze in depth his play Macbeth, it is necessary to consider some aspects of this crucial figure of the world literature in attempt to make easier and clearer the understanding of his work.
Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-Upon-Avon, south of England. His major motive to write was merely financial . He aimed becoming a gentleman rather than an artist, as many may suppose. Since in Elizabethan period the theatre was a means of profiting for men who had verbal talent and fair education, the English writer decided to invest in this area to achieve his objective. Therefore, Shakespeare never seemed to think of his plays as literature, having no interest in the reader and in the study, simply in the audience and in the playhouse .
This can be confirmed by the fact that, to please the ones who watched the plays, the writer would give primary importance to the sound and meaning of words, bearing in mind the diversity of the audience as defines Anthony Burgess:
“Being a mixed bag, it wanted a variety of things – action and blood for the unlettered, fine phrases and wit for the gallants, thought and debate and learning for the more scholarly, subtle humor for the refined, boisterous clowning for the unrefined, love-interest for the ladies, song and dance for everybody. Shakespeare gives all this things; no other dramatist has given anything like as such.”
In Macbeth, for example, it is possible to find some exerts in which Shakespeare writes for aristocrats and wits as well as other parts addressed to sailors and soldiers. Firstly, while saying “so foul and fair a day I have not seen” through the voice of the character Macbeth, the dramatist speaks to the refined part of the public. Secondly, “Or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?” can be seen as subject matter for debate among another category of spectators. Finally, “There’s blood upon thy face / ‘T is Banquo’s then / ‘T better thee without, than he within” is supposed to entertain the unrefined mass since it shows more aggression and blood.
Macbeth is believed to have been written between 1603 and 1606 and first published in 1623, having had many modifications throughout time. Some critics consider this play the cruelest of his works, perhaps only behind King Lear, once the former is built through murdering from beginning to end. It starts with the assassination of the king of Scotland while sleeping and closes with the cold-hearted slay of all Macduff’s line under Macbeth orders.
This play is certainly one of the most violent of Shakespeare’s piece of art and, if we take into account Burgess’ mixed bag audience concept previously mentioned, it would perhaps please to a farther extent the ones who prefer action and blood, if comparing to other of his productions. References to murder and blood are continuously repeated throughout the play assuring this is not, for sure, family entertainment and definitely should not be seen and considered as such.
Childhood is normally connected to innocence, purity and vulnerability, as children are unable to react to any harm directed to them. As in Hugh LaFollette’s view:
“Children are paradigmatically vulnerable because they do not have the wherewithal to care for themselves; they must rely on others to care for them as well as paradigmatically innocent since they are neither causally nor morally responsible for their plight”.

Being so, Shakespeare uses this imagery to transmit the idea that the Macbeths are cruel to the most and have no mercy for others, not even for a baby family member as in Lady Macbeth’s speech, upholding the evil essence of the play and its intention to show humans at its most raw nature:
“I have given suck, and know / How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, / And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you / Have done to this.”
(Act One, Scene VII, Lines 54-59)

This extract is used by Lady Macbeth in order to persuade her husband to kill King Duncan and it shows how committed she would be to the plan, had she promised she would fulfill it and it is not employed this way merely by chance. The child figure plays the role of an intensifier of the scene brutality, feeling that would not emerge as strongly as if it was the exact example only with an adult figure. Presumably, Shakespeare attacks this common-sense concept of vulnerability and innocence because it shocks the audience unquestionably more. These concepts contrast with and reinforce the cruel and dark nature not only of the Macbeths, but also of the play itself.
After observing this, it becomes possible for the reader to identify the usage of children and babies references along different parts of this piece of art such as in Act Four, Scene I, Lines 29-32, in which the witches know that Macbeth will return to learn his fate. As they wait for him, they stir up a disgusting stew of evil and one of the last ingredients to go into the cauldron is a finger from a strangled baby born of a prostitute out in a ditch: “Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips; Finger of birth-strangled babe / Ditch-deliver'd by a drab" These ingredients are almost humorous, but this one is truly horrifying because parents could be -- and can still be -- so evil that they will kill and mutilate their own children.
If a more accurate search is performed, many distinct passages can be found in which children are mentioned so as to maintain the merciless tone of the story. For example, later in the same scene, the witches call up apparitions that speak to Macbeth and the second one is a "bloody child”, representing Macduff, as learned farther in the plot, which is the person who will be able to kill Macbeth, once "Macduff was from his mother's womb / Untimely ripp'd" (5.8.15-16) because cesarean section is not considered a natural birth.
Taking into consideration this brief analysis of how the imagery of babies and children is employed in the play, one might draw the conclusion that Macbeth is supposed to upset people instead of barely amusing and entertaining. The images are used in the opposite way, that is, instead of stating the good-hearted and pure personality of a specific character or to give a tone to a context, transmitting, thus, a good impression as well as touching the audience, they are ruthless attacked in order to astonish the spectators in a dreadful way. Therefore, the means children and babies are portrayed in the play to reassure the evil nature of Macbeth.

Pygmalion

George Bernard Shaw, author of Pygmalion, was a very famous playwright of the twentieth century. Born in Ireland in 1856, Shaw’s main subjects to transform into art were education, marriage, religion, government, health care, social classes and relations between the sexes, being these two last the ones more visible in the play.
He was the only person to have been awarded both a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925 and an Oscar in 1938, respectively for this play and for his work on the British film version with the same name, which was a financial and critical success besides being nominated three more times. And the repercussion of this play was such, that in 1956 its screenplay was adapted into a musical called “My Fair Lady” and later in 1964 into a film with this same name.
The play which brought Shaw popularity as well as respect is about a cockney flower girl who is changed into a lady by speaking the English language properly. This is possible because during one of her walking selling flowers, Eliza Doolittle meets Professor Higgins, a phonetician who can say where anyone is from by listening to their accent. Impressed by his ability and at the same time by the marketing he does about being able to change anyone’s social position using phonetics, she decides to pay for lessons in order to speak like upper class people and, therefore, get the chance to benefit from a better life.
Shaw was an ardent socialist; therefore, it is possible to observe in this writing of his the intention of changing the power relations present in society. For example, when Mr. Higgins defends himself from Eliza Doolittle’s complaint of not being treated as she deserved after becoming a lady, and that only Mr. Pickering (a professor’s friend and also involved in the process) addressed to her as a duchess, Shaw shows very plainly his position towards equality among people: “And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl” (Act V- pg. 97). Another visible manifestation of Shaw’s socialist view is when he seriously tells Eliza about the secret of being a lady:
“[…] is not having good manners or bad manners […], but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.” (Act V – pg. 98)

Moving towards the main theme present in the play - the Pygmalion myth - , it was a popular subject for Victorian era English playwrights, including one of Shaw's influences, W. S. Gilbert, who wrote a successful play based on the story in 1871, called Pygmalion and Galatea. Shaw also would have been familiar with the burlesque version, Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed. In the Greek mythology, Pygmalion is a sculptor who falls in love with one of his productions – Galatea – and asks Aphrodite (Venus), Goddess of Love, to give life to the ivory monument. The sculptor is considered a misogynist , but he finds his sculpture so astonishingly gorgeous that he cannot help loving and desiring her. Being so, Mr. Higgins is supposed to be the one who gives life – actually the chance of another kind of life – to Eliza Doolittle.
There is a central discussion among critics about the relation between Mr. Higgins and the Doolittle girl, questioning the reasons why Shaw did not finish the plot with the two main characters together. The great expectation about such closing is so strong because both the sculptor of the myth and the professor in the play share somewhat of the misogynist behavior. For example, this similarity becomes clearer when he comments to Colonel Pickering about marriage that he does not believe having a woman by his side is something worth the troubles she invariably brings:

“Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you are driving at another. […] One wants to go north and the other south; and the result is that both have to go east, though they both hate the east wind. So, here I am, a confirmed old bachelor, and likely to remain so.” (Act II – pg. 35)

In order to test his capacity to achieve the ends of teaching Eliza to speak as well as behave properly, Mr. Higgins decides to take her to an important event, with plenty of influent high-society people to see the results of his insatiable efforts. Impressively, everything goes on fine and the process is complete, so Eliza is now free to do whatever she decides is best for her. However, as in the myth, what rises from the transformation is a person who does not fit neither where she belonged before nor in this new environment she was taught to blend in. Eliza does not have any further knowledge besides the ones about manner and phonetics to lead a life as an upper-class lady. There are some evidences of her hopeless despair after having what she paid for:

“What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What is to become of me?” (Act IV – pg 76.)

Knowing that the Doolittle girl had a father – Mr. Alfred Doolittle – who as soon as he was aware of the moving of his daughter to professor Higgins’ place went straight to him asking for money as a compensation for using his child for whatever reasons the old bachelor had in mind. Presumably, Mr. Doolittle did not know why his daughter had moved and he did not care about it as long as he profited from the situation somehow. This way, Mr. Higgins and Eliza herself know very well the girl does not have a place to come back - a family where she can find support to face her so stoutly dreamt new life. However, he does not seem too worried about it once he claims when he had done what he was asked to and paid for, and from that on, it will not be of his concern anymore:

“Well, when I’ve done with her, we can throw her back into the gutter; and then it will be her own business again.”(Act II – pg. 30)

With this new reality in front of her, Eliza Doolittle decides to marry Freddy Eynsford Hill, a young man who falls in love with her when she first appears as an elegant upper-class young woman at Mrs. Higgins at-home day. Freddy is not rich and does not have talent for anything in special, but she believes that his submissive temper and his love for her is enough to make them a happy couple. And despite all the evidences of lack of interest in Eliza, Professor Higgins even mentions the possibility of adopting her as a daughter (once marrying her was completely out of question) or marrying Colonel Pickering, although he knew he was also a confirmed old bachelor, as an attempt to show he had some consideration for her. But, obviously, she would not give the Professor the taste of keeping her under his command as she felt while living in his house.
Finally, with the financial help and counseling of Colonel Pickering and having calligraphy lessons from Mr. Higgins after ferociously avoiding it until the last minute, Eliza and Freddy start a business owning a flower shop, an enthusiastic attempt to settle down in life and, therefore, do not depend (so much) on anyone else. However, they are not as successful as expected in this new endeavor once they do not know about the business as necessary to make a fair living out of it. Eliza knows about flowers but her writing is detestable not mentioning the lack of ability to use checks and deal with bank bureaucracy. Besides, Freddy knows a little Latin and can do with the botanical nomenclature, but nothing else. Thus, they accept being timeless supported by the two “sculptors”, if we consider the Greek myth.
Possibly Shaw’s comedic masterpiece, and certainly his funniest and most popular play, Pygmalion was claimed by Shaw himself to be a didactic drama about phonetics, and its antiheroic hero, Henry Higgins, is a phonetician, but the play is a humane comedy about love and the English class system. It probes important questions about social class, human behavior, and relations between the sexes. To prove the comical tone of this play, the scene in which Eliza shows she had already learnt how to speak English properly but does not know how to lead a polite conversation is the one in which grasps laughs from the audience. The completely unfortunate subject she talks about:
“Why would she die of influenza? She come through a diphtheria right enough the year before. I saw her with my own eyes. Fairly blue with it she was.”(Act III – pg. 58)
Indeed, it is a very humorous story, dealing with relaxation about topics that could be reason to raise a war or revolution, perhaps, and depicting a bit of the reality in society of the time. There is pretty much of Shaw’s political position and ideology and it does not seem that at any moment he had the intention of veiling his strong desire to make profound changes in society’s organization and principles. It is a very intelligent and at the same time peaceful line of attack to spread different and new ideas using Literature as the vehicle to reach people. It amuses, entertains and feeds people’s minds with distinct concepts from what so far they have been exposed to.