Matisse and Macbeth: A Tragedy in Two Forms

      To fall apart in the midst of merriment is to fall into the pit of grief. It’s the feeling of falling awake from a dream; it’s as if in the jumble of life you suddenly realize that your heart was never beating this whole time. The utopia that had at once been, is now no more. The fatal missing link between two people dancing in a ring in Henri Matisse’s Dance pinpoints the moment just before happiness crumbles, symbolic of the moment that Macbeth finally realizes that his fight against Macduff is futile.

      Initially, Macbeth attempts to drown out his guilt with drink, food, and rowdy banquets. However, the calls of Banquo’s ghost still sound above the sounds of feast and festivity. This foreshadows his eventual descent into a state of numbness rather than genuine disregard for his sins. Macbeth eventually becomes immune to all forms of fear, and, when confronted with news of Macduff’s forces invading his castle, claims that “direness, familiar to [his] slaughterous thoughts, cannot once start [him]” (Shakespeare 100). He is convinced that no man born of a woman can harm him, and his reign will remain undisturbed.

     Macduff shatters Macbeth’s last reason to deny his oncoming downfall when he states that he “was from his mother’s womb ultimately ripped” (Shakespeare 105). It is at this exact line that the correlation between Dance and Macbeth is seen the most clearly. As the other dancers seem to be circling around in ecstasy, the bottom middle dancer, unable to reach the hand on the person to its left, has been flung from the circle. Soon, all of the dancers will be pulled down due to the missed link and will land in a forlorn mess on the spot they once danced upon. Similarly, Macbeth’s fake confidence has also been thrust out of motion by a single sentence and will lead to his greatest fear: his death.

      The instant that Macbeth realizes his mortality is like the moment a drunk is snapped out of his euphoria; and when a Dancer is being pulled down to its fate--it is as tragic as a man who could never admit he was dreaming this whole time.