Witches and darkness and blood and noise permeate Shakespeare’s masterpiece Macbeth. The play is dominated by the destroying power of sin and the depths of wickedness to which the human heart can plunge. Throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare uses symbols and imagery to lend a deeper, darker meaning to many events.
After murdering Banquo, Macbeth is haunted by Banquo’s ghost. His wife chides him that he looks “but on a stool.” To this comment Macbeth replies, “If charnel-houses and our graves must send/ Those that we bury back, our monuments/ Shall be the maws of kites.” In passing, this allusion seems obscure, but the passage becomes clearer once the meaning of the words is known.
The key to unlocking the phrase is found in two words: monument and kite. An eerie reference to Banquo’s ghost, the monument mentioned is a device by which those who are living remember those who are dead. The type of monument described is rather nasty: the maw of kites, or, in other words, the stomach of a predatory bird that symbolizes greed and insatiable desire.
Accordingly, Macbeth’s comment assumes a double meaning. On the surface, he seems to be talking about the futility of burial; if the graveyards are going to send back the dead, then dead bodies might as well be left for scavenging animals to devour. However, wittingly or unwittingly, Macbeth also predicts his legacy. In this sense, he is saying that, if the ghosts of everyone he has murdered come back to haunt him, he will be exposed as the greedy, predatory creature he truly is.
This comment is not the only instance of Shakespeare’s masterful use of adumbration. He did not create the moods in his plays by description but by the interaction of his characters. Thus, the audience often senses, rather than knows, how the wickedness of Macbeth progresses. A perfect example of this subtlety is Act III, Scene 3 of Macbeth, the scene of Banquo’s murder.
In this scene, Shakespeare relates the presence and absence of light to the progression of evil. As the murderers lie in wait for Banquo, the First Murderer states that “the west yet glimmers with some streaks of day.” At this point, the Murderers have not killed Banquo; there is still time left to abandon the scheme. Just as sunset wavers between day and night, so this moment the Murderers’ souls waver between good and evil; as the sunset plunges the world irrevocably into night, so the Murderers’ choice to “stand to ‘t” plunges their souls into murder most foul. When Banquo dies, the Third Murderer cries, “Who did strike out the light?” By what clever means does Shakespeare represent the extinguishing of the Murderers’ consciences!
Because he uses such rich imagery to picture the deeper meanings of his characters’ actions, Shakespeare involves his audience far deeper in the psychological workings of Macbeth than he would by simple description or narration. His vivid imagery compellingly illustrates the truth of Matthew 6:22-23:
“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”
I was always under the impression that the monuments = maws of kites quote was a reference to birds of prey regurgitating bones and skin after devouring prey. It doesn't make sense unless you interpret it like this.
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