Understanding Macbeth by William Shakespeare through Beyonce's Tyrant

How does the song Tyrant by Beyonce be related to the play the tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare in the 16th century? The two pieces of work has more in common than their respective titles. 

Before we get to the interlacing of the master pieces it’s good to get a good understanding of them individually. 

The tragedy of Macbeth is a play written by Shakespeare during the 16th century. The play centers Macbeth, who starts off hailed as a valiant war hero but due to corrupt ambitions (catalyzed by prophecies by witches) commit the treasonous crime of killing the king. Macbeth becomes king due to this but it is short lived as he faces guilt, paranoia and imminent defeat, head slashed by Macduff, a lord of the kingdom in the final scenes of the play. 

Tyrant is a song by Beyonce on the album Cowboy Carter, about a woman that the singer refers to as a hangman and a tyrant, who goes into town and kills and steals husbands/boyfriends, Beyonce’s man included. The singer laments this, asking how could the woman be so heartless and cruel, but at the same time envying the tyrant and wanting to be her, even begging her tell her how to become a tyrant. At the end of the song it can be interpreted that Beyonce herself became a tyrant. 

The thing that sparked this connection between the play and the song for me is this one lyric in Tyrant “Hangman, answer me now” and the line “One cried ‘God bless us!’, and ‘Amen’ the other,

As they had seen me with these hangman’s hands.”  expressed by Macbeth after he killed Duncan. From the get go, there seems to be a clear flow between Macbeth and Tyrant, where Tyrant confronts the hangman, which in this case would be Macbeth. This conversation between the two texts expand further from this metaphor of hangman, however. 

The western setting, including the repetition of “giddy up giddy up” throughout the song reminds me of the horse metaphor Macbeth makes: “I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition which overleaps itself and falls on the other”. Giddy up is a saying said (combined with whipping or pricking) to make a horse start moving or go faster. Is this a reference Beyonce is making towards the tyrant as a warning, to start moving because I will catch up to you or giddy up as in I will join you? The latter interpretation would make more sense if we think about Lady Macbeth, or Macbeth. To get ready, start moving, moving faster than ever, committing crimes left and right to safeguard his corrupt throne. I also come across something interesting on Tumblr, about how witches and cowboys are “the same entity but just separated by night and day”:

- Big silly hats

- Dangerous aura

- wands/guns

- midnight/high noon

- robes/ponchos

These motifs provide some similarities regarding the imagery and location that may seem contrasting at first, but deep down are somehow connected, rendering the two texts more intertwined as a result. There is also a saying on the same tumblr screenshot I came across that says "somethin' wicked this way rides" which is a twist on the well known line from Macbeth "something wicked this way comes". The re-done saying has a wild west feel to it and I thought it was kind of cool to see how much connections there are between 11th century Scotland and the wild west. 

"Cowboy Carter

Time to strike a match

And light up this juke joint"

At the start of the song is Dolly Parton speaking, addressing Beyonce with the name "Cowboy Carter" and tells her to burn up "this juke joint" (juke joint is an African American vernacular term for an informal establishment featuring music, dancing, gambling). The cheery image of a bar or a gathering place contrasts with the mischievous message from Dolly, who is telling Cowboy Carter to destroy this lively setting. This ominous and destructive tone is reminiscent of the Act 1 Scene 1 in Macbeth, where the three witches meet in lightning and thunder, set in the background of a relatively peaceful Scotland on the verge of bloodshed. "When the battle's lost, and won" "There to meet Macbeth" both of the main characters of the song and the play gets mentioned at the beginning. However, whereas Cowboy Carter is about to burn the juke joint down, the three destructive witches meet in rain and thunder. Positioned at two polar ends, both the narrator and the three witches act as a foreshadowing to the tumultuous events that will take place. 

In the first verse of Tyrant, Beyonce sings, “One by one, you hang them high”. This euphemism describes how the tyrant that Beyonce speaks of is killing men, one by one. This is similar to what takes place in Macbeth, where Macbeth goes on to carry out a chain of murders (even though he actually only physically kills one person, he pays others to go kill Banquo and Macduff’s family). Looking closer at the language, it can be seen that the word choices "hang" and "high" contradict each other, since hang as in the idiom "hang your head" (which is to have one's head turned *downward* because of shame or embarrassment) portrays a contrasting image to that of the idiom "hold your head high" (which means to be proud and confident). The hangman is doing the hanging, is she shameful of this like Macbeth is, with his hangman's hands after killing Duncan? The 'them', the men that were killed had their heads high, going out proud and virtuous. This mirrors the difference between Macbeth and Duncan, between the shameful traitor and the dignified king, immortalized as so by his death. 

Next, the singer goes “your hands are steady and you sleep at night”, from the outside assuming that the hangman is not disturbed by her heinous crimes. But is this true? Shakespeare says no; in act 2 scene 2 right after murdering Duncan, Macbeth says he heard a voice telling him "" Sleep no more!” to all the house. “Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more.”” This voice becomes true, and Macbeth (and Lady Macbeth) are not able to sleep peacefully afterward. Macbeth's hands are not steady either, as expressed in the hyperbole “What hands are here! Ha, they pluck out mine eyes. Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand?”, claiming that his hands are so stained they will never be clean again, no matter how much water is used to wash them. This symbolizes the paranoia that Macbeth (and Lady Macbeth) go through. An observation can be made about the irony of the lyrics and the events that take place in the play. On one hand, from an outsider perspective, the criminal doesn't seem to get punished and lives on their days like normal. On the other hand, however, through the play it is revealed that indeed the criminal does pay for his actions; he struggles to sleep and stay in control of his own body, the possible protruding of internal paranoia and guilt. 

Beyonce continues with “How did you turn your heart to stone?”. A rhetorical question, served as a way for the singer to make sense of the evil deeds of the hangman, not so much as to question the hangman's lack of remorse. Lady Macbeth's "unsex me" scene comes to mind immediately when I heard this lyric because Lady Macbeth most explicitly summoned dark spirits to block the passage of remorse and any sense of humanity from entering her body, as a result turning her "heart to stone". If viewed through the lens of rhetorical question, this could represent Lady Macbeth's questioning her husband and his descent into evilness (loosing conscience the more murders he becomes responsible for). In the play Lady Macbeth becomes fearful of her husband's darkness as he proceeds to kill Macduff's family without planning with her, shutting her out. Lady Macbeth, albeit being the master manipulator that ultimately pushed Macbeth to kill Duncan, starts to become a lot more hesitant about the whole murder thing Macbeth has when she knows of Macbeth’s plan to kill Banquo and Macduff’s family. Also, the hangman was assumed to be all evil, not a human to do this, but Shakespeare suggests that this is only a facade and that in the end the truth will shine, as what happened to Lady Macbeth sleepwalking act 5 scene 1. 

This lyric “I don’t want him back, but I can’t let go” through this perspective means that even though Lady Macbeth doesn’t want Duncan back alive, since she obviously wants this power,  the guilt is haunting her so bad that her mind is filled with paranoia and immense guilt about her participation in Macbeth’s treasonous scheme for power. Also, antithesis of not not wanting to get something back but at the same time can't letting go of that thing reveals the internal struggle in Lady Macbeth. 

“Hangman, answer me now, you owe me a debt, you stole him from me” Whoever talking is addressing Macbeth, who is the hangman/tyrant referred to in the song. Could this be Fleance, or Macduff (referencing his dead family at the hands of Macbeth), or Lady Macbeth speaking to the new Macbeth consumed with dark spirits. 

“I hated you once, I envy you now, just tell me how, tell me how” Lady Macbeth’s insanity is put on display more graphically than Macbeth’s who actually didn’t go through any sort of physically manifestations of his guilt to such a graphic degree like Lady Macbeth did (we could talk more about how this display of female hysteria is inherently misogynistic but let’s unpack that another time). So with her insanity on such public display, we see how mad she is due to the killing of Duncan. This could be her saying to the corrupt Macbeth how are you still holding up teach me to do the same because I am dying from this (it tormented her so much she killed herself). 

The next relevant lyrics come a few verses down, with “when the sun goes down (it’s night-night hey) can hear her body howl (in the moonlight hey). From this line it is clear that the tyrant is active at night, especially when the sun starts dipping down. In the play, Macbeth not only asks the darkness to shield his deep desires from getting caught (by the Heaven) but during and after Macbeth kills Duncan the sky stays a dark hue, garnering an observation from a lord saying that it should be morning but the darkness engulfs all source of light. In this dark abyss, owls howling can be heard, at the time symbolizing death. The setting for tyrannical activities in both works is darkness filled with unsettling howls. Another interpretation of the lyric “can hear her body howl (in the moonlight hey)” in regards to the play is that it could be a nudge to Hecate. Hecate tells her plan to create illusions to coat Macbeth in a false sense of security ("mortal's chiefest enemy") “Upon the corner of the moon There hangs a vap’rous drop profound. I’ll catch it ere it come to ground, And that, distilled by magic sleights, Shall raise such artificial sprites”. Hecate’s collecting drops from the moon to create illusions is an image that fits pretty nicely into the lyric “can hear her body howl (in the moonlight hey). Back to Lady Macbeth, the next lyric is super interesting: “I know they’re looking for me, how we gonna hide it?”. On the surface this in the context of the play could be about Lady Macbeth and Macbeth trying to hide their crimes. But looking deeper into this lyric brings out much more depth about the character of Lady Macbeth, as well as Shakespeare authorial choices regarding narration. “I know they’re looking for me” metaphor for they are trying to catch me (for my crimes/for something I did). But taking this literally it means that someone is trying to look for Lady Macbeth, with the intention of snooping, looking *at* her. This brings us to act 5 scene 1, the scene of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking. This is the only scene in the entire play where Shakespeare uses third person narrating to give the audience insight on what is happening to Lady Macbeth, which is significant. Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking is not described by Lady Macbeth herself, who is the person experiencing this phenomenon, but by the doctor and gentlewoman. By showing her sleepwalking through the perspectives of outsiders, Shakespeare implies how Lady Macbeth has lost autonomy over her own body now; she can’t control anymore what she wants to show others and what to hide. All her guilt that she tries to suppress has now dominated her body. So back to the lyrics, “I know they’re looking for me” but “how we gonna hide?”. You can’t, Lady Macbeth, you can’t hide because all of your crimes bubble up and escape your body violently at the witness of the doctor and gentlewoman. After Lady Macbeth has tried so hard to keep her internal turmoil at bay, it shoots outward in the end. 

After this we have “shoot up the bar, tell the law we don’t remember nothing after that, scot free whole city after me”. I want to highlight the “tell the law we don’t remember nothing after that” because in the context of the play it could mean the divine rule of kings, which Macbeth breaks  by killing the rightful king and then steals the crown. And because Macbeth has violated this law the “whole city [is] after [him]”; that is Macduff and Malcolm, followed by the English army. Beyonce sings next “have you seen her…what a tragedy”. And what a tragedy it is for Macbeth, who initially emerged as a war hero, had everything on his side, power and love, throwing it all away to run after the heels of his ambition, leading him nowhere in the end. "what a tragedy" Macbeth himself posits in act 5 scene 8 in the infamous tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow speech, stating "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,/And then is heard no more. It is a tale /Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, /Signifying nothing." In the end, as the commentary made by Beyonce "what a tragedy" Macbeth's ambition for power not only gets him nothing but destroys him in the end, a life that signifies nothing. 

Lyrics from Beyonce's "Tyrant" can reveal the messaging of Shakespeare in his play The Tragedy of Macbeth, that on the outside looking in, ambition for power looks seductive and those who acts on these corrupt desires roams free of consequences but in reality they are met with a type of haunting that will drive them to the verge of death. The play also provides clues as to what will happen to Beyonce, this Cowboy Carter that becomes a tyrant herself at the end of the song. As the tyrant, is she going to take revenge, *kill* the old tyrant? This is an interesting concept shown in the play Macduff kills Macbeth, who *is* the king. He may have not been a good and rightful king, but in a vacuum Macduff killing the king should be as condemned as Macbeth was when he killed Duncan. However it doesn't exist in a vacuum. Instead in this context Macduff is doing the right thing by killing the tyrannical king and restoring order to Scotland. So would Cowboy Carter killing the old tyrant make her the tyrant? Or is she just continuing what the old tyrant has left behind.