REVIEW
Jorgensen, Paul. Our Naked Frailties: Sensational Art and Meaning in Macbeth.
Berkeley: U of California P, 1971.

Thesis: "My concern," Jorgensen writes, "is to get at what I take to be characterizing human feature of Macbeth: its almost uniquely tangible impact, from within us, upon our feelings" (1). This is why he uses the word "sensational" in the title of his book. He believes the play is sensational in an important way: "For I take 'sensational' not so much in its popular meaning of spectacular as in its deeper, interior meaning of causing sensation" (1). He believes that the play makes us feel its meaning: "Macbeth depicts man's primal ordeal of temptation, crime, and punishment, here upon this bank and shoal of time--in this case an ordeal of one who is more heroic in proportion and potentially more terrible than most of us but who nevertheless sees and feels in a way that compels us to see and feel, yet not always to agree, with him" (5).

Method: The body of Jorgensen's book has nine chapters:

In each chapter Jorgensen illustrates his points with character analysis, thematic analysis, comparisons to characters in other Shakespearean tragedies, and additional material drawn from literature of Shakespeare's time. Here's an example of the character analysis, from the chapter "Bloody Instructions":
In planning the murder, it is Macbeth who first recognizes that there will be blood. He foresees the "bloody instructions," but in discussing the strategy with his Lady, he unwittingly, and without revulsion, inaugurates the action that will spread the blood. The two of them, he plans, will "mark" with blood the two grooms of the chamber and thus place the guilt on them. "Mark" is a tidy, controlled word which will prove sadly inadequate for the splash and spread of blood. Here he has obviously not pictured the blood. He does so, through the terrible force of his demonically instructed imagination, in the dagger soliloquy. On the blade and dudgeon appear "gouts of blood, / Which was not so before" (II.i.46-47). This is his first felt realization that blood can be horrible; he had not, in the service of the King, been frightened by the "strange images of death" which he made. Blood becomes for him now a symbol of evil and guilt. We may ask why the demons, who are eager to lead him to crime, would seem to warn him of the consequences so painfully. We need, however, only to remember that they never lie to him, any more than Mephostophilis lies to Doctor Faustus. They simply show him, now that he has bent up each corporal agent in their service, what is required. And their function is punitive as well as tempting. Moreover, they are not now so much tempting as guiding him.   (84)

Bottom Line: Dense, solid scholarship.