Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
'Still,' it may be said, 'the Witches did foreknow Macbeth's future; and
what is foreknown is fixed; and how can a man be responsible when his
future is fixed?' With this question, as a speculative one, we have no
concern here; but, in so far as it relates to the play, I answer, first,
that not one of the things foreknown is an action. This is just as true
of the later prophecies as of the first. That Macbeth will be harmed by
none of woman born, and will never be vanquished till Birnam Wood shall
come against him, involves (so far as we are informed) no action of his.
It may be doubted, indeed, whether Shakespeare would have introduced
prophecies of Macbeth's deeds, even if it had been convenient to do so;
he would probably have felt that to do so would interfere with the
interest of the inward struggle and suffering. And, in the second place,
_Macbeth_ was not written for students of metaphysics or theology, but
for people at large; and, however it may be with prophecies of actions,
prophecies of mere events do not suggest to people at large any sort of
difficulty about responsibility. Many people, perhaps most, habitually
think of their 'future' as something fixed, and of themselves as 'free.'
The Witches nowadays take a room in Bond Street and charge a guinea; and
when the victim enters they hail him the possessor of L1000 a year, or
prophesy to him of journeys, wives, and children. But though he is
struck dumb by their prescience, it does not even cross his mind that he
is going to lose his glorious 'freedom'--not though journeys and
marriages imply much more agency on his part than anything foretold to
Macbeth. This whole difficulty is undramatic; and I may add that
Shakespeare nowhere shows, like Chaucer, any interest in speculative
problems concerning foreknowledge, predestination and freedom.
(2) We may deal more briefly with the opposite interpretation. According
to it the Witches and their prophecies are to be taken merely as
symbolical representations of thoughts and desires which have slumbered
in Macbeth's breast and now rise into consciousness and confront him.
With this idea, which springs from the wish to get rid of a mere
external supernaturalism, and to find a psychological and spiritual
meaning in that which the groundlings probably received as hard facts,
one may feel sympathy. But it is evident that it is rather a
'philosophy' of the Witches than an immediate dramatic apprehension of
them; and even so it will be found both incomplete and, in other
respects, inadequate.
It is incomplete because it cannot possibly be applied to all the facts.
Let us grant that it will apply to the most important prophecy, that of
the crown; and that the later warning which Macbeth receives, to beware
of Macduff, also answers to something in his own breast and 'harps his
fear aright' But there we have to stop. Macbeth had evidently no
suspicion of that treachery in Cawdor through which he himself became
Thane; and who will suggest that he had any idea, however subconscious,
about Birnam Wood or the man not born of woman? It may be held--and
rightly, I think--that the prophecies which answer to nothing inward,
the prophecies which are merely supernatural, produce, now at any rate,
much less imaginative effect than the others,--even that they are in
_Macbeth_ an element which was of an age and not for all time; but still
they are there, and they are essential to the plot.[209] And as the
theory under consideration will not apply to them at all, it is not
likely that it gives an adequate account even of those prophecies to
which it can in some measure be applied.
It is inadequate here chiefly because it is much too narrow. The Witches
and their prophecies, if they are to be rationalised or taken
symbolically, must represent not only the evil slumbering in the hero's
soul, but all those obscurer influences of the evil around him in the
world which aid his own ambition and the incitements of his wife. Such
influences, even if we put aside all belief in evil 'spirits,' are as
certain, momentous, and terrifying facts as the presence of inchoate
evil in the soul itself; and if we exclude all reference to these facts
from our idea of the Witches, it will be greatly impoverished and will
certainly fail to correspond with the imaginative effect. The union of
the outward and inward here may be compared with something of the same
kind in Greek poetry.[210] In the first Book of the _Iliad_ we are told
that, when Agamemnon threatened to take Briseis from Achilles, 'grief
came upon Peleus' son, and his heart within his shaggy breast was
divided in counsel, whether to draw his keen blade from his thigh and
set the company aside and so slay Atreides, or to assuage his anger and
curb his soul. While yet he doubted thereof in heart and soul, and was
drawing his great sword from his sheath, Athene came to him from heaven,
sent forth of the white-armed goddess Hera, whose heart loved both alike
and had care for them. She stood behind Peleus' son and caught him by
his golden hair, to him only visible, and of the rest no man beheld
her.' And at her bidding he mastered his wrath, 'and stayed his heavy
hand on the silver hilt, and thrust the great sword back into the
sheath, and was not disobedient to the saying of Athene.'[211] The
succour of the goddess here only strengthens an inward movement in the
mind of Achilles, but we should lose something besides a poetic effect
if for that reason we struck her out of the account. We should lose the
idea that the inward powers of the soul answer in their essence to
vaster powers without, which support them and assure the effect of their
exertion. So it is in _Macbeth_.[212] The words of the Witches are fatal
to the hero only because there is in him something which leaps into
light at the sound of them; but they are at the same time the witness of
forces which never cease to work in the world around him, and, on the
instant of his surrender to them, entangle him inextricably in the web
of Fate. If the inward connection is once realised (and Shakespeare has
left us no excuse for missing it), we need not fear, and indeed shall
scarcely be able, to exaggerate the effect of the Witch-scenes in
heightening and deepening the sense of fear, horror, and mystery which
pervades the atmosphere of the tragedy.
3
From this murky background stand out the two great terrible figures, who
dwarf all the remaining characters of the drama. Both are sublime, and
both inspire, far more than the other tragic heroes, the feeling of awe.
They are never detached in imagination from the atmosphere which
surrounds them and adds to their grandeur and terror. It is, as it were,
continued into their souls. For within them is all that we felt
without--the darkness of night, lit with the flame of tempest and the
hues of blood, and haunted by wild and direful shapes, 'murdering
ministers,' spirits of remorse, and maddening visions of peace lost and
judgment to come. The way to be untrue to Shakespeare here, as always,
is to relax the tension of imagination, to conventionalise, to conceive
Macbeth, for example, as a half-hearted cowardly criminal, and Lady
Macbeth as a whole-hearted fiend.
These two characters are fired by one and the same passion of ambition;
and to a considerable extent they are alike. The disposition of each is
high, proud, and commanding. They are born to rule, if not to reign.
They are peremptory or contemptuous to their inferiors. They are not
children of light, like Brutus and Hamlet; they are of the world. We
observe in them no love of country, and no interest in the welfare of
anyone outside their family. Their habitual thoughts and aims are, and,
we imagine, long have been, all of station and power. And though in both
there is something, and in one much, of what is higher--honour,
conscience, humanity--they do not live consciously in the light of these
things or speak their language. Not that they are egoists, like Iago;
or, if they are egoists, theirs is an _egoisme a deux_. They have no
separate ambitions.[213] They support and love one another. They suffer
together. And if, as time goes on, they drift a little apart, they are
not vulgar souls, to be alienated and recriminate when they experience
the fruitlessness of their ambition. They remain to the end tragic, even
grand.
So far there is much likeness between them. Otherwise they are
contrasted, and the action is built upon this contrast. Their attitudes
towards the projected murder of Duncan are quite different; and it
produces in them equally different effects. In consequence, they appear
in the earlier part of the play as of equal importance, if indeed Lady
Macbeth does not overshadow her husband; but afterwards she retires more
and more into the background, and he becomes unmistakably the leading
figure. His is indeed far the more complex character: and I will speak
of it first.
Macbeth, the cousin of a King mild, just, and beloved, but now too old
to lead his army, is introduced to us as a general of extraordinary
prowess, who has covered himself with glory in putting down a rebellion
and repelling the invasion of a foreign army. In these conflicts he
showed great personal courage, a quality which he continues to display
throughout the drama in regard to all plain dangers. It is difficult to
be sure of his customary demeanour, for in the play we see him either in
what appears to be an exceptional relation to his wife, or else in the
throes of remorse and desperation; but from his behaviour during his
journey home after the war, from his _later_ conversations with Lady
Macbeth, and from his language to the murderers of Banquo and to others,
we imagine him as a great warrior, somewhat masterful, rough, and
abrupt, a man to inspire some fear and much admiration. He was thought
'honest,' or honourable; he was trusted, apparently, by everyone;
Macduff, a man of the highest integrity, 'loved him well.' And there
was, in fact, much good in him. We have no warrant, I think, for
describing him, with many writers, as of a 'noble' nature, like Hamlet
or Othello;[214] but he had a keen sense both of honour and of the worth
of a good name. The phrase, again, 'too much of the milk of human
kindness,' is applied to him in impatience by his wife, who did not
fully understand him; but certainly he was far from devoid of humanity
and pity.
At the same time he was exceedingly ambitious. He must have been so by
temper. The tendency must have been greatly strengthened by his
marriage. When we see him, it has been further stimulated by his
remarkable success and by the consciousness of exceptional powers and
merit. It becomes a passion. The course of action suggested by it is
extremely perilous: it sets his good name, his position, and even his
life on the hazard. It is also abhorrent to his better feelings. Their
defeat in the struggle with ambition leaves him utterly wretched, and
would have kept him so, however complete had been his outward success
and security. On the other hand, his passion for power and his instinct
of self-assertion are so vehement that no inward misery could persuade
him to relinquish the fruits of crime, or to advance from remorse to
repentance.
In the character as so far sketched there is nothing very peculiar,
though the strength of the forces contending in it is unusual. But there
is in Macbeth one marked peculiarity, the true apprehension of which is
the key to Shakespeare's conception.[215] This bold ambitious man of
action has, within certain limits, the imagination of a poet,--an
imagination on the one hand extremely sensitive to impressions of a
certain kind, and, on the other, productive of violent disturbance both
of mind and body. Through it he is kept in contact with supernatural