Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
It remains to look a little more fully at the history of Macbeth after
the murder of Duncan. Unlike his first struggle this history excites
little suspense or anxiety on his account: we have now no hope for him.
But it is an engrossing spectacle, and psychologically it is perhaps the
most remarkable exhibition of the _development_ of a character to be
found in Shakespeare's tragedies.
That heart-sickness which comes from Macbeth's perception of the
futility of his crime, and which never leaves him for long, is not,
however, his habitual state. It could not be so, for two reasons. In the
first place the consciousness of guilt is stronger in him than the
consciousness of failure; and it keeps him in a perpetual agony of
restlessness, and forbids him simply to droop and pine. His mind is
'full of scorpions.' He cannot sleep. He 'keeps alone,' moody and
savage. 'All that is within him does condemn itself for being there.'
There is a fever in his blood which urges him to ceaseless action in the
search for oblivion. And, in the second place, ambition, the love of
power, the instinct of self-assertion, are much too potent in Macbeth to
permit him to resign, even in spirit, the prize for which he has put
rancours in the vessel of his peace. The 'will to live' is mighty in
him. The forces which impelled him to aim at the crown re-assert
themselves. He faces the world, and his own conscience, desperate, but
never dreaming of acknowledging defeat. He will see 'the frame of things
disjoint' first. He challenges fate into the lists.
The result is frightful. He speaks no more, as before Duncan's murder,
of honour or pity. That sleepless torture, he tells himself, is nothing
but the sense of insecurity and the fear of retaliation. If only he were
safe, it would vanish. And he looks about for the cause of his fear; and
his eye falls on Banquo. Banquo, who cannot fail to suspect him, has not
fled or turned against him: Banquo has become his chief counsellor. Why?
Because, he answers, the kingdom was promised to Banquo's children.
Banquo, then, is waiting to attack him, to make a way for them. The
'bloody instructions' he himself taught when he murdered Duncan, are
about to return, as he said they would, to plague the inventor. _This_
then, he tells himself, is the fear that will not let him sleep; and it
will die with Banquo. There is no hesitation now, and no remorse: he has
nearly learned his lesson. He hastens feverishly, not to murder Banquo,
but to procure his murder: some strange idea is in his mind that the
thought of the dead man will not haunt him, like the memory of Duncan,
if the deed is done by other hands.[222] The deed is done: but, instead
of peace descending on him, from the depths of his nature his
half-murdered conscience rises; his deed confronts him in the apparition
of Banquo's Ghost, and the horror of the night of his first murder
returns. But, alas, _it_ has less power, and _he_ has more will.
Agonised and trembling, he still faces this rebel image, and it yields:
Why, so: being gone,
I am a man again.
Yes, but his secret is in the hands of the assembled lords. And, worse,
this deed is as futile as the first. For, though Banquo is dead and even
his Ghost is conquered, that inner torture is unassuaged. But he will
not bear it. His guests have hardly left him when he turns roughly to
his wife:
How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person
At our great bidding?
Macduff it is that spoils his sleep. He shall perish,--he and aught else
that bars the road to peace.
For mine own good
All causes shall give way: I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er:
Strange things I have in head that will to hand,
Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.
She answers, sick at heart,
You lack the season of all natures, sleep.
No doubt: but he has found the way to it now:
Come, we'll to sleep. My strange and self abuse
Is the initiate fear that wants hard use;
We are yet but young in deed.
What a change from the man who thought of Duncan's virtues, and of pity
like a naked new-born babe! What a frightful clearness of
self-consciousness in this descent to hell, and yet what a furious force
in the instinct of life and self-assertion that drives him on!
He goes to seek the Witches. He will know, by the worst means, the
worst. He has no longer any awe of them.
How now, you secret, black and midnight hags!
--so he greets them, and at once he demands and threatens. They tell him
he is right to fear Macduff. They tell him to fear nothing, for none of
woman born can harm him. He feels that the two statements are at
variance; infatuated, suspects no double meaning; but, that he may
'sleep in spite of thunder,' determines not to spare Macduff. But his
heart throbs to know one thing, and he forces from the Witches the
vision of Banquo's children crowned. The old intolerable thought
returns, 'for Banquo's issue have I filed my mind'; and with it, for all
the absolute security apparently promised him, there returns that inward
fever. Will nothing quiet it? Nothing but destruction. Macduff, one
comes to tell him, has escaped him; but that does not matter: he can
still destroy:[223]
And even now,
To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:
The castle of Macduff I will surprise;
Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the sword
His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls
That trace him in's line. No boasting like a fool;
This deed I'll do before this purpose cool.
But no more sights!
No, he need fear no more 'sights.' The Witches have done their work,
and after this purposeless butchery his own imagination will trouble him
no more.[224] He has dealt his last blow at the conscience and pity
which spoke through it.
The whole flood of evil in his nature is now let loose. He becomes an
open tyrant, dreaded by everyone about him, and a terror to his country.
She 'sinks beneath the yoke.'
Each new morn
New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows
Strike heaven on the face.
She weeps, she bleeds, 'and each new day a gash is added to her wounds.'
She is not the mother of her children, but their grave;
where nothing,
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile:
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not mark'd.
For this wild rage and furious cruelty we are prepared; but vices of
another kind start up as he plunges on his downward way.
I grant him bloody,
Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
Sudden, malicious,
says Malcolm; and two of these epithets surprise us. Who would have
expected avarice or lechery[225] in Macbeth? His ruin seems complete.
Yet it is never complete. To the end he never totally loses our
sympathy; we never feel towards him as we do to those who appear the
born children of darkness. There remains something sublime in the
defiance with which, even when cheated of his last hope, he faces earth
and hell and heaven. Nor would any soul to whom evil was congenial be
capable of that heart-sickness which overcomes him when he thinks of the
'honour, love, obedience, troops of friends' which 'he must not look to
have' (and which Iago would never have cared to have), and contrasts
with them
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not,
(and which Iago would have accepted with indifference). Neither can I
agree with those who find in his reception of the news of his wife's
death proof of alienation or utter carelessness. There is no proof of
these in the words,
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word,
spoken as they are by a man already in some measure prepared for such
news, and now transported by the frenzy of his last fight for life. He
has no time now to feel.[226] Only, as he thinks of the morrow when time
to feel will come--if anything comes, the vanity of all hopes and
forward-lookings sinks deep into his soul with an infinite weariness,
and he murmurs,
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
In the very depths a gleam of his native love of goodness, and with it a
touch of tragic grandeur, rests upon him. The evil he has desperately
embraced continues to madden or to wither his inmost heart. No
experience in the world could bring him to glory in it or make his peace
with it, or to forget what he once was and Iago and Goneril never were.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 194: See note BB.]
[Footnote 195: 'Hell is murky' (V. i. 35). This, surely, is not meant
for a scornful repetition of something said long ago by Macbeth. He
would hardly in those days have used an argument or expressed a fear
that could provoke nothing but contempt.]
[Footnote 196: Whether Banquo's ghost is a mere illusion, like the
dagger, is discussed in Note FF.]
[Footnote 197: In parts of this paragraph I am indebted to Hunter's
_Illustrations of Shakespeare_.]
[Footnote 198: The line is a foot short.]
[Footnote 199: It should be observed that in some cases the irony would
escape an audience ignorant of the story and watching the play for the
first time,--another indication that Shakespeare did not write solely
for immediate stage purposes.]
[Footnote 200: Their influence on spectators is, I believe, very
inferior. These scenes, like the Storm-scenes in _King Lear_, belong
properly to the world of imagination.]
[Footnote 201: 'By yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed: I
like not when a 'oman has a great peard' (_Merry Wives_, IV. ii. 202).]
[Footnote 202: Even the metaphor in the lines (II. iii. 127),
What should be spoken here, where our fate,
Hid in an auger-hole, may rush and seize us?
was probably suggested by the words in Scot's first chapter, 'They can
go in and out at awger-holes.']
[Footnote 203: Once, 'weird women.' Whether Shakespeare knew that
'weird' signified 'fate' we cannot tell, but it is probable that he did.
The word occurs six times in _Macbeth_ (it does not occur elsewhere in
Shakespeare). The first three times it is spelt in the Folio _weyward_,
the last three _weyard_. This may suggest a miswriting or misprinting of
_wayward_; but, as that word is always spelt in the Folio either rightly
or _waiward_, it is more likely that the _weyward_ and _weyard_ of
_Macbeth_ are the copyist's or printer's misreading of Shakespeare's
_weird_ or _weyrd_.]
[Footnote 204: The doubt as to these passages (see Note Z) does not
arise from the mere appearance of this figure. The idea of Hecate's
connection with witches appears also at II. i. 52, and she is mentioned
again at III. ii. 41 (cf. _Mid. Night's Dream_, V. i. 391, for her
connection with fairies). It is part of the common traditional notion of
the heathen gods being now devils. Scot refers to it several times. See
the notes in the Clarendon Press edition on III. v. 1, or those in
Furness's Variorum.
Of course in the popular notion the witch's spirits are devils or
servants of Satan. If Shakespeare openly introduces this idea only in
such phrases as 'the instruments of darkness' and 'what! can the devil
speak true?' the reason is probably his unwillingness to give too much
prominence to distinctively religious ideas.]