Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
left much alone. She sinks slowly downward. She cannot bear darkness,
and has light by her continually: 'tis her command. At last her nature,
not her will, gives way. The secrets of the past find vent in a disorder
of sleep, the beginning perhaps of madness. What the doctor fears is
clear. He reports to her husband no great physical mischief, but bids
her attendant to remove from her all means by which she could harm
herself, and to keep eyes on her constantly. It is in vain. Her death is
announced by a cry from her women so sudden and direful that it would
thrill her husband with horror if he were any longer capable of fear. In
the last words of the play Malcolm tells us it is believed in the
hostile army that she died by her own hand. And (not to speak of the
indications just referred to) it is in accordance with her character
that even in her weakest hour she should cut short by one determined
stroke the agony of her life.
The sinking of Lady Macbeth's nature, and the marked change in her
demeanour to her husband, are most strikingly shown in the conclusion of
the banquet scene; and from this point pathos is mingled with awe. The
guests are gone. She is completely exhausted, and answers Macbeth in
listless, submissive words which seem to come with difficulty. How
strange sounds the reply 'Did you send to him, sir?' to his imperious
question about Macduff! And when he goes on, 'waxing desperate in
imagination,' to speak of new deeds of blood, she seems to sicken at the
thought, and there is a deep pathos in that answer which tells at once
of her care for him and of the misery she herself has silently endured,
You lack the season of all natures, sleep.
We begin to think of her now less as the awful instigator of murder than
as a woman with much that is grand in her, and much that is piteous.
Strange and almost ludicrous as the statement may sound,[230] she is, up
to her light, a perfect wife. She gives her husband the best she has;
and the fact that she never uses to him the terms of affection which, up
to this point in the play, he employs to her, is certainly no indication
of want of love. She urges, appeals, reproaches, for a practical end,
but she never recriminates. The harshness of her taunts is free from
mere personal feeling, and also from any deep or more than momentary
contempt. She despises what she thinks the weakness which stands in the
way of her husband's ambition; but she does not despise _him_. She
evidently admires him and thinks him a great man, for whom the throne is
the proper place. Her commanding attitude in the moments of his
hesitation or fear is probably confined to them. If we consider the
peculiar circumstances of the earlier scenes and the banquet scene, and
if we examine the language of the wife and husband at other times, we
shall come, I think, to the conclusion that their habitual relations are
better represented by the later scenes than by the earlier, though
naturally they are not truly represented by either. Her ambition for her
husband and herself (there was no distinction to her mind) proved fatal
to him, far more so than the prophecies of the Witches; but even when
she pushed him into murder she believed she was helping him to do what
he merely lacked the nerve to attempt; and her part in the crime was so
much less open-eyed than his, that, if the impossible and undramatic
task of estimating degrees of culpability were forced on us, we should
surely have to assign the larger share to Macbeth.
'Lady Macbeth,' says Dr. Johnson, 'is merely detested'; and for a long
time critics generally spoke of her as though she were Malcolm's
'fiend-like queen.' In natural reaction we tend to insist, as I have
been doing, on the other and less obvious side; and in the criticism of
the last century there is even a tendency to sentimentalise the
character. But it can hardly be doubted that Shakespeare meant the
predominant impression to be one of awe, grandeur, and horror, and that
he never meant this impression to be lost, however it might be modified,
as Lady Macbeth's activity diminishes and her misery increases. I cannot
believe that, when she said of Banquo and Fleance,
But in them nature's copy's not eterne,
she meant only that they would some day die; or that she felt any
surprise when Macbeth replied,
There's comfort yet: they are assailable;
though I am sure no light came into her eyes when he added those
dreadful words, 'Then be thou jocund.' She was listless. She herself
would not have moved a finger against Banquo. But she thought his death,
and his son's death, might ease her husband's mind, and she suggested
the murders indifferently and without remorse. The sleep-walking scene,
again, inspires pity, but its main effect is one of awe. There is great
horror in the references to blood, but it cannot be said that there is
more than horror; and Campbell was surely right when, in alluding to
Mrs. Jameson's analysis, he insisted that in Lady Macbeth's misery there
is no trace of contrition.[231] Doubtless she would have given the world
to undo what she had done; and the thought of it killed her; but,
regarding her from the tragic point of view, we may truly say she was
too great to repent.[232]
2
The main interest of the character of Banquo arises from the changes
that take place in him, and from the influence of the Witches upon him.
And it is curious that Shakespeare's intention here is so frequently
missed. Banquo being at first strongly contrasted with Macbeth, as an
innocent man with a guilty, it seems to be supposed that this contrast
must be continued to his death; while, in reality, though it is never
removed, it is gradually diminished. Banquo in fact may be described
much more truly than Macbeth as the victim of the Witches. If we follow
his story this will be evident.
He bore a part only less distinguished than Macbeth's in the battles
against Sweno and Macdonwald. He and Macbeth are called 'our captains,'
and when they meet the Witches they are traversing the 'blasted
heath'[233] alone together. Banquo accosts the strange shapes without
the slightest fear. They lay their fingers on their lips, as if to
signify that they will not, or must not, speak to _him_. To Macbeth's
brief appeal, 'Speak, if you can: what are you?' they at once reply, not
by saying what they are, but by hailing him Thane of Glamis, Thane of
Cawdor, and King hereafter. Banquo is greatly surprised that his partner
should start as if in fear, and observes that he is at once 'rapt'; and
he bids the Witches, if they know the future, to prophesy to _him_, who
neither begs their favour nor fears their hate. Macbeth, looking back at
a later time, remembers Banquo's daring, and how
he chid the sisters,
When first they put the name of king upon me,
And bade them speak to him.
'Chid' is an exaggeration; but Banquo is evidently a bold man, probably
an ambitious one, and certainly has no lurking guilt in his ambition. On
hearing the predictions concerning himself and his descendants he makes
no answer, and when the Witches are about to vanish he shows none of
Macbeth's feverish anxiety to know more. On their vanishing he is simply
amazed, wonders if they were anything but hallucinations, makes no
reference to the predictions till Macbeth mentions them, and then
answers lightly.
When Ross and Angus, entering, announce to Macbeth that he has been made
Thane of Cawdor, Banquo exclaims, aside, to himself or Macbeth, 'What!
can the devil speak true?' He now believes that the Witches were real
beings and the 'instruments of darkness.' When Macbeth, turning to him,
whispers,
Do you not hope your children shall be kings,
When those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me
Promised no less to them?
he draws with the boldness of innocence the inference which is really
occupying Macbeth, and answers,
That, trusted home,
Might yet enkindle you unto the crown
Besides the thane of Cawdor.
Here he still speaks, I think, in a free, off-hand, even jesting,[234]
manner ('enkindle' meaning merely 'excite you to _hope_ for'). But then,
possibly from noticing something in Macbeth's face, he becomes graver,
and goes on, with a significant 'but,'
But 'tis strange:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence.
He afterwards observes for the second time that his partner is 'rapt';
but he explains his abstraction naturally and sincerely by referring to
the surprise of his new honours; and at the close of the scene, when
Macbeth proposes that they shall discuss the predictions together at
some later time, he answers in the cheerful, rather bluff manner, which
he has used almost throughout, 'Very gladly.' Nor was there any reason
why Macbeth's rejoinder, 'Till then, enough,' should excite misgivings
in him, though it implied a request for silence, and though the whole
behaviour of his partner during the scene must have looked very
suspicious to him when the prediction of the crown was made good through
the murder of Duncan.
In the next scene Macbeth and Banquo join the King, who welcomes them
both with the kindest expressions of gratitude and with promises of
favours to come. Macbeth has indeed already received a noble reward.
Banquo, who is said by the King to have 'no less deserved,' receives as
yet mere thanks. His brief and frank acknowledgment is contrasted with
Macbeth's laboured rhetoric; and, as Macbeth goes out, Banquo turns with
hearty praises of him to the King.
And when next we see him, approaching Macbeth's castle in company with
Duncan, there is still no sign of change. Indeed he gains on us. It is
he who speaks the beautiful lines,
This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate;
--lines which tell of that freedom of heart, and that sympathetic sense
of peace and beauty, which the Macbeth of the tragedy could never feel.
But now Banquo's sky begins to darken. At the opening of the Second Act
we see him with Fleance crossing the court of the castle on his way to
bed. The blackness of the moonless, starless night seems to oppress him.
And he is oppressed by something else.
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep: merciful powers,
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose!
On Macbeth's entrance we know what Banquo means: he says to
Macbeth--and it is the first time he refers to the subject unprovoked,
I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters.
His will is still untouched: he would repel the 'cursed thoughts'; and
they are mere thoughts, not intentions. But still they are 'thoughts,'
something more, probably, than mere recollections; and they bring with
them an undefined sense of guilt. The poison has begun to work.
The passage that follows Banquo's words to Macbeth is difficult to
interpret:
I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:
To you they have show'd some truth.
_Macb._ I think not of them:
Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,
We would spend it in some words upon that business,
If you would grant the time.
_Ban._ At your kind'st leisure.