Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
_Macb._ If you shall cleave to my consent, when 'tis,
It shall make honour for you.
_Ban._ So I lose none
In seeking to augment it, but still keep
My bosom franchised and allegiance clear,
I shall be counsell'd.
_Macb._ Good repose the while!
_Ban._ Thanks, sir: the like to you!
Macbeth's first idea is, apparently, simply to free himself from any
suspicion which the discovery of the murder might suggest, by showing
himself, just before it, quite indifferent to the predictions, and
merely looking forward to a conversation about them at some future time.
But why does he go on, 'If you shall cleave,' etc.? Perhaps he foresees
that, on the discovery, Banquo cannot fail to suspect him, and thinks it
safest to prepare the way at once for an understanding with him (in the
original story he makes Banquo his accomplice _before_ the murder).
Banquo's answer shows three things,--that he fears a treasonable
proposal, that he has no idea of accepting it, and that he has no fear
of Macbeth to restrain him from showing what is in his mind.
Duncan is murdered. In the scene of discovery Banquo of course appears,
and his behaviour is significant. When he enters, and Macduff cries out
to him,
O Banquo, Banquo,
Our royal master's murdered,
and Lady Macbeth, who has entered a moment before, exclaims,
Woe, alas!
What, in our house?
his answer,
Too cruel anywhere,
shows, as I have pointed out, repulsion, and we may be pretty sure that
he suspects the truth at once. After a few words to Macduff he remains
absolutely silent while the scene is continued for nearly forty lines.
He is watching Macbeth and listening as he tells how he put the
chamberlains to death in a frenzy of loyal rage. At last Banquo appears
to have made up his mind. On Lady Macbeth's fainting he proposes that
they shall all retire, and that they shall afterwards meet,
And question this most bloody piece of work
To know it further. Fears and scruples[235] shake us:
In the great hand of God I stand, and thence
Against the undivulged pretence[236] I fight
Of treasonous malice.
His solemn language here reminds us of his grave words about 'the
instruments of darkness,' and of his later prayer to the 'merciful
powers.' He is profoundly shocked, full of indignation, and determined
to play the part of a brave and honest man.
But he plays no such part. When next we see him, on the last day of his
life, we find that he has yielded to evil. The Witches and his own
ambition have conquered him. He alone of the lords knew of the
prophecies, but he has said nothing of them. He has acquiesced in
Macbeth's accession, and in the official theory that Duncan's sons had
suborned the chamberlains to murder him. Doubtless, unlike Macduff, he
was present at Scone to see the new king invested. He has, not formally
but in effect, 'cloven to' Macbeth's 'consent'; he is knit to him by 'a
most indissoluble tie'; his advice in council has been 'most grave and
prosperous'; he is to be the 'chief guest' at that night's supper. And
his soliloquy tells us why:
Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,
As the weird women promised, and, I fear,
Thou play'dst most foully for't: yet it was said
It should not stand in thy posterity,
But that myself should be the root and father
Of many kings. If there come truth from them--
As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine--
Why, by the verities on thee made good,
May they not be my oracles as well,
And set me up in hope? But hush! no more.
This 'hush! no more' is not the dismissal of 'cursed thoughts': it only
means that he hears the trumpets announcing the entrance of the King and
Queen.
His punishment comes swiftly, much more swiftly than Macbeth's, and
saves him from any further fall. He is a very fearless man, and still so
far honourable that he has no thought of acting to bring about the
fulfilment of the prophecy which has beguiled him. And therefore he has
no fear of Macbeth. But he little understands him. To Macbeth's
tormented mind Banquo's conduct appears highly suspicious. _Why_ has
this bold and circumspect[237] man kept his secret and become his chief
adviser? In order to make good _his_ part of the predictions after
Macbeth's own precedent. Banquo, he is sure, will suddenly and secretly
attack him. It is not the far-off accession of Banquo's descendants that
he fears; it is (so he tells himself) swift murder; not that the 'barren
sceptre' will some day droop from his dying hand, but that it will be
'wrenched' away now (III. i. 62).[238] So he kills Banquo. But the
Banquo he kills is not the innocent soldier who met the Witches and
daffed their prophecies aside, nor the man who prayed to be delivered
from the temptation of his dreams.
_Macbeth_ leaves on most readers a profound impression of the misery of
a guilty conscience and the retribution of crime. And the strength of
this impression is one of the reasons why the tragedy is admired by
readers who shrink from _Othello_ and are made unhappy by _Lear_. But
what Shakespeare perhaps felt even more deeply, when he wrote this play,
was the _incalculability_ of evil,--that in meddling with it human
beings do they know not what. The soul, he seems to feel, is a thing of
such inconceivable depth, complexity, and delicacy, that when you
introduce into it, or suffer to develop in it, any change, and
particularly the change called evil, you can form only the vaguest idea
of the reaction you will provoke. All you can be sure of is that it will
not be what you expected, and that you cannot possibly escape it.
Banquo's story, if truly apprehended, produces this impression quite as
strongly as the more terrific stories of the chief characters, and
perhaps even more clearly, inasmuch as he is nearer to average human
nature, has obviously at first a quiet conscience, and uses with evident
sincerity the language of religion.
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Apart from his story Banquo's character is not very interesting, nor is
it, I think, perfectly individual. And this holds good of the rest of
the minor characters. They are sketched lightly, and are seldom
developed further than the strict purposes of the action required. From
this point of view they are inferior to several of the less important
figures in each of the other three tragedies. The scene in which Lady
Macduff and her child appear, and the passage where their slaughter is
reported to Macduff, have much dramatic value, but in neither case is
the effect due to any great extent to the special characters of the
persons concerned. Neither they, nor Duncan, nor Malcolm, nor even
Banquo himself, have been imagined intensely, and therefore they do not
produce that sense of unique personality which Shakespeare could convey
in a much smaller number of lines than he gives to most of them.[239]
And this is of course even more the case with persons like Ross, Angus,
and Lennox, though each of these has distinguishable features. I doubt
if any other great play of Shakespeare's contains so many speeches which
a student of the play, if they were quoted to him, would be puzzled to
assign to the speakers. Let the reader turn, for instance, to the second
scene of the Fifth Act, and ask himself why the names of the persons
should not be interchanged in all the ways mathematically possible. Can
he find, again, any signs of character by which to distinguish the
speeches of Ross and Angus in Act I. scenes ii. and iii., or to
determine that Malcolm must have spoken I. iv. 2-11? Most of this
writing, we may almost say, is simply Shakespeare's writing, not that of
Shakespeare become another person. And can anything like the same
proportion of such writing be found in _Hamlet_, _Othello_, or _King
Lear_?
Is it possible to guess the reason of this characteristic of _Macbeth_?
I cannot believe it is due to the presence of a second hand. The
writing, mangled by the printer and perhaps by 'the players,' seems to
be sometimes obviously Shakespeare's, sometimes sufficiently
Shakespearean to repel any attack not based on external evidence. It may
be, as the shortness of the play has suggested to some, that Shakespeare
was hurried, and, throwing all his weight on the principal characters,
did not exert himself in dealing with the rest. But there is another
possibility which may be worth considering. _Macbeth_ is distinguished
by its simplicity,--by grandeur in simplicity, no doubt, but still by
simplicity. The two great figures indeed can hardly be called simple,
except in comparison with such characters as Hamlet and Iago; but in
almost every other respect the tragedy has this quality. Its plot is
quite plain. It has very little intermixture of humour. It has little
pathos except of the sternest kind. The style, for Shakespeare, has not
much variety, being generally kept at a higher pitch than in the other
three tragedies; and there is much less than usual of the interchange of
verse and prose.[240] All this makes for simplicity of effect. And, this
being so, is it not possible that Shakespeare instinctively felt, or
consciously feared, that to give much individuality or attraction to the
subordinate figures would diminish this effect, and so, like a good
artist, sacrificed a part to the whole? And was he wrong? He has
certainly avoided the overloading which distresses us in _King Lear_,
and has produced a tragedy utterly unlike it, not much less great as a
dramatic poem, and as a drama superior.
I would add, though without much confidence, another suggestion. The
simplicity of _Macbeth_ is one of the reasons why many readers feel
that, in spite of its being intensely 'romantic,' it is less unlike a
classical tragedy than _Hamlet_ or _Othello_ or _King Lear_. And it is
possible that this effect is, in a sense, the result of design. I do not
mean that Shakespeare intended to imitate a classical tragedy; I mean
only that he may have seen in the bloody story of Macbeth a subject
suitable for treatment in a manner somewhat nearer to that of Seneca, or
of the English Senecan plays familiar to him in his youth, than was the
manner of his own mature tragedies. The Witches doubtless are
'romantic,' but so is the witch-craft in Seneca's _Medea_ and _Hercules
Oetaeus_; indeed it is difficult to read the account of Medea's
preparations (670-739) without being reminded of the incantations in
_Macbeth_. Banquo's Ghost again is 'romantic,' but so are Seneca's
ghosts. For the swelling of the style in some of the great
passages--however immeasurably superior these may be to anything in
Seneca--and certainly for the turgid bombast which occasionally appears
in _Macbeth_, and which seems to have horrified Jonson, Shakespeare
might easily have found a model in Seneca. Did he not think that this
was the high Roman manner? Does not the Sergeant's speech, as Coleridge
observed, recall the style of the 'passionate speech' of the Player in
_Hamlet_,--a speech, be it observed, on a Roman subject?[241] And is it
entirely an accident that parallels between Seneca and Shakespeare seem
to be more frequent in _Macbeth_ than in any other of his undoubtedly
genuine works except perhaps _Richard III._, a tragedy unquestionably
influenced either by Seneca or by English Senecan plays?[242] If there
is anything in these suggestions, and if we suppose that Shakespeare
meant to give to his play a certain classical tinge, he might naturally
carry out this idea in respect to the characters, as well as in other
respects, by concentrating almost the whole interest on the important
figures and leaving the others comparatively shadowy.
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