Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
For Shakespeare's audience these mysteries were revealed by a glance at
the actors, like the fact that Duncan was an old man, which the text, I
think, does not disclose till V. i. 44.
3. Whether Macbeth had children or (as seems usually to be supposed) had
none, is quite immaterial. But it is material that, if he had none, he
looked forward to having one; for otherwise there would be no point in
the following words in his soliloquy about Banquo (III. i. 58 f.):
Then prophet-like
They hail'd him father to a line of kings:
Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,
And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding. If't be so,
For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind.
And he is determined that it shall not 'be so':
Rather than so, come, fate, into the list
And champion me to the utterance!
Obviously he contemplates a son of his succeeding, if only he can get
rid of Banquo and Fleance. What he fears is that Banquo will kill him;
in which case, supposing he has a son, that son will not be allowed to
succeed him, and, supposing he has none, he will be unable to beget one.
I hope this is clear; and nothing else matters. Lady Macbeth's child (I.
vii. 54) may be alive or may be dead. It may even be, or have been, her
child by a former husband; though, if Shakespeare had followed history
in making Macbeth marry a widow (as some writers gravely assume) he
would probably have told us so. It may be that Macbeth had many children
or that he had none. We cannot say, and it does not concern the play.
But the interpretation of a statement on which some critics build, 'He
has no children,' has an interest of another kind, and I proceed to
consider it.
These words occur at IV. iii. 216. Malcolm and Macduff are talking at
the English Court, and Ross, arriving from Scotland, brings news to
Macduff of Macbeth's revenge on him. It is necessary to quote a good
many lines:
_Ross._ Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
Savagely slaughter'd: to relate the manner,
Were, on the quarry of these murder'd deer,
To add the death of you.
_Mal._ Merciful heaven!
What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows;
Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.
_Macd._ My children too?
_Ross._ Wife, children, servants, all
That could be found.
_Macd._ And I must be from thence!
My wife kill'd too?
_Ross._ I have said.
_Mal._ Be comforted:
Let's makes us medicines of our great revenge,
To cure this deadly grief.
_Macd._ He has no children. All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?
_Mal_. Dispute it like a man.
_Macd._ I shall do so;
But I must also feel it as a man:
I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me.--
Three interpretations have been offered of the words 'He has no
children.'
(_a_) They refer to Malcolm, who, if he had children of his own, would
not at such a moment suggest revenge, or talk of curing such a grief.
Cf. _King John_, III. iv. 91, where Pandulph says to Constance,
You hold too heinous a respect of grief,
and Constance answers,
He talks to me that never had a son.
(_b_) They refer to Macbeth, who has no children, and on whom therefore
Macduff cannot take an adequate revenge.
(_c_) They refer to Macbeth, who, if he himself had children, could
never have ordered the slaughter of children. Cf. _3 Henry VI._ V. v.
63, where Margaret says to the murderers of Prince Edward,
You have no children, butchers! if you had,
The thought of them would have stirred up remorse.
I cannot think interpretation (_b_) the most natural. The whole idea of
the passage is that Macduff must feel _grief_ first and before he can
feel anything else, _e.g._ the desire for vengeance. As he says directly
after, he cannot at once 'dispute' it like a man, but must 'feel' it as
a man; and it is not till ten lines later that he is able to pass to the
thought of revenge. Macduff is not the man to conceive at any time the
idea of killing children in retaliation; and that he contemplates it
_here_, even as a suggestion, I find it hard to believe.
For the same main reason interpretation (_a_) seems to me far more
probable than (_c_). What could be more consonant with the natural
course of the thought, as developed in the lines which follow, than that
Macduff, being told to think of revenge, not grief, should answer, 'No
one who was himself a father would ask that of me in the very first
moment of loss'? But the thought supposed by interpretation (_c_) has
not this natural connection.
It has been objected to interpretation (_a_) that, according to it,
Macduff would naturally say 'You have no children,' not 'He has no
children.' But what Macduff does is precisely what Constance does in the
line quoted from _King John_. And it should be noted that, all through
the passage down to this point, and indeed in the fifteen lines which
precede our quotation, Macduff listens only to Ross. His questions 'My
children too?' 'My wife killed too?' show that he cannot fully realise
what he is told. When Malcolm interrupts, therefore, he puts aside his
suggestion with four words spoken to himself, or (less probably) to Ross
(his relative, who knew his wife and children), and continues his
agonised questions and exclamations. Surely it is not likely that at
that moment the idea of (_c_), an idea which there is nothing to
suggest, would occur to him.
In favour of (_c_) as against (_a_) I see no argument except that the
words of Macduff almost repeat those of Margaret; and this fact does not
seem to me to have much weight. It shows only that Shakespeare might
easily use the words in the sense of (_c_) if that sense were suitable
to the occasion. It is not unlikely, again, I think, that the words came
to him here because he had used them many years before;[296] but it does
not follow that he knew he was repeating them; or that, if he did, he
remembered the sense they had previously borne; or that, if he did
remember it, he might not use them now in another sense.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 294: So in Holinshed, as well as in the play, where however
'cousin' need not have its specific meaning.]
[Footnote 295: 'May,' Johnson conjectured, without necessity.]
[Footnote 296: As this point occurs here, I may observe that
Shakespeare's later tragedies contain many such reminiscences of the
tragic plays of his young days. For instance, cf. _Titus Andronicus_, I.
i. 150 f.:
In peace and honour rest you here, my sons,
* * * * *
Secure from worldly chances and mishaps!
Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,
Here grow no damned drugs: here are no storms,
No noise, but silence and eternal sleep,
with _Macbeth_, III. ii. 22 f.:
Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further.
In writing IV. i. Shakespeare can hardly have failed to remember the
conjuring of the Spirit, and the ambiguous oracles, in _2 Henry VI._ I.
iv. The 'Hyrcan tiger' of _Macbeth_ III. iv. 101, which is also alluded
to in _Hamlet_, appears first in _3 Henry VI._ I. iv. 155. Cf. _Richard
III._ II. i. 92, 'Nearer in bloody thoughts, but not in blood,' with
_Macbeth_ II. iii. 146, 'the near in blood, the nearer bloody'; _Richard
III._ IV. ii. 64, 'But I am in So far in blood that sin will pluck on
sin,' with _Macbeth_ III. iv. 136, 'I am in blood stepp'd in so far,'
etc. These are but a few instances. (It makes no difference whether
Shakespeare was author or reviser of _Titus_ and _Henry VI._).]
NOTE FF.
THE GHOST OF BANQUO.
I do not think the suggestions that the Ghost on its first appearance is
Banquo's, and on its second Duncan's, or _vice versa_, are worth
discussion. But the question whether Shakespeare meant the Ghost to be
real or a mere hallucination, has some interest, and I have not seen it
fully examined.
The following reasons may be given for the hallucination view:
(1) We remember that Macbeth has already seen one hallucination, that of
the dagger; and if we failed to remember it Lady Macbeth would remind us
of it here:
This is the very painting of your fear;
This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said,
Led you to Duncan.
(2) The Ghost seems to be created by Macbeth's imagination; for his
words,
now they rise again
With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
describe it, and they echo what the murderer had said to him a little
before,
Safe in a ditch he bides
With twenty trenched gashes on his head.
(3) It vanishes the second time on his making a violent effort and
asserting its unreality:
Hence, horrible shadow!
Unreal mockery, hence!
This is not quite so the first time, but then too its disappearance
follows on his defying it:
Why what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.
So, apparently, the dagger vanishes when he exclaims, 'There's no such
thing!'
(4) At the end of the scene Macbeth himself seems to regard it as an
illusion:
My strange and self-abuse
Is the initiate fear that wants hard use.
(5) It does not speak, like the Ghost in _Hamlet_ even on its last
appearance, and like the Ghost in _Julius Caesar_.
(6) It is visible only to Macbeth.
I should attach no weight to (6) taken alone (see p. 140). Of (3) it may
be remarked that Brutus himself seems to attribute the vanishing of
Caesar's Ghost to his taking courage: 'now I have taken heart thou
vanishest:' yet he certainly holds it to be real. It may also be
remarked on (5) that Caesar's Ghost says nothing that Brutus' own
forebodings might not have conjured up. And further it may be asked why,
if the Ghost of Banquo was meant for an illusion, it was represented on
the stage, as the stage-directions and Forman's account show it to have
been.
On the whole, and with some doubt, I think that Shakespeare (1) meant
the judicious to take the Ghost for an hallucination, but (2) knew that
the bulk of the audience would take it for a reality. And I am more sure
of (2) than of (1).
INDEX
The titles of plays are in italics. So are the numbers of the pages
containing the main discussion of a character. The titles of the Notes
are not repeated in the Index.
Aaron, 200, 211.
Abnormal mental conditions, 13, 398.
Accident, in tragedy, 7, 14-16, 26, 28;
in _Hamlet_, 143, 173;
in _Othello_, 181-2;
in _King Lear_, 253, 325.
Act, difficulty in Fourth, 57-8;
the five Acts, 49.
Action, tragic, 11, 12, 31;
and character, 12, 19;
a conflict, 16-19.
Adversity and prosperity in _King Lear_, 326-7.
Albany, _297-8_.
Antonio, 110, 404.
_Antony and Cleopatra_, 3, 7, 45, 80;
conflict, 17-8;
crisis, 53, 55, 66;
humour in catastrophe, 62, 395-6;
battle-scenes, 62-3;
extended catastrophe, 64;
faulty construction, 71, 260;
passion in, 82;
evil in, 83-4;
versification, 87, Note BB.