Chapter Vil
MACBETH
9
Though
Macbeth
is
primarily
about
the
delirious
aspiration
of
a
Renaissance man we are apt to be faced with the strange feeling that men after
all are puppets in the hands of fate. It is true as the Greeks put it that the
perfection of human happiness lies in working towards the arete proper to oneself
and no one can deny the fact that Macbeth is a magnificent character who is
capable of being a king. It is also true that the moira or one’s own portion, as the
Greeks formulate, has to be abided by, and any deviation from it would attract
divine retribution. Man has to walk a razor-edge path and is likely to be subject to
an unforeseen blindness in the process, leading to hubris, and the consequent
nemesis. It almost seems to be the universal pattern of life that even the most
noble and wise ones act sometimes as if they are devoid of judgment or even
good sense.
Probably composed in late 1606 or early 1607, Macbeth is the last of
Shakespeare’s four great tragedies, the others being Hamlet, King Lear and
Othello. Hamlet is obsessed with an unerring idealism that does not allow him to
sin, which ennobles him.
King Lear by enduring a fate he is powerless to alter
and by self-awareness gained through suffering becomes an epitome of
goodness. Othello because of the motiveless malignity of lago sacrifices
Desdemona and himself as a votary of love. The play Macbeth deals more with
the inexorability of forces beyond oneself which bring ruin to the noblest of
249
persons. In Macbeth, Shakespeare adds a supernatural dimension, more vitally
than in Hamlet, that purposively conspires against Macbeth but he takes upon
himself the full responsibility of his sins and his total visualization of the futility of
human ambition, serves to raise his moral stature.
Macbeth is presented by Shakespeare as a magnificently great, and
magnanimous character: “Bellona’s bridegroom” (I. ii. 55). At the opening of the
play, Macbeth is noted for his courage in the battle with the king’s enemy even as
Othello is in Venice. He is praised for his loyalty and is considered a good friend
by Duncan. In the very first scene, Macbeth is heroised because he saves the
king and his kingdom from the attack of a traitor, the Thane of Cawdor. Every
character that we meet up to this point says that Macbeth is a kind, brave, and
honorable man. A wounded soldier in the first Act, says:
For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name),
Disdaining Fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
Which smok’d with bloody execution,
Like Valour’s minion, carv’d out his passage,
Till he fac'd the slave;
which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam’d him from the nave to th’ chops,
And fix’d his head upon our battlements. (I. ii. 16-23)
As far as the other characters can see, he deserves nothing but praise for his
heroism. King Duncan exclaims, "O valiant cousin! worthy gentleman!" (I. ii. 24)
The "cousin" reminds us that Macbeth has a royal lireage (both he and King
Duncan being grandsons of King Malcolm). He plunges fearlessly into battle and
wins the victory. Like an eagle dismays the sparrow, or a lion dismays a rabbit,
Macbeth and Banquo burst upon the Norwegians like cannons packed with
double charges of gunpowder, and they made the battlefield into a place of skulls,
a new Golgotha.
250
II
The play breaks upon us with a very short, mysterious gathering of the
three witches from nowhere.1 They appear suddenly, in mid-conversation, which
is dramatic and creates unclear ideas about the dubious topics of conversation.
Coleridge remarked: “that I have assigned the true reason for the first appearance
of the Weird Sisters, as the keynote of the character of the whole play. . ,”2
Coleridge further suggests on the opening of the play:
The opening of Macbeth [should be] contrasted with that of Hamlet. In
the latter the gradual ascent from the simplest forms of conversation to
the language of impassioned intellect, yet stil the intellect remaining the
seat of passion; in the Macbeth the invocation is made at once to the
imagination, and the emotions connected therewith. Vet [there is]
superstition in both...The weird sisters [are] as true a creation of
Shakespeare's as his Ariel and Caliban, the Fates, the Furies, and the
materializing witches being the elements3.
The appearance of the witches creates an air of tension, suspicion and an
ominous atmosphere. The words of the witches “When the hurlyburly’s done, /
When the battle’s lost and won” (I. i. 3-4) suggest as noted by Knights:
1Shakespeare takes his clue from Holinshed Chronicle of Scotland (1587 ed.) but he changes the
nature of his witches from 'godesses of destiny' to ‘Elizabethan Witches' and curtails their power
of determination. But these witches by their equivocal nature try to influence Macbeth's actions
and make the prophecies come true.
2 Samuel Coleridge, Marginalia on Macbeth', included in A Casebook Series,
Shakespeare: Macbeth, ed. by. John Wain, (Macmillan, London, 1968), p.77.
3 ibid., p. 77
251
. . . the tumult of insurrection. . .the kind of metaphysical pitch-and-toss
which is about to be played with good and evil.4
Witches’ equivocal words which have a proverbial character, “Fair is foul, and foul
is fair” (I. i. 11) are very striking. This line is the assertion of the main subject of
the play, of “the reversal of values’’5 as suggested by Knights. Knights further
notes in his Explorations that the subject matter of the whole play “is stated in the
first act. The first scene, every word of which will bear the closest scrutiny, strikes
one dominant chord”6. It is suggestive that the rest of the play would be full of
chaos, treachery, revenge, anger and pain. The play would certainly be a tragedy.
This scene creates a sense of mystery and intrigue. Macbeth at once deals with
what
Helen
Gardner remarks,
“profound
and
unanswerable
metaphysical
problems”7 because we are made to ask, as she writes:
What is it that lures men against their judgment and against their better
nature to do what revolts them? Why do they persist in a course that
leads them, as they know it will, to destruction? Why does a prophecy of
future greatness arouse in one a mild response and in another not a
vision of greatness but a vision of murder? To say that Macbeth is driven
by ambition explains nothing.8
The presence of thunder and lightning is a symbol of disaster and creates a more
hostile atmosphere. Thunder and lightning have always been associated with
religious
apocalyptical
symbols
of
divine
wrath,
and
though
they
are
manifestations of both the creative and the destructive aspects of the divine, here
they do denote that all is not well with the present state of things.
4 L C Knights, Explorations; included in The Arden Shakespeare: Macbeth, ed. by. Kenneth Muir,
(Methuen & Co Ltd, London, 1951), p.3.
5 L C knights, Some Shakespearean Themes, (Chatto and Windus, London, 1949), p.122.
6op. cit., p. 3.
7 Helen Gardner, Religion and Literature, (Faber and Faber, London, 1971), p.85.
8 ibid., p.85.
252
The witches plan to meet Macbeth on the heath and wait for him. Macbeth
arrives with Banquo, almost echoing the witches' paradoxical utterance by stating,
"So foul and fair a day I have not seen." These words of Macbeth assert the
equivocal nature of the temptation that he is about to come across and the
premonitions of the moral darkness which he has never experienced before. The
witches hail Macbeth as "Thane of Glamis" (his present title), "Thane of Cawdor"
(the title which he does not know has just been granted), and "King hereafter"
(I. iii. 48-50).
Their greeting startles and seems to frighten Macbeth perhaps
because the seeds of a vision of being supreme are already in him. There is a
sign of guilt in him as if he has committed the evil deed already. Banquo asks
Macbeth whether his fear is imaginary or real:
Good Sir, why do you start, and seem to fear
Things that do sound so fair? - I’ th’ name of truth,
Are ye fantastical, or that indeed
Which outwardly ye show? My noble partner
You greet with present grace, and great prediction
Of noble having, and of royal hope,
That he seems rapt withal: to me you speak not.
If you can look into the seeds of time,
And say which grain will grow, and which will not,
Speak then to me, who neither beg, nor fear,
Your favours nor your hate. (I. iii. 51-61)
These words obviously exhibit that Macbeth is transfixed by the witches’
‘prophecy’. Coleridge makes a fine statement regarding this:
But O how truly Shakespearean is the opening of Macbeth's character
given in the unpossessedness of Banquo’s mind, wholly present to the
present object - an unsullied, unscarified mirror; and [it is] in strict truth
of nature that he, and not Macbeth himself, directs our notice to the
253
effect produced in Macbeth’s mind, rendered temptable by previous
dalliance of the fancy with ambitious thoughts.9
Macbeth is a noble and courageous warrior but his reaction to the witches’
pronouncements seems to stir his submerged desire for power and prestige. It
evidently seems that he had been nursing the feeling of being the greatest in
status but was also aware that it was against all logic. So when the witches
predict him as the king, all logic seems to get suspended. He exhibits fear on
hearing the witches as he might himself had thought of eliminating the King, which
is a huge and massive effort. The king is an anointed one and is like a God on
earth, and removing him is an act of the sacrilege. Kingship carries with it
sacredness and sanctity and it cannot be snatched away by any manipulations.
So Macbeth is startled and seems to be rapt or entranced with horror on hearing
the witches’ words.
He immediately realizes that the fulfilment of the prophecy
may require conspiracy and murder on his part. He clearly allows himself to
consider taking such actions, although he is by no means resolved to do so.
Shakespeare drops the subtle hints of Macbeth’s guilty thoughts in these lines
because he is focusing his dramatic attention on the heinous act of killing King
Duncan. Macbeth’s reaction to the prophecy displays a fundamental flaw in him,
as, instead of resolving simply to dismiss the witches’ claims, Macbeth stops to
ponder over. Moreover, Bradley rightly states,
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.10
9 op. cit., p.78
4Q
A C Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Otheilo, King Lear, Macbeth,
(Macmillan, London, 1904), p. 305.
254
The witches greet Banquo as "lesser than Macbeth, and greater", "not so
happy, yet much happier" and a man who "shait get kings, though thou be none."
(I. iii. 65-67) W hen Macbeth questions them further, the witches vanish like
bubbles into the air. Almost as soon as they disappear, Ross and Angus appear,
bearing the news that the king has granted Macbeth the title of Thane of Cawdor.
Macbeth and Banquo step aside to discuss this news and Banquo is of the
opinion that the title of the Thane of Cawdor might "enkindle" Macbeth to seek the
crown as well. Coleridge is right in remarking:
So truly is the guilt in its germ anterior to the supposed cause and
immediate temptation. Before he can cool, the confirmation of the
tempting half of the prophecy [arrives], and the catenating tendency [of
the mind is] fostered by the sudden conincidence. . . [what follows is a]
confirmation of the remark on the birth-date of guilt; and then [note] the
warning of the conscience.. . 11
The phenomenon of hamartia almost as an innate flaw is very much there in
Macbeth because of the way he is tempted by the salutations of the witches and
when he thinks:
Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor:
The greatest is behind.
(I. iii. 116-17)
‘Behind’ means next, and of course ‘the greatest’ is the kingship and Macbeth is
already looking forward to being a king. Macbeth speaks to himself ruminating
upon the possibility that he might one day be king. Though the predictions of the
witches have partially come true, there is no need for Macbeth to be carried away.
So, here in the play it goes as close to the notion of hamartia as one can conceive
it to be, where it looks like a congenital tendency of Macbeth to be ambitious, as it
seems wherever there is a scope to fulfil it, he would leap to it. But we need to
11 op. cit, p.78-79
255
see Macbeth as Shakespeare exhibits Macbeth’s struggle in his soul evidently
stirred by ambition. Macbeth could be put in any Aristotelian category of the
wicked man but then no wicked man could carry 'the substance of tragedy’. If
Macbeth has an innate criminal tendency, he is then just a criminal and not a
tragic hero. If we take him as a born criminal character, then there is no question
of tragedy or looking for an hamartia that causes it.
■• •
III
Macbeth has a native tendency to think high. He is innately ambitious; but
ambition by itself need not be sinful. Ambition assists growth towards excellence
{arete) and being spurred by the instinct for arete or excellence, one becomes
what one ought to be. Macbeth is power driven but is not like Marlowe’s
Tamburlaine who is a mere shepherd and has the aspiration to be the Lord of the
Earth. Nor is he like Doctor Faustus who has a mightier dream that his power
should extend as far as the mind of man and believes that black magic would
accomplish this for him. Doctor Faustus delves into the knowledge of black magic,
because he finds it something tangible, as opposed to the mysticism and mystery
of Christianity, which is intangible, and he easily rejects religion with a fatalistic
“W hat will be, shall be! Divinity, adieu!” (1.48). In doing so, he delves into the dark
arts, “These metaphysics of magicians / And necromantic books are heavenly”
(1.49-50), he declares without a trace of mental pain or distress. Macbeth is not a
man possessed like them, though he has a native tendency to overreach. He is
not aiming at something which he does not deserve. He is indeed a tragic hero, a
protagonist with exceptional human qualities that personages of tragedy normally
possess. Shakespeare imbues him with tragic grandeur from the very early
scenes. There is something impressive in the breadth of his ambition, even if he
pursues it through diabolical means. He is the one who takes upon himself the full
256
onslaught of sin, even while he experiences pangs or devastations of conscience
while committing the evil deed.
Macbeth is indeed tempted by the witches but his hamartia need not be
fixed on him by contrasting him with Banquo. Macbeth takes the words of the
witches seriously while Banquo seems to be joking. When Macbeth seriously tells
Banquo “Your children shall be kings” (I. iii. 86) Banquo facetiously replies “You
shall be king” (I. iii. 87). Banquo is just amused and speaks philosophically of
witches as “The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, / And these are of them”
(I. iii. 79-80). This need not establish Macbeth as in any way less noble than
Banquo. While Banquo is not moved, it is only because he is not involved in it, nor
is he expected to be excited about the future of his children. There is no dazzling
or heroic dimension to him as to Macbeth. For him the entire salutation of the
witches is nothing but a fiction, a kind of fairy tale. But for Macbeth with his
remarkable dynamism the prophecies of the witches are real possibilities. Soon
when Macbeth is made Thane of Cawdor, even Banquo is also puzzled as to
whether witches can speak the truth since witches and truth do not go together.
Banquo has left the witches behind. In Macbeth the fire of ambition is ignited by
the greetings of the witches and followed by the announcement to him that he has
been invested with the title of the Thane of Cawdor. Though the degeneration of
the self has already started, the moral dimension develops only when the short­
cut to the elevation is conceived to be inevitable. He cannot be nailed with the
diagnosis of hamartia instantly. His innate desire to exceed limits is a part of his
make-up.
For purely dramatic reasons Macbeth is viewed in contrast to Banquo.
Shakespeare is selective not to blacken Banquo in order to intensify the whole
tragic situation. In the Holinshed Chronicle:
Banquo and others were accomplices in the murder of Duncan, which
was carried out as an open political assassination. This was altered,
257
partly because it was more dramatic for Macbeth and his wife to bear the
whole responsibility for the murder, and partly because Banquo’s
reputation as James I's ancestor has to be safeguarded.12
Shakespeare suppresses a detail and elevates the other but that does not mean
that he wants to put the entire blame of the tragic catastrophe on Macbeth.
Shakespeare makes Banquo a spectator, not a conspirer, who is later victimized.
Shakespeare excludes so many elements from history, and heightens a number
of others, and thinks of a very tragic destiny for Macbeth. Even history says that
Macbeth was not a criminal:
Shakespeare was wrong about Macbeth: Macbeth was not ambitious,
cold blooded murderer Shakespeare described in his play but a popular
king who ruled over a peaceful land, a group of Scottish parliamentarians
said on Thursday. They want to restore the reputation of 11th century
king of Scotland, who has been stained with villainy ever since
Shakespeare’s play was first performed 400 years ago.13
Kenneth Muir also remarks:
Shakespeare omits the ten years’ good rule by Macbeth between the
murder of Duncan and the murder of Banquo. It would obviously have
ruined the
play by breaking it into two and
by interfering with
Shakespeare's conception of the workings of conscience.14
The whole atmosphere is vitiated to nail him down as a ‘butcher’. Shakespeare is
trying to enhance the moral significance of the entire tragedy by Duncan’s
reposing full trust in Macbeth. But Muir highlights:
12 The Arden Shakespeare, op. cit., p.xli.
13 'Around the World', Times of India, Ahmedabad, Saturday, February 5, 2005, p. 10.
14 op. cit., p.xlii
258
Macbeth in the Chronicle has a genuine grievance against Duncan, who
by proclaiming his son Prince of Cumberland went against the laws of
succession, and took away from Macbeth the prospect of the throne;
which he had every reason to hope for, since he could claim it ...
Shakespeare suppresses these facts, partly because he wished for
dramatic reasons to accentuate Macbeth's guilt and to minimize any
excuses he might have had, and partly for accidental reasons. Macbeth
was the murderer of James I's ancestor, and could not be depicted in a
favourable light.15
Shakespeare for reasons of artistic economy did not use all the details of
Holinshed Chronicles. Moreover, as Samuel Johnson has suggested we should
consider the genius of the age wherein:
The reign of King James in which this tragedy was written many
circumstances concurred to propagate and confirm . . . the doctrine of
witchcraft was very powerfully inculcated and as the greatest part of
mankind have no other reason for their opinions than that they are in
fashion. . . The infection soon reached the Parliament, who in the first
year of King James made a law by which it was enacted Ch. XII that ‘if
any person shall use any invocation or conjuration of any evil or wicked
spirit: 2. Or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed or
reward any evil or cursed spirit to or for any intent or purpose; 3 Or take
up any dead man, woman or child out of the grave, or the skin, bone or
any part of the dead person to be employed or used in any manner of
witchcraft, sorcery, charm or enchantment; 4. Or shall use, practice or
exercise any sort of witchcraft, sorcery, charm or enchantment; 5.
Whereby any person shall be destroyed, killed, wasted, consumed, pined
or lamed in any part of the body; 6. That every such person being
convicted shall suffer death.'
15op. cit., p. xli
259
Thus in the time of Shakespeare was the doctrine of witchcraft at once
established by law and by the fashion, and it became not only unpohte
but criminal to doubt it.16
While judging Macbeth we should keep in mind all the historical considerations.
Macbeth's guilt deepens the moral dimensions. Witches totally unfix him with the
predictions. And all this is dramatically devised. The witches’ predictions are
followed instantly by the announcement that he is made the Thane of Cawdor. All
these things happen simultaneously to blind Macbeth’s vision. Macbeth is a
serious contender for the throne and possesses all the potentialities of being a
king. Such a man who wanted to be a king was not obsessed with the idea of
shedding blood and attain kingship. He could have performed this and could have
got his desires fulfilled long back.
But for the witches’ forebodings, the dormant
desires of his would have remained unaroused.
iv
Macbeth now wonders whether the crown would simply drop on him or
whether he will have to perform a dark deed in order to gain the crown. Here we
do witness the workings of the supernatural or the preternatural intervening in
human affairs which impairs man’s understanding of the world he is about to
move into and act upon. At first he's elated as he says:
Two truths are told ,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme. (I. iii. 127-29)
16 Samuel Johnson, Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare, ed. by. H. R Woudhuysen, (Penguin
Books, London 1989), pp.45-46.
260
The magical logic of the three witches seems to ignite Macbeth’s imagination.
Macbeth illustrates here what Coleridge calls the “catenating tendency of the
mind”17, the urge to believe in the chain of events. He cannot any longer wait for
the kingship to come to him in a natural way because his imagination is blinded by
the predictions of the witches, which has already come partially true. Macbeth
feels that it is impossible to put a stop to the chain of events. He is fearful, his
action may not trammel up the consequences. Wilson Knights obsreves:
This is the moment of the birth of evil in Macbeth - he may have had
ambitious thoughts before, may even have intended the murder, but now
for the first time he feels its oncoming reality.18
But then he has second thoughts that if the witches' prophecies are good, he asks
himself:
. . .why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings.
My thought, whose murther yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man,
That function is smother’d in surmise,
And nothing is, but what is not. (i. iii. 134-42)
The witches’ intentionally vague or ambiguous prophecy startles Macbeth and his
sense of guilt starts gnawing at him immediately and he is beckoned into the
world of nothingness. Macbeth questions himself why he gives way to the
promptings of the witches and is afraid that the witches’ suggestion implies the
murder of King Duncan. These supernatural solicitings unfix him beyond the
reach of his soul. The ‘good’ news makes his thoughts turn immediately to the
17 op. cit., p.78
18 G Wilson Knight, The Wheel o f Fire, (Routledge, London & New York, 1989), p.174.
261
murder of the king as the only means to fulfil the witches' second prophesy. At the
same time, Macbeth is asking himself why he shudders at the temptation. The
very thought makes his seated heart knock at his ribs and his hair stands on end
with terror, as this act is contrary to his nature. Macbeth here reaches to an awful
situation worse than Faust’s willing compact with the devil. This struggle faced by
Macbeth in his soul is rightly termed by Bradley as a “spiritual force”19 which
means “whatever forces act in the human spirit, whether good or evil, whether
personal passion or impersonal principle; doubts, desires, scruples, ideas whatever can animate, shake, possess, and drive a man’s soul.”20 Bradley further
writes that,
In a Shakespearean tragedy some such forces are shown in conflict.
They are shown acting in men and generating strife between them. They
are also shown, less universally, but quite characteristically, generating
disturbance and even conflict in the soul of the hero. . . [and] the hero,
though he pursues his fated way, is, at least at some point in the action,
and sometimes at many, torn by an inward struggle; and it is frequently
at such points that Shakespeare shows his most extraordinary pow er.21
Shakespeare wants to emphasise the inner workings of Macbeth’s mind. It is torn
before it is driven by a desire to accomplish the horrible deed and yet whose very
noble nature resists it. This is the moment when we may say that Macbeth is both
disintegrating and “growing" to fullness (arGte) at the same time as we notice the
genesis of the evil desire when he thinks of the murder of King Duncan. Even
though his customary nature is telling him that he shouldn't be thinking about
murdering King Duncan, he cannot stem the deeper urge on the one hand; still
deeper conscience on the other. This is what he means when he says that his
"function is smother'd in surmise" (I. iii.141). "Function" is normal activity;
"surmise" is the ‘imagination’ of a future activity. Perhaps he had nurtured the
19 op. c it., p. 13
20 ibid., p.13
21 ibid., p. 13,12.
262
ambitious thoughts in him before also, but now he seems to be enslaved by them.
The imagination has totally overwhelmed his sense of propriety. A moral crack
has appeared in his rather precarious integrity and soon it will widen. His
imagination is in the grip of a powerful tension between his desire to see himself
as king and his sense of the immorality of the act, and also of the immediate
consequences, which he knows will be disastrous. Part of the great fascination we
have with Macbeth's character is that he has a very finely perfected moral sense
and powerfully visualises the key issues. He is no hypocrite in the sense that he
cannot deceive himself. He knows he will have to violate what he believes to be
morally wrong.
consequences
Moreover,
of
killing
he
is intelligent enough
Duncan,
even
as
to
Claudius
realise the
knows
the
public
political
consequences of harming Hamlet. But he is totally different from a historical
Richard who seems to believe that once he is king he will have things entirely
according to his desires. Macbeth knows, even before he does the deed, that he
will have to pay, and that the cost will be high, and even to contemplate upon
such a deed shakes his ‘single state of man’.
When Duncan desires to visit his castle at Inverness Macbeth appeals to
the stars to hide their fires:
Stars, hide your fires!
Let not light see my black and deep desires;
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see. (I. iv. 50-53)
Macbeth wants impossibilities. He wants the stars to go out, so that no one can
see what he does, not even himself. R Walker rightly suggests about the nobility
of Macbeth in these lines. He writes, “it is the sign of nobleness in his own nature
that he would obscure”22. His own eye should blind itself to what his own hand
wants to do. He wants the thing done, even if afterwards, when it is done, his own
22 The Arden Shakespeare: Macbeth, ed by Kenneth Muir, op. cit., p.26.
263
eye would be afraid to look at what his hand had done. W hat could he be talking
about, except murder? It is profoundly ironical that Duncan reposed so much trust
in him and created his own death-trap. This only confirms the fact Macbeth indeed
was trustworthy.
Some
unknown powers must be working.
We
have to
acknowledge that there is some mysterious force in the universe that sweeps man
into a course of action and carries him helplessly towards his doom. Both the
‘victor’ Macbeth and the ‘victim’ Duncan, seem to be fascinated by the self-same
doom.
Macbeth is not a born sinner. Lady Macbeth fears his nature, “It is too full
o’ th’ milk of human kindness, / To catch the nearest way” (I. v. 17-18).
She
implies by these words, the absence of requisite hardness in Macbeth who is too
humane to commit the deadly deed. She knows he is noble so “what thou wouldst
highly, / That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false” (I. v. 20-21). This shows
that this is an unprecedented event and that he has not plunged himself
wholeheartedly into villainy, being a basically noble person. Lady Macbeth doubts
the capabilities of her husband for such mortal action and immediately decides to
make it her responsibility to ensure that he fulfils his ambition. She believes that
Macbeth is too good-natured to go through with the deed.
However, she is also
aware of the ambition of her husband. It is on this basis that she decides to take
the responsibility to influence him to ensure he goes through with it, because she
is unsure whether he would go the whole length unspurred by her. She resolves
to convince her husband to do whatever is required to seize the crown. She then
implores him to hurry home so that she says:
I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crown’d withal. (I. v. 26-29)
264
In other words she must goad him on to the murder he must commit if only to
accomplish what fate and metaphysical aid have already brought him close to.
When a messenger enters and informs Lady Macbeth that the king rides
toward the castle and that Macbeth is on his way, Lady Macbeth's first reaction is
one of absolute astonishment. "Thou'rt mad to say it!" (I. v. 32), she exclaims. To
her, it seems that there's some magic at work, because just as she's thinking
about killing the King, here comes the news that he's going to be sleeping under
her roof. She invokes the heavenly powers:
Come, you Spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,
Stop up th' access and passage to remorse;
That no compunctious visitings of Nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murth’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on Nature's mischief! Come, thick Night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, “Hold, hold!" (I. v. 40-54)
Incidentally this passage seems to echo Macbeth’s own address to the stars
(I. iv. 50-53), even as Macbeth has to desiccate the ‘milk of human kindness’. She
resolves to put her natural femininity aside so that she can do the bloody deeds
necessary to seize the crown. There is also significance in her asking the spirits to
thicken her blood, as later in the play Shakespeare uses imagery to make blood
represent guilt. Therefore, asking for the thickening of her blood represents
allowing her to withstand guilt, and removing her conscience. In the dark,
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Lady Macbeth's knife should not see what it's doing, nor should heaven. The
knife, then, is a metaphor for perhaps her steely will, and "heaven" is probably a
metaphor for her conscience. In short, she thinks she's a killer, but there's a part
of her that wants to close its eyes to what she wants to do. This only implies that
both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are not meant for the crime. They both have to
call on the "spirits" of murder to take away their human scruples. Lady Macbeth
wants her blood to be thick and her milk to be bitter poison when she is talking
about deadly thoughts.
Macbeth is a basically good man who is troubled by his conscience and
loyalty, though ambitious and finally, murderous. He is sparked off to evil initially
by the witches' predictions, and then by his wife's goading, which he succumbs to.
The great soliloquy has been taken as the supreme expression of his troubled
soul:
If it were done, when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if th' assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all - here
But, here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
W e’d jump the life to come. (I. vii.1-7)
Macbeth knows that he can get away with murder only here on earth. On the Day
of the Judgment he will certainly be punished. He also knows that the afterlife is
very long; it's like a boundless ocean, and our life is only a bank or shoal on the
edge of that ocean. He had no conscious intention of killing his ruler or of even
betraying him until he met the three witches who tell him that he will become king.
Ifs not that Macbeth is totally averse to killing as such. He is a famous warrior,
and the first thing we hear about him, well before he enters, is that he is drenched
in blood and has slit someone open from the nave to the chops. His high social
status comes from his effectiveness as a bloody warrior. So it's not the deed of
266
killing as such that holds him back. It is only the clear awareness that in killing
Duncan he will be violating every rule that holds the human bond together. This
awareness is accompanied by a full awareness of the immediate consequences
to him:
But in these cases,
W e still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague th* inventor: this even-handed Justice
Commends th' ingredience of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips. (I. vii. 7-12)
He may not be piously God-fearing but he fears justice, the moral law. To act on
his desire to become king is to drink from a poisoned chalice and no one knows
this better than Macbeth.
One may note how Claudius experiences the literal
truth of this statement. And when that awareness is uppermost in his mind, he
would not carry out the murder. He debates over whether or not he should murder
King Duncan. He puts forward one reason for killing him, that is, fulfilling his
ambition, which is no reason at all:
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself
And falls on th' o th e r- (I. vii. 25-28)
At the same time he puts forward many reasons as to why he should not kill the
King. He would be violating his double trust as kinsman and subject. Regicide is
an unholy act according to the divine right of Kings. As the King is the chosen
one, he would be going against God and killing him would unbalance nature,
causing chaos or a political storm. In addition, Duncan is innocent and his virtues
are radiant. In addition, he would be violating the ancient law of hospitality by
killing his guest. Great pity would be caused and there would be complications in
267
dealing with the guards and kinsmen. Duncan would have no opportunity to
defend himself, so it would not be even-handed. And also there lies the significant
matter of Macbeth’s conscience in killing his own King. He would be a criminal
exile in a moral universe. He knows the cause of all this and its consequence.
This indicates that although his ambition to become king is strong, many reasons
against killing Duncan seem to overwhelm him. The only stimulus for Macbeth is
his ambition which makes him enter into guilty thoughts. Mentally, Macbeth
appears relatively stable in his soliloquy, as he is able rationally to debate with
himself whether or not he should kill Duncan and at the end of his soliloquy he
logically makes up his mind almost not to kill the king. Macbeth is presented as a
strong character for defying his ambition. He exclaims his decision to Lady
Macbeth almost straightaway, “W e will proceed no further in this business” (I.
vii.31). Coleridge says this happens because “the inward pangs and warnings of
conscience [are] interpreted into prudential reasonings”23.
He sounds firm and
reasonable when he says that he wants to enjoy the honours that the King has
just bestowed upon him.
Macbeth wants to rise to the fullest stature of his humanity as he tells his
wife when she taunts him:
I dare do all that may become a man;
,
Who dares do more, is none. (I. vii. 46-47)
He would not do anything more because he who dared “more” would be “none”.
He would be either superhuman, or diabolic or beastly. It would be just proper for
him to be nothing less or more than a man. But Lady Macbeth starts drilling into
his mind by playing cruelly on the term ‘man’:
When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
23 op. cit., p.83
268
Be so much more the man. (I. vii. 49-51).
Here she hammers him with the concept of ‘man’. Johnson in this regard writes:
The arguments by which Lady Macbeth persuades her husband to
commit the murder afford a proof of Shakespeare’s knowledge of human
nature. She urges the excellence and dignity of courage, a glittering idea
which has dazzled mankind from age to age and animated sometimes
the house-breaker and sometimes the conqueror; but this sophism
Macbeth has for ever destroyed by distinguishing true from false fortitude
in a line and a half; of which it may almost be said that they ought to
bestow immortality on the author, though all his other productions had
been lost:
I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none.
[1.7 . 46]
This topic, which has been always employed with too much success, is
used in this scene with peculiar propriety to a soldier by a woman.
Courage is the distinguishing virtue of a soldier and the reproach of
cowardice cannot be borne by any man from a woman without great
impatience.
She then urges the oaths by which he had bound himself to murder
Duncan, another art of sophistry by which men have sometimes deluded
their consciences and persuaded themselves that what would be criminal
in others is virtuous in them; this argument Shakespeare, whose plan
obliged him to make Macbeth yield, has not confuted though he might
easily have shown that a former obligation could not be vacated by a
latter.24
When as Thane of Glamis and then as Thane of Cawdor, he desired to be a king,
he wanted to be more than ‘man’ by being king too. If he really wanted to be more
than what he was, he had to be more than man, so much more. That is, he must
reshuffle the entire order and aspire for something high. She further says:
24 op. cit., p.57
269
I have given suck, and know
How tender *tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn
As you have done to this. (I. vii.54-59)
Lady Macbeth pressurises Macbeth by reminding him of the promise he had
made to undertake the plot against Duncan. Coleridge says that this passage:
. . .though usually thought to prove a merciless and unwomanly nature,
proves the direct opposite: she brings it as the most solemn enforcement
to Macbeth of the solemnity of his promise to undertake the plot against
Duncan. Had she so sworn, she would have done that which was most
horrible to her feelings, rather than break the oath; and as the most
horrible act which it was possible for imagination to conceive, as that
which was most revolting to her own feelings, she alludes to the
destruction of her infant, while in the act of sucking at her breast.
Had
she regarded this with savage indifference, there would have been no
force in the appeal; but her very allusion to it, and her purpose in this
allusion, shows that she considered no tie so tender as that which
connected her with her babe.25
She accuses him of being the kind of person who can dream of wearing kingly
robes. She asks him sarcastically, "Was the hope drunk, / Wherein you dress'd
yourself? Hath it slept since?" (I. vii. 35-36). This is harsh enough, but it gets
worse. She tells him that if he's going to go back on his word, he doesn't really
love her, and he's a coward, no better than the "poor cat i' th’ adage?" (I. vii. 44),
who wants a fish, but doesn't want to get its feet wet. She takes her persuasion to
such an extreme as to say, she would rather kill her own suckling child than give
in sheepishly to conscience and reason over the issue of killing Duncan. She is
using hyperbole to persuade her husband by touching a raw nerve in making him
25 Samuel Coleridge, The Arden Shakespeare, ed by. Kenneth Muir, op. cit., p.43.
270
feel cowardly and effiminate by saying that had she sworn to kill Duncan she
would have done anything rather than break her resolve. She wants a Hamlet to
be translated to a Laertes.
However, at this point in the play, he is still the
character who questions the morality of certain actions. In comparison, it would
appear that Lady Macbeth is the toughest person who already seems to have
succeeded in getting rid of her conscience. Walter Kaufmann rightly argues:
The hero [Macbeth] is ambitious but also has another dimension to which
the other characters in the play are blind and which Lady Macbeth takes
for mere w eakness.. .she cannot understand how he differs from h e r . . .
she rightly concludes that he would never murder Duncan unless she
made him do i t . . . W hat she fails to see is that Macbeth would be great
in another way; that his desire for enhancement is different in kind from
her ambition and that he is not merely more particular as regards the
means; and that, once crowned, Macbeth will find that his “ambition” is
unstilled, being of such a nature that no crown could satisfy it.
Indeed, Macbeth is far closer in spirit to Hamlet than to Lady Macbeth.
He has a deep spirituality and an essentially lyrical soul - albeit of titanic
dimensions - that finds expression in almost all of his monologues and
asid es.. .Macbeth and Hamlet are doomed no less than Oedipus, called
to do what they would rather not do, placed in a world that is not their
own and among people who cannot understand th e m .26
Eve ate the apple largely because she was unaware of the consequences,
for the serpent had dulled her understanding by his flattery and his lies. But
Macbeth becomes the victim of the appetite excited by the witches and later fed
by his own wife even when he is aware of the consequences. Marilyn French
rightly puts it:
The factor responsible for Macbeth’s doing so [choosing to break the
laws of nature/morality by killing Duncan] is Lady Macbeth. Although it is
26 Walter Kaufmann, From Shakespeare to Existentialism, (Princeton University Press, Princeton,
1980), p. 42-43.
271
clear that Macbeth has, before the opening of the play, considered taking
over the kingdom by force, it is also clear from his hesitation that he
could easily be dissuaded from killing Duncan. And within the feminine/
masculine polarity of morals and roles in Shakespeare’s division of
experience, it is Lady Macbeth’s function so to dissuade him. But Lady
Macbeth, a powerful person' is drawn to the role in which worldly power
resides. She seems to be, by the world’s standards, an exemplary wife.
She encourages and supports her husband in good wifely fashion; she
does not undermine him; she sees, knows, and understands the terms of
the world she lives in, and she accepts them.27
Shakespeare by giving highly imaginative and particular strokes to his play made
it one of the most profound tragedies. The tragedy here is that one of the noblest
souls is being turned into a devil, and the agents are beyond or outside him. As
long as it was within him to control his destiny he had full control over it. Then the
witches hail him king and what was left half done, Lady Macbeth completes, just
for the simple reason that she is a wife who dreams the good of her husband.
The irony is that only a wife could have stopped him; instead she actually
continues the mission of the witches, and goes through it till the whole is finished.
Lady Macbeth is not herself a devil nor does she want power for herself. She just
like any other good wife wants all the best for her husband and so tries to do all
that she can to persuade her husband Macbeth to go ahead with the deed in
order to accomplish his unfulfilled desires.
V
Lady Macbeth is not ‘fiend-like’ though she looks like that. She is herself
transported by the idea of the witches and tries hard to dehumanize herself and
27 Marilyn French, The Late Tragedies, included in Shakespearean Tragedy, ed. by John
Drakakis, (Longman, London &New York, 1992), p.265-66.
272
become fiend like’ in order to use any means to accomplish the desirable deed.
She is also perhaps just like Macbeth driven by the power of evil. Coleridge’s
remark on Lady Macbeth is very important for her character analysis, as he
writes,
Though usually thought to prove a merciless and unwomanly nature,
proves the direct opposite: she brings it as the most solemn enforcement
to Macbeth of the solemnity of his promise to undertake the plot against
Duncan. Had she so sworn, she would have done that which was most
horrible to her feelings, rather than break the oath; and as the most
horrible act which it was possible for imagination to conceive, as that
which was most revolting to her feelings, she alludes to the destruction of
her infant, while in the act of sucking at her breast. Had she regarded
this with savage indifference, there would have been no force in the
appeal; but her very allusion to it, and her purpose in this allusion, shows
that she considered no tie so tender as that which connected her with
her babe.28
Lady Macbeth’s own conscience is revealed in her comment that she would have
killed Duncan herself had he not "resembled [her] father as he slept" (II. ii. 12-13).
Compared
to
Goneril
and
Regan
who,
marble-hearted
fiends,
(King Lear. I. iv. 257) throw an old father who is eighty years and above to the
winds with sheer brutality, Lady Macbeth is not such a thorough criminal.
L C Knights rightly states:
The two daughters [Goneril and Regan], by their actions, by what they
say, and by the imagery of beasts of prey so consistently associated with
them, represent a ferocious animality.29
Albany’s judgment of Goneril is so true that we are satisfied to hear such words
from his mouth:
28 Samuel Coleridge, The Arden Shakespeare: Macbeth, ed. by. Kenneth Muir, op. cit., p.43.
29 op. cit., p.94 - 95
273
O Goneril!
You are not worth the dust which the rude wind
Blows in your face. I fear your disposition;
That nature, which contemns its origin,
Cannot be border'd certain in itself;
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her material sap, perforce must wither,
And come to deadly use.
(IV. ii. 29-36)
. . . If that the heavens do not their visible spirits
Send quickly down to tame these vile offences,
It will come:
Humanity must perforce prey on itself,
Like monsters of the deep.
(IV. ii. 45-49)
She hardens herself into a monster of evil, but ultimately she breaks down
completely. Regan and Goneril never break down: they in fact start a competitive
affair with Edmund. Lady Macbeth may be compared to Gertrude who through
compulsions might have entered into an incestuous marriage with a wicked speed
( Hamlet: I. ii. 156-57), but has had no hand in the husband’s murder. Shakespeare
keeps her perfectly noble as no one suspects her of having colluded with
Claudius in murdering her own husband. She is not a criminal, though grossly
hateful, and even despicable, to Hamlet. She is preserved as being graceful to
the end. Lady Macbeth too is otherwise quite gracious and for a specific purpose
of the tragedy, she hardens herself for the task.
She brutalized herself
deliberately probably with a misguided feeling that her husband should not wait
endlessly for a chance to become a king. It seems as if there is some cosmic
conspiracy going on against the couple. W e do wonder as to why the victim
walked into the trap himself: why did Duncan decide to visit them precisely when
Macbeth’s imagination was fired by the prophecies of the three weird sisters and
the evil desires were further fuelled by his wife. The circumstances, along with the
metaphysical powers, seem to collaborate to get the deed accomplished, by a
basically noble couple.
274
vi
Macbeth, after discussing the crime with Lady Macbeth, has decided to go
through with the "terrible feat" (I. vii. 81). Now as he sits alone, waiting for the bell
which will summon him to murder Duncan, pondering his decision one final time,
the focus of the soliloquy, the invisible dagger, is our first glimpse of Macbeth's
powerful imagination, undistinguishable from his conscience, that is, largely
responsible for his mental torment throughout the drama.
Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee: -
(II. i. 33-34).
The dagger suddenly hanging in the air is an hallucination, of a precursor of
Banquo’s ghost. It could be brought about by his potentially "heat-oppressed
brain" (39), and the phantom dagger is soon stained with imaginary "gouts of
blood" (46), to affect him greatly. The blood represents guilt and the appearance
of the bloody dagger suggests that forces beyond him seem to be chasing his
conscience in a bid to harden it. Macbeth’s mind in this scene appears to be
dazed, confused and unsure of itself. However, the hallucination represents the
mental fight Macbeth is having, as his ambition is crying to drown his sense of
guilt and rationality. He is able to imagine the consequences long before the deed
is done. His character is evidently not innately criminal, since he has to kill his
own conscience which is rising again and again to torment him, before he kills
Duncan. It is notable, however, that although he does eventually kill Duncan, it is
an intolerable task. I believe that Shakespeare has included this scene to develop
Macbeth into a profoundly complex and rich character. His mental instability itself
suggests that he is not entirely responsible for Duncan’s murder.
He looks
275
possessed by a ‘daemon’, even as Oedipus was supposed to be when he blinded
himself.
Macbeth’s first utterance after he has murdered Duncan expresses a
sense of primal human fear, "I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?"
(II. ii.14). Though he has done the deed, he cannot handle the psychological
impact. This is at once visible in his utmost shock and sadness as he looks at his
bloodstained hands and says: "This is a sorry sight" (II. ii. 20). The deed is done
in horror as if someone was enticing him towards it, and as soon as it is done, he
realizes the sheer horror of it. Macbeth is even more confused and dazed than he
was before killing Duncan, and he displays an immediate bewilderment for doing
it. He is extremely paranoid, scared and frightened. This is indicated in Macbeth’s
inability to say ‘Amen’, suggesting that he feels he has done a very unholy deed,
as he tells Lady Macbeth: “List’ning their fear, I could not say, “Amen,” / When
they did say, “God bless us”(ll, ii. 27-28). This shows that he is already estranged
from God. In addition, Lady Macbeth heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.
Macbeth has done not only the most unholy deed but ravaged nature itself by
murdering sleep itself, ‘the chief nourisher in life’s feast’.
The voices pounded in
his mind:
Still it [a voice] cried, “Sleep no more!” to all the house:
“Glamis hath murther’d Sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!” (II. ii. 40-42)
He has done something utterly horrid by killing Duncan and knows he has done
violence to nature itself, to order or hierarchy. Glamis, Cawdor and Macbeth are
all cumulatively guilty.
The deed simply stuns him with a sense of disgust and
repugnance. W hat strikes him with disgust or revulsion is the image of his bloody
deed as being too diabolical to be owned.
276
Macbeth is paralyzed with horror by what he has done. After having killed
Duncan, he goes immediately to Lady Macbeth without even completing the deed
and disposing off the daggers, very much like a novice. When Lady Macbeth tells
him that he must take the daggers back, put them with the grooms, and smear the
grooms with blood, to make them look like the culprits, Macbeth’s humanity
becomes irrepressible and he refuses to return to the scene of the crime and
says,
I'll go no more:
I am afraid to think what i have done;
Look on't again I dare not. (II. ii. 49-50).
These words offer a key to Macbeth’s inner self.
horror: they pluck out his eyes.
He looks at his hands with
It is the blood on his hands that causes this
horrible angst, and he feels that the blood can never be washed away. Before his
hands are clean, they will make all the seas of the world turn red:
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
(II. ii. 59-62).
Shakespeare in these lines presents the enormity of Macbeth’s guilt which is
inseparable from remorse. He feels that his guilt is heinous enough to turn even
the green sea, red. Nothing can save him. Though Lady Macbeth advises him to
stop the horrible imaginings, he cannot do so. "To know my deed, 'twere best not
know myself' (II. ii. 72): his very identity is threatened by the deed, and he can
have the courage to know the deed, only if he was not himself. He fully
understands what he has done: he is able to see what a monster he has become,
and by trying to be more than man he has ceased to be a man altogether. He
feels he has reduced himself to more than nothing. This also shows that at this
moment in the play Macbeth has committed a perpetual deed by which King
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Duncan could never be brought to life. Fear is perhaps one of the most primal
and basic human emotions and the most profound one too. Indeed, it is
Macbeth’s capacity for fear and to a lesser degree regret over what he has done,
which makes him ultimately human. He is not a villain, because he desperately
fails to be really wicked. A villain is a flat character with no thoughts of before or
after. Shakespeare portrays him here as a conscience-tormented man. A lot of
the ambivalence in this play lies precisely in the fact that Macbeth is genuinely
sorry and remorseful for the deed he has done, even when it was something he
had consummately wished. The wages of his deed are incalculable: it has cost
him his very conscience.
The emotional toll of killing Duncan was very high for Macbeth as his words
exhibit his profoundest feelings:
Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There’s nothing serious in mortality;
All is but toys: renown, and grace, is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of. (II. iii. 91-96)
Macbeth here seems to be infinitely more a victim than a villain. Shakespeare has
embodied in the spectacle of Macbeth’s fall the destiny of the man whose
dormant desires are excited by the prophecies of unknown and dark forces and
the misguided zeal in one’s own dear wife. The witches strike him first and then
Lady Macbeth assaults on his manliness to draw him towards the murder.
Macbeth seems to have become the instrument of the darker elements to fulfil
their purpose and it seems as if some metaphysical power had been plotting
against him even as in the case of Oedipus. So it is not through any habitual
wickedness or vice that we witness Macbeth’s fall but through an hamartia pure
and simple, that is, a moral and intellectual error committed with a conscience in
duress. Compare him to Dr Faustus who after selling hts soul to Mephistopheles,
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starts basking in the illusions of omnipotence, and carries on for twenty four
years. Macbeth is fully aware of the heinous wrong that he has done both before
and immediately after the event. He feels that he has lost all. Heaven’s grace has
been forfeited. Macbeth’s whole being is shattered by his act and he realises that
he has overhauled the kingdom of God and has created chaos for himself.
After the deed and the terrible convulsion, it is now a desperate anxiety to
reshape an identity for himself. There is no question of the devil tempting him: he
becomes the devil, nearly. Now that the first part of the witches’ prophecy has
come true and he is crowned as the King of Scotland, he feels that to be a king in
name is nothing.
It is not a Faustian attempt to enjoy the crown with certainty.
Following the witches’ prophecy the next stumbling block would be Banquo’s
children:
To be thus is nothing, but to be safely thus:
Our fears in Banquo
Stick deep. (III. i. 48-49)
Cleanth Brooks has rightly noted:
But to see this fully, It will be necessary to review the motivation of the
play. The stimulus of Duncan’s murder, as we know was the prophecy of
the Weird Sisters. But Macbeth's subsequent career of bloodshed stems
from the same prophecy. Macbeth was to have the crown, but the crown
was to pass to Banquo’s children. The second part of the prophecy
troubles Macbeth from the start. It does not oppress him, however, until
the crown has been won. But from this point on, the effect of the
prophecy is to hurry Macbeth into action and more action until he is
finally precipitated into ruin.30
30 Cleanth Brooks, The Naked Babe, included in Shakespeare: Macbeth, A Casebook Series ed
by John Wain, (Macmillan, London, 1968), p. 193.
279
Macbeth expresses his fears when he says;
They hail’d him [Banquo] 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.
(III. i. 59-63)
He notes that if the witches’ prophecy is to come true, his will be wearing a
‘fruitless crown’. The murder of Duncan, which weighs so heavily on his
conscience, may have simply cleared the way for Banquo’s sons to overthrow
Macbeth’s own family. He himself asks:
If t be so,
For Banquo’s issue have i fil’d my mind;
For them the gracious Duncan have I murther’d;
Put rancours in the vessel of my peace,
Only for them; and mine eternal jewel
Given to the common Enemy of man,
To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings!
Rather than so, come, fate, into the list,
And champion me to th’ utterance! (III. i. 63-71)
Macbeth invokes Fate (even like Milton’s Satan) to be his champion to defend his
royal title and so decides to take its reign in his own hands. He must kill his friend
Banquo and the young Fleance in order to prevent the second part of the
prophecy from coming true. Yet, despite his display of fearlessness, Macbeth is
undeniably beset with guilt and doubt, which he expresses in his statement that in
killing Duncan they “have scorch’d the snake, not kill’d it” (lll.ii.13). He feels that
the business that he began by killing Duncan is not complete because there are
still threats to the throne that must be eliminated.
280
Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth seem to be shocked and dismayed that
possessing the crown has not rid them of trouble or brought them happiness. The
language that they use is fraught with imagery suggestive of suspicion, paranoia,
and inner turmoil: Macbeth tells his wife, “full of scorpions is my mind” (III. ii. 36).
Bradley writes:
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. . .
They suffer together. And 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. . . His [Macbeth’s] conscious or reflective mind, that
is, moves chiefly among considerations of outward success and failure,
while his inner being is convulsed by conscience.31
Each murder Macbeth commits or is destined to commit is intended to bring him
security and contentment, but the deeper his hands sink in blood, the more he
realises the repercussions of acting for ambition without moral constraint.
The play now grows towards Macbeth’s own need for survival and he
would rather go on with the evil deeds than suffer from fear of guilt and of the
presence of Banquo as we learn from his words:
. . .Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams,
31 op. c it., p,306
281
That shake us nightly. Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy.
( III. ii. 17-22)
Macbeth’s ultimate fear is that all the risks taken and all the hard work done to
obtain the crown will be fruitless if he cannot hold on to it. So what prompts him to
get Banquo and his son Fleance killed is the knowledge that the real future had
been bestowed upon them. Moreover, to say that Macbeth has a criminal
tendency would disqualify him as a tragic hero, and so, instead of finding any
significance in his precarious desire to exceed, we should notice that it was some
fatal moment when he met the witches and chose to fulfill his submerged ambition
and pat, Duncan reposed trust in him to come to his castle at Macbeth’s
psychological weakest moment.
W e must also realize that the voice of his
conscience that tortures him constantly makes him essentially human. The
apparently beneficent chance is but a terrible trap which is all set to destroy
Macbeth. It is set against him to entice him to commit the horrible deeds, one after
another. The instruments of darkness and evil are becoming the instruments of
destiny for him, and his path to hell is paved by unseen forces. It is significant to
note that the witches’s prophesy was not only instrumental in Macbeth’s first
murder, but even the subsequent murder of Banquo.
If the witches had not said
in his presence that Banquo’s children would be kings, Macbeth may not have
cared to kill Banquo too.
The witches thus push him into a whole career of
murder.
Fleance’s survival suggests that the future has sidestepped Macbeth by
frustrating his desire. If only Fleance also had been killed, Macbeth’s throne would
have been ‘secure’ but now he is “cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in / To saucy
doubts and fears” (III. iv. 23-24) On hearing of the escape of Fleance Macbeth
exclaims: "Then comes my fit again: I had else been perfect” (III. iv. 20) W hat is
this if not trapping of Macbeth by some metaphysical powers to commit the deadly
282
deed again and again. Whatever Macbeth does is futile, his kingship, his
murdering Duncan, Banquo all is wasteful
There the grown serpent lies; the worm, that's fled,
Hath nature that in time will venom breed, (lll.iv.28—29).
By this we should infer that hamartia is not a key to Macbeth’s character. He does
miss the target again! He is basically ruined because every remedy he thinks
turns out to be worse than the disease.
The murder of Banquo too becomes
meaningless when Fleance has fled. Everything that Macbeth does worsens him
further, and he grows blacker and blacker.
His luck ran out when he met the
witches.
■■
VII
Though the environment of the play is soaked in blood and wrapped in
darkness, we also sight that the providential scheme is also working underneath.
Malcolm, Donalbain, Fleance and Macduff escape and the forces of evil are not
given a totally free hand. These are the outlets which open another world;
otherwise this world would have been the darkest. This manifests that the
universe is fundamentally ordered and benevolent, and which is as it were,
self-restorative, even though evil and chaos temporarily play havoc with it.
Even when we perceive the working of a providential order in the escapes
of Fleance, Malcolm and Donalbain, we should not forget that Macbeth’s inner
worth is never lost. The pressure that he experiences in his inner being shows
unfixed Macbeth is, at the banquet.
Macbeth perhaps had false hopes that the
murder of Banquo would not afflict his conscience like the murder of Duncan,
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since he had not committed the evil deed with his own hands. The appearance of
Banquo’s ghost in the banquet scene provides evidence for the force which
threatens Macbeth, and which he cannot at all control. Banquo's ghost appears
twice at exactly the same moment when Macbeth mentions him. First, Macbeth
announces to the guests that the feast is incomplete in Banquo's absence and as
he says this, Banquo’s ghost appears, sitting on Macbeth's own seat. This is great
drama. But it is also morally significant. The ghost reappears as Macbeth makes
a toast to Banquo in front of his guests. It seems that each time Macbeth thinks of
Banquo, he has a vision of him since one is not sure whether a ghost as such can
appear so soon after the murder. It is noteworthy that the ghost of Banquo is seen
by no one except Macbeth suggesting that it could be an hallucination, not an
actual apparition.
He faces his conscience again in the form of Banquo’s ghost.
In retrospect, one may feel that Duncan’s ghost did not appear at Macbeth’s
coronation since, perhaps Duncan was too holy to descend so low on the one
hand, and the deed was so heinous that silence was censure enough, on the
other. He is in a state of mind closely bordering upon a collapse. The appearance
of the ghost is like the dagger which had haunted him before Duncan’s murder.
He seems more like the manifestation of an idea, a figment of the imagination,
than a ghost. Just like the dagger, Banquo's ghost is the concretion of Macbeth's
guilt, a metaphor come to life. Lady Macbeth says as much when she pulls
Macbeth aside, "this is the very painting of your fear: / This is the air-drawn
dagger, which, you said, / Led you to Duncan" (III. iv 60-62). These recurring
apparitions or hallucinations reflect the sense of metaphysical dread that
consumes the royal couple as they feel the fateful force of their deeds coming
back to haunt them. Macbeth can fight with the ghost but not with his conscience
as he utters:
!f charnel-houses and our graves must send
Those that we bury, back, our monuments
Shall be the maws of kites. (III. iv. 70-72)
284
The murder is not over and past but is having a deeply disquieting or
disturbing effect on his subconscious mind. Bradley is right in summing up the
whole situation as he writes:
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. Agonized 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.32
Macbeth can fight with any one but not with his conscience, the fears deep rooted
in his heart. The immensity of his feelings is expressed in his words:
Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
Thou hast no speculation in those eyes,
Which thou dost glare w ith .. .
Approach thou like the rugged Russian bear,
The arm’d rhinoceros, or th' Hyrcan tiger;
Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
Shall never tremble: or, be alive again,
And dare me to the desert with thy sword;
if trembling I inhabit then, protest me
The baby of a girl. Hence, horrible shadow! (Hi. iv. 92-94, 98-105)
Banquo’s ghost is the infernal illusion created in his mind as he fully realizes his
deed and we are sure that no mere criminal will feel this kind of moral pressure.
His conscience is more than a nuisance. He is also, more than Lear, bound on a
32 op. cit, p.316-17
285
wheel of fire. Antonie, Prospero’s brother can happily say, “I feel not / This deity
in my bosom . . ( Tempest, II. i. 272-23) But Macbeth can never.
But there is no going back for Macbeth and he realizes that. He resolves to
do whatever is necessary to keep his throne, declaring:
I am in blood
Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o’er (lll.iv.135-137).
Doubts have begun to rise in Macbeth’s mind as he realizes that this deadly deed
is as futile as the first one but he knows that there can be no turning back. Curry
rightly states that:
Whatever he does is inevitably in pursuance of some apparent good,
even though that apparent good is only temooral or nothing more than
escape from a present evil.33
So he plans to visit the witches again for he is “bent to know, / By the worst
means, the worst" (III. iv. 133-34) in the hope of learning more about the future
and about who may be plotting against him. He is willing to be led by the nose by
the witches now.
Macbeth in returning to the witches is trapped further by the
very fact that witches already know it that the future stands beyond Macbeth’s
comprehension, and perhaps their own too.
33 W C Curry, Shakespeare's Philosophical Patterns, included in: The Arden Shakespeare:
Macbeth, op. cit., 102.
286
VIII
Witches “by the strength of their illusion" plan to “draw him on to his
confusion” so that Macbeth “shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear / His hopes
‘bove wisdom, grace, and fear” as we all know that "security / Is mortals’ chiefest
enemy" (III. v. 28-33). In a dark cavern, a bubbling cauldron hisses and spits, and
the three witches suddenly appear onstage. They circle the cauldron, chanting
spells and adding bizarre ingredients to their stew—-“eye of newt, and toe of
frog, / Wool of bat and tongue of dog” (IV .i.14-15).
Hecate materializes and
compliments the witches on their work. One of the witches then chants: “By the
pricking of my thumbs, / Something wicked this way comes" (IV.i.44-45). In
fulfilment of the witch’s prediction, Macbeth enters. He asks the witches to reveal
the truth of their prophecies to him. To answer his questions, they summon
horrible apparitions, each of which offers a prediction to allay Macbeth’s fears.
First, a floating head warns him to beware Macduff. Then a bloody child appears
and tells him that “none of woman born / shall harm Macbeth" (IV.i.80-81). Next, a
crowned child holding a tree tells him that he is safe until Birnam Wood moves to
Dunsinane Hill. Finally, a procession of eight crowned kings walks by, the last
carrying a mirror. Banquo’s ghost walks at the end of the line. Macbeth demands
to know the meaning of this final vision, but the witches perform a mad dance and
then vanish. The witches are vaguely absurd figures, with their rhymes and
beards and capering, but they are also clearly sinister, possessing a great deal of
power over minds. The strange apparitions act as symbols that foreshadow the
way the prophecies would be fulfilled. The armored head suggests war or
rebellion, a telling image when connected to the apparition’s warning about
Macduff. The bloody child obliquely refers to Macduff’s birth by Caesarean
section— he is not “of woman born” and has been "untimely ripped" from his
mother's womb. The crowned child is Malcolm. He carries a tree, just as his
soldiers carry branches from Birnam Wood to Dunsinane. Finally, the procession
of kings reveals the future line of kings, all descending from Banquo. Some of
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those kings carry two balls and three sceptres, the royal insignia of Great
Britain— alluding to the fact that James I, Shakespeare’s patron, claimed descent
from the historical Banquo. The mirror carried by the last figure may have been
meant to reflect King James, sitting in the audience. Banquo becomes the father
of kings, and Macbeth falls to a man not born of woman. The course of time flows
on, despite the struggles of man. Although Macbeth's reign of terror caused the
times to be "disjoint" (III. ii 16), by the end of the play the tide of time has
smoothed over Scotland, and Macduff comments that "the time is free" (V. ix. 21)
and the order is reestablished. W e wonder whether the witches simply are
independent agents playing mischievously and cruelly with human events or are
the “weird sisters”, agents of fate, signals of the inevitable? The word “weird”
descends etymologically from the Anglo-Saxon word “wyrd,” which means “fate”
or “doom,” and the three witches bear a striking resemblance to the Fates of the
couple. Their prophecies are constructed to wreak havoc in the mind of Macbeth,
so that they become self-fulfilling. It is now even more doubtful, for instance,
whether Macbeth would have really killed Duncan but for his meeting with the
witches.
Throughout Macbeth,
as
in many of Shakespeare’s tragedies,
the
supernatural and the unnatural appear in grotesque form as harbingers of
wickedness, moral corruption, and downfall. Witches instigate Macbeth to become
bloody and careless by telling him that Macbeth shall never be vanquished as
Macbeth is sure that Macduff is born like any one else of a woman and thus
cannot harm him. As Cleanth Brooks states:
Yet, a Macbeth who could act once, and then settle down to enjoy the
fruits of this one attempt to meddle with the future would, of course, not
be Macbeth. For it is not merely his great imagination and his warrior
courage in defeat which redeem him for tragedy and place him beside
the other great tragic protagonists: rather, it is his attempt to conquer the
future, an attempt involving him, like Oedipus, in a desperate struggle
with fate itself. It is this which holds our imaginative sympathy, even after
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he has degenerated into a bloody tyrant and has become the slayer of
Macduffs wife and children.34
So Macbeth plans to get Macduff killed to “make assurance double sure, /
And take a bond of Fate" (IV. i. 83-84) At this very moment Lennox enters and
tells Macbeth that Macduff has fled to England and by this news, just as earlier
the predictions of the witches seemed to come true, the ‘trustworthiness’ of the
witches is established in Macbeth’s mind. Macbeth resolves to send murderers to
capture Macduffs castle and to kill Macduffs wife and children, in a sheer act of
desperation and vindictiveness.
ix
Lady Macbeth enters in a trance with a candle in her hand bemoaning the
murders of Lady Macduff and Banquo. She seems to see blood on her hands and
claims that nothing will ever wash it off. Earlier it appeared that for Lady Macbeth
there seemed to exist no moral order when she summoned the power of darkness
to unsex her and to “stop up th’accesse, and passage to remorse” (I. v. 44). She
seemed to possess a stronger resolve and sense of purpose than her husband
and was the driving force behind the plot to kill Duncan. She had expressly
repudiated the most fundamental social aspect of her being, her role as a woman,
wife, and mother.
Ironically enough, part of her tactics with Macbeth is to urge
him to be more of a man. She condemns his scruples as something unmanly.
When Macbeth believed his hand was unwashably bloodstained earlier in the
play, Lady Macbeth had told him, “My hands are of your colour; but I shame / To
wear a heart so w hite....A little water clears us of this deed” (II. ii. 63-66). But now
we discover that she too is not a monster, or a devil, or a fourth witch. The moral
34 Op. c i t , p.193
289
order does exist for her too and she too smells blood. As time advances, her
fabled strength diminishes as she fights the torments of her conscience. The
burden of her deeds becomes too great for her and her mental condition
deteriorates. Lady Macbeth in her sleep-walking asks herself, "what, will these
hands ne're be clean", seeing that she will never have peace of mind. The
sleepwalking lady tries in vain to scrub the stain of blood off her hand and
exclaims:
Out, damned spot! out, I say! - One; two:
why then, 'tis time to do't. - He!! is murky. - Fie,
my Lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? - W hat need
we fear who knows it, when none can call our power
to accompt? - Yet who would have thought the
old man to have had so much blood in him? (V. i. 34-39)
She is completely undone by guilt and lapses into a psychosis. Her conscience
engulfs and destabilizes her and in her somnambulism she utters:
Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
Oh! oh! oh!
(V. i. 48-50)
This scene dramatically echoes the earlier one where Macbeth cannot wash his
hands clean.
This speech may be a reflection of Lady Macbeth's mental and
emotional state as she says, “Hell is murky,” implying that she already knows that
darkness intimately. Lady Macbeth's dissolution is swift. At the end she chooses
death because she can no longer bear the torments of her guilt. This sleepwalking
scene is the last time we see her, and a few scenes later, Macbeth receives news
that she has died very much like Oedipus receiving the report of Jocasta’s death.
Coleridge makes a very fair remark on this:
Lady Macbeth, like all in Shakespeare, is a class individualized: of high
rank, left much atone, and feeding herself with day-dreams of ambition,
290
she mistakes the courage of fantasy for the power of bearing the
consequences of the realities of guilt.
Hers is the mock fortitude of a
mind deluded by ambition; she shames her husband with a superhuman
audacity of fancy which she cannot support, but sinks in the season of
remorse, and dies in suicidal agony.35
She began as a remorseless, influential voice capable of sweet-talking Duncan
and of leading Macbeth to do her bidding.
But eventually she turns to a bared
soul which sighs and moans for the unnatural deeds and finally succumbs to guilt.
Actually it was Macbeth who had murdered sleep; we see now that he has
murdered Lady Macbeth’s too. This suggests that she was able to accept the
responsibility and thus cannot be labelled wittily as the fourth witch of the play.
The couple, where they are tormented by guilt and insanity, display that the entire
world of evil seems to be against them.
The witches stand outside the limits of human comprehension. They seem
to represent the part of human beings in which ambition and sin originate— an
incomprehensible and unconscious part of the human psyche itslef. In this sense,
they almost seem
to
belong to
a
Christian framework,
as supernatural
embodiments of the Christian concept of original sin. Indeed, Macbeth is, as
Helen Gardner suggested the greatest “Christian tragedy "36 of all. And by
Christian tragedy Gardner means “it is a tragedy of the imperatives and torments
of the conscience’’37. A remarkably simple story of temptation, fall, and retribution
and is the most orderly and just of the tragedies, insofar as evil deeds lead first to
psychological torment and then to destruction. Divine justice is a palpable force
hounding Macbeth toward his inevitable end. The witches’ prophecies allow
Macbeth, whose sense of doom is mounting, to tell him that everything may yet
be well as he tells the attendant:
35 Samuel Coleridge, included in A Casebook , op. cit., p.81.
36 op. cit., p.80
37 ibid., p.84
291
Bring me no more reports; let them fly all:
Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane,
I cannot taint with fear. What’s the boy Malcolm?
Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know
All mortal consequence have pronounc'd me thus:
“Fear not, Macbeth; no man that’s born of woman
Shall e’er have power upon thee.” (V. iii. 1-7)
Macbeth’s words portray the human nature that believes desperately that all is
well and thus sticks to a particular idea stubbornly. Macbeth is sure by the words
of the witches and becomes callous and so believes to be secured. But at the
same time he is fully aware of the unnatural and horrible deeds he has
unleashed.
Shakespeare has structured the play to reflect Macbeth’s moral dilemma.
This represents the wavering mind of Macbeth.
The way that he is constantly
changing his mind about whether or not he should fulfil his ambition follows the
same pattern as the representations of Macbeth’s guilt-ridden actions in the final
scene. Just as the three weird sisters predicted, they precipitated his fondest
wishes, his secret dreams of power seemed to have all come true but so too have
his darkest fears. In the course of the play, we see Macbeth struggling against
those phantoms, struggling to master or eradicate his own fears as he laments, "I
am cabin'd, cribb'd, confin’d, bound in / To saucy doubts and fears" (III. iv. 24-25).
He has won the crown, but his mind is poisoned, his tranquillity lost. He cannot
enjoy his triumph, cannot rest, and cannot sleep. And this makes Macbeth a tragic
character and saves him from becoming a gross monster as he is perpetually
conscious of his evil choices. He is poignantly aware of the rapid deterioration of
his humanity,
Seyton! - 1 am
sick at heart,
When I behold - Seyton!, I say! -This push
292
Will cheer me ever, or disseat me now.
I have liv’d long enough: my way of life
Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
1 must not look to have; but in their stead,
Curses not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.
Seyton ! -
(V. iii. 19-28)
Behind every passage of Macbeth’s utterance there is a vast continent of feeling
which really makes him a tall figure. There is no going back for him and he knows
so. He is a great soul ruined by something more than a hamartia, that is, a mere
miscalculation of judgment. And as Helen Gardner writes,
Macbeth gets precisely what he knew he would get from the murder of
Duncan and does not get what he hoped, in spite of his knowledge, that
he would get. He has judgment here- he never gets the reality of
kingship, 'solely sovereign sway and masterdom’.38
Macbeth from the very beginning realizes the futility of his actions and
knows that any fulfillment is but a dismal despair. Indeed, Macbeth’s speech
following his wife’s death is one of the most famous expressions of despair in all
literature:
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. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
38 op. cit, p. 84.
293
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. (V. v. 19-28)
These philosophical statements cannot come from any one who is a bom sinner.
He is caught in time that is infinitely, unendingly insignificant. He realizes that
man’s life is a shadow walking the way of the dusty death and when that time
fixed for one’s life expires is unknown to man. But a poor player keeps strutting
vainly on the stage of life; that is brief and mysterious. His words insist that there
is no meaning or purpose in life either; life is deceitful. Dr. Johnson writes
Macbeth now realises that:
Such is the world - such is the condition of human life, that we always
think tomorrow will be happier than today, but tomorrow and tomorrow
steals over us unenjoyed and unregarded and we still linger in the same
expectation to the moment appointed for our end. All these days which
have thus passed away have sent multitudes of fools to the grave, who
were engrossed by the same dream of future felicity and, when life was
departing from them, were like me reckoning on tomorrow.39
One can easily understand how, with his wife dead and armies marching against
him, Macbeth succumbs to such pessimism. Despite the pure nihilism of this
speech, Macbeth seems to enter into a deeper despair, making his own
dissolution tougher and more complex than that of his wife.
These profound
words can come from the lips of a man who has experienced world as a vanity of
vanities. In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Prospero, a king who had renounced
power can only visualise the nature of the world in consonance with Macbeth’s
mentality. Prospero speaks of the transience of all things in the universe:
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. W e are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. (IV. i. 152-58)
Only a philosopher can contemplate on the nature of time. W e need to glance at
Hamlet’s words at the beginning of the play; “the time is out of joint” (I. v. 189).
The words of Macbeth are a parallel contemplation after full realisation of the
futility of the evil deeds in an inexplicable march of time. But these words come to
a man who has murdered sleep and thus in a way murdered time itself. Time,
famed as the great healer, is the means of renewal as is sleep. In case of
Macbeth there is no new day and every dawn is a futile duplication. W ho less than
a great man can ponder on the value of time? Only a philosopher can meditate on
eternal verities. Only a thoughtful man can talk of the ultimates. Macbeth is a man
of such stature who is led to the observation of the final futility of all things and not
merely kingship: ultimate detachment from the world. Prospero’s vision of life is
from another perspective and another peak of meditation. But both Prospero and
Macbeth meditate on the ultimate nature of human existence.
X
Lured into a false sense of security by the final prophecies of the witches,
Macbeth may give way to boastfulness and a kind of self-destructive arrogance.
When the battle begins, Macbeth clings, against all apparent evidence, to the
notion that he will not be harmed because he is protected by the prophecy—
although we are not sure whether he really believes it at this stage.
Or is he
merely hanging on to the last thread of illusion he is left with, is debatable. But
that ambiguity is part of the dramatic moment like the ambiguity of Cordelia’s life
in the arms of the dying Lear.
Nearing his end, Macbeth gives a memorable
295
expression to a real depth of meaning, a realization of the futility of his endeavour
to keep his kingship intact. There is also a tragic undertone of a defensive and
self-justifying quality to his abovesaid words. If everything is meaningless, then
Macbeth’s awful crimes are somehow made less awful, because, like everything
else, they too signify nothing, are meaningless, rather than evil. Shakespeare
through these words of Macbeth tries to restore the glory of the man by exhibiting
the inner struggle faced by him. In a fatalistic universe, even like Oedipus’s, the
length and outcome of one’s life (destiny) is predetermined by external forces. In
Macbeth, the witches seem to represent this influence. The play makes an
important observation that in a Christian world such as Macbeth’s, man’s own
choice or free will is just a manner of saying, while Fate dictates what will be, and
that destiny has its own way. W hat is destined to happen is fixed. The emphasis
being laid on Macbeth’s moral choice and his actions is misleading. Although
Macbeth is not told how to achieve the position of a king, we may not blame him
for the way in which he gets there. He is trapped by some metaphysical powers to
act against his judgment and his noble nature.
Then the very question of the
purpose of human existence arises. He follows the self-defeating course in an
attempt to defy the prophecies by entering into a career of slaughtering.
Moreover, one could rise to the top of the wheel and enjoy the benefits of
superiority, but only for a while. With an unpredictable swing up or down, one
could equally easily crash to the base of the wheel and this is what life is. In ‘the
great chain of being’, though a special place is ordained to man, he is neither
above the angels nor below the beasts: he is tragically dislocated.
It appears that the course of the fate cannot be changed. The events that
the weird sisters had set in motion at the beginning of the play happen exactly as
they said, no matter what the characters do to change them. Macbeth tries his
hardest to force fate to work to his bidding, but to no avail. The witches have
equivocated; they told him a double truth, concealing the complex reality within a
framework that seems simple. Macbeth speaks to himself with an added weight of
despair:
296
They have tied me to a stake: I cannot fly,
But bear-like I must fight the course. (V. vii. 1-2)
Macbeth just like other Shakespeare’s tragic heroes is tied to the stake.
Gloucester too said, “I am tied to the stake and I must stand the course”
(III. vii. 54). Adrian Poole rightly marks the resemblance of Macbeth with
Aeschylean tragedy where:
Fear is something which invades, pervades Macbeth's experience,
shaking him by fits and starts, so that he lives in a state of ‘restless
ecstasy’. Rest, certainty, security is what he longs for. The passion by
which he is driven is the passion of apprehension, or what he himself
calls 'the initiate fear’.40
Macbeth also knows that there is no escape for him from the miseries of life and
he has to face the consequences of his dire acts in this life only. W e find the touch
of real remorse in him when Macduff attacks him as he says:
Of all men else I have avoided thee:
But get thee back, my soul is too much charg’d
With blood of thine already, (V. viii. 4-6)
He has a sharp moral sense but still keeps committing the most heinous crimes
and blackening himself. But at the same time he cannot be labelled as a “dead
butcher" because someone who himself suffers so much cannot be a butcher. A
butcher is accustomed to his way of life and does not experience the pangs of
regret. The first thing that a butcher does is to murder his conscience. Macbeth
may murder anyone but not his conscience. Macbeth is a true tragedy as
Shakespeare has set down moments where Macbeth repents as he is conscious
of his damnation. John Calvin in his Doctrine of Predestination rightly asserts:
40 Adrian Poole, Tragedy: Shakespeare and the Greek Example,(Basil Blackwell Ltd, New York,
1987), p.15.
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By an eternal and immutable counsel, God has once for all
determined both whom he would admit to salvation, and whom
he would condemn to destruction. This counsel, as far as
concerns the elect, is founded on his gratuitous mercy, totally
irrespective of human merit; but that to those whom he devotes
to condemnation, the gate of life is closed by a just and
irreprehensible, but incomprehensible, judgment. In the elect,
considered calling as an evidence of election; and justification is
another token of its manifestation, till they arrive in glory, which
constitutes its completion. As God seals his elect by vocation
and justification, so by excluding the reprobate from the
knowledge of his name and the sanctification of his Spirit, he
affords an indication of the judgment that awaits them .41
Cosmic evil seems to have undone him and he realizes that as he utters in
complete resignation:
be these juggling fiends no more believ’d,
That palter with us in a double sense;
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope. (V. ix. 19-22)
There is something really remarkable in him: though he knows that witches have
deceived him and he curses the witches for it, he never attempts to shift the
blame of his heinous crimes on them. But that does not mean that we entirely
blame Macbeth for the tragic catastrophe as the witches were apparently
plausible in the beginning but later were destructive as Banquo exclaims:
But 'tis strange:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
41 From John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Chapter 19 Doctrine of Predestination,
translated by John Allen, resource: World Civilizations,
http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/worldciv/ workbook/ralprs'9c.htm, Page created by
Thomas Pearcy and Mary Dickson, ( W. W . Norton, London, 1997)
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The instruments of Darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s
In deepest consequence. (I. iii. 122-26)
Banquo makes a very profound philosophical statement as this is the way the
devils’ work. Witches by their ambiguous prophecies trick Macbeth into evil to
fulfill their ambitions not his. The prophecies of these weird sisters are told to
Macbeth at perhaps the weakest moment of his life to be believed, and then to be
dangerously followed to lead him to fatal consequences. These witches however
cannot destroy Macbeth’s humanity with which Shakespeare had endowed him.
The ambiguous salutations of the witches can be compared with the episodes of
the Ghost in Hamlet or the inexplicable malignity of lago which all lead to the
tragic doom of these moral giants.
Macbeth from the very beginning is aware that the deeds he has
committed are evil and he is affected to the deepest level of his soul with the
realization of the horror of the deeds. Macbeth’s final submission can be
compared with Faustus' final despairing entreaties to be saved by Christ before
his soul is claimed by the devil, in Marlowe’s, Dr. Faustus:
The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.
O, I'll leap up to my God!--Who pulls me down?~
See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ!—
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!
Yet will I call on him: 0 , spare me, Lucifer!—
Where is it now? 'tis gone: and see, where God
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful brows!
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God! (Sc. XIV. 37-47)
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Just as in Tamburlaine Marlowe had seen the cruelty and absurdity of his hero as
well as his magnificence, so here he can enter into Faustus' grandiose intellectual
ambition, simultaneously viewing those ambitions as futile, self-destructive, and
absurd. Having served Lucifer for so long, he has reached a point at which he
cannot imagine breaking free. Marlowe uses much of his finest poetry to describe
Faustus’ final hours, during which his desire for repentance finally wins out.
Faustus is restored to his earlier grandeur in his closing speech, with its hurried
despairing, Renaissance-renouncing last line, “I’ll burn my books!” (Sc XIV. 85)
He becomes once again a tragic hero, a great man undone because his
ambitions have butted up against the law of God.
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth too is apparent the inner disintegration that the
hero identifies within him. For Macbeth with the murder of Duncan the life had
become self frustrating and each further step had made him plunge more and
more into devastation. Yet there was no going back. Nor could he choose a better
course and within his conscience lay the deepening sense of the loss of
significance. It seems as if some stronger force or some cosmic power was
trapping him towards his destruction. This graph of Macbeth’s ruin itself is the
most touching spectacle of tragedy. Macbeth exhibits elements that reflect the
greatest Christian tragedy of all: Fall of Man and also the hope of reconciliation.
Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have to try hard to ‘unpluck’ humanity in them.
Macbeth cannot become a butcher and Lady Macbeth cannot become fiend-like,
though they have proved to be so to the rest of the world.
They are not moral
emblems; nor are they merely skin-deep. And in his final utterances, Macbeth is
clearly wracked with remorse, and seems to be able to repent. Christian doctrine
holds that one can repent for any sin, however grave, until the very moment of
death, and be saved. Christ will come to save mankind precisely because
mankind has belief in the existence of God. People may suffer— as Christ himself
did— but for those who repent, salvation eventually awaits. In Christian terms,
although Macbeth has acted tyrannically, criminally, and sinfully, he does not
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entirely exclude himself from redemption. In Macbeth there is the elaborate
presentation of the despair of a man who had, though knowingly, made mortal
war on his soul. But he may not be utterly damned as there is always hope for
Divine mercy. Macbeth ceased to be a sympathy-worthy hero once he made the
decision to kill Duncan.
But since the witches were such active agents eagerly
seeking to seize Macbeth’s soul and since the consciousness of guilt is enormous
in him, by the end of the play, he becomes so tragic that his end does not fail to
evoke pity.
xi
Wilson knight rightly suggests that “the play ends on a note of courage” .42
Macbeth throughout the play showed great personal courage. In all adverse
circumstances he tried to display this courage and it is visible in his last words
also, when he was called a coward by Macduff:
I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcom’s feet,
And to be baited with the rabble’s curse.
Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane,
And thou oppos’d, being of no woman born,
Yet I will try the last: before my body
I throw my warlike shield: lay on, Macduff;
And damn’d be him that first cries, “Hold, enough!” (V. viii. 27-34)
42 G Wilson Knight, The Milk o f Concord: An Essay on Life-Themes in Macbeth (1931), included in
A Casebook series, Shakespeare: Macbeth, op. cit., p.139.
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Macbeth’s utterance proceeds not out of his chosen role of a tyrant, but out of a
still unhardened self which is still humane in its invisible dignity. And here I would
like to quote Bradley who rightly remarks:
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 the 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 lago would
have never cared to have), and contrasts with them
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would feign deny, and dare n o t43
Helen Gardner writes:
the worst suffering is to suffer alone. . .It is the judgment of the human
heart that Macbeth fears here, and the punishment which the speech
foreshadows is not that he will be cut down by Macduff, but that having
murdered his own humanity he will enter into a world, of appalling
loneliness, of meaningless activity, unloved himself, and unable to lo v e ..
. it is not terror of heaven’s vengeance which make him pause; but the
terror of moral isolation,44
And Macbeth has suffered so much as chance will not bring him his wife to
support him, and all his efforts to save his kingship are futile. He is left all alone
and he fully realizes it and no born sinner or a criminal would be able to ever feel
to the core of his heart the dread of his deeds as Macbeth does.
43 op. c it., p. 320
44 Helen Gardner, Business of Criticism, included in Shakespeare: Macbeth, A Casebook Series
ed by John Wain, (Macmillan, London, 1968), p. 252-54.
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L C Knights citing W C Curry writes:
that in proportion as the good in him diminishes, hts liberty of free choice
is determined more and more by evil inclination and that he cannot
choose the better course.
Hence we speak of destiny or fate, as if it
were some external force or moral order, compelling him against his will
to certain destruction. . . after the initial crime there is something
compulsive in Macbeth’s murders; and at the end, for all his 'valiant fury’,
he is certainly not a free agent. He is like a bear tied to a sta ke .45
Macbeth cannot be nailed down by some plain hamartia as he was ambitious.
But at the same time he was indeed aware of the fact that he could not exceed his
limits, before he met the witches. It was also because of the incitements of his
wife who starts hammering him, questioning his state of being a man that he had
to give in. These exhortations were so strong that it became impossible for him to
resist his dormant ambition, and thus he was finally caught into the trap. One may
be reminded here of a somewhat similarly destructive cajoling by a wife in
Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, where Clytemnestra succeeds in forcing her husband
to walk the purple carpet into her net. Macbeth had to pay a heavy price of putting
rancours in the vessel of his peace as all his efforts were destined to be futile. So
any application of the concept of hamartia in a limited sense would debase
Macbeth’s stature and diminish the very vitality of the great tragedy. The virtuous
can also be trapped by forces of evil and we find in tragedy a variety of the
Christian spectacle of the impotence of omnipotence: the great heroes turning
victims. Tragic figures arouse sympathy because their fates are terrible. Tragedy
is as much concerned with the sufferings of men as with the errors committed by
them. In great tragedies the tragic protagonists are indeed ‘more sinned against
that sinning’. And w e can say so because the errors committed by these moral
stalwarts are not sins or moral obliquities but certainly crucial intellectual errors,
45 L C Knights, Trends in Criticism, included in A Casebook series, Shakespeare: Macbeth, op.
cit., p.243
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som e
u n fo r tu n a te
m is c a lc u la tio n
m ade
in t r e a c h e r y o r in
ig n o r a n c e .
M an
is
in d e e d n o t b e y o n d e r r o r s a s h e is a m o r ta l. T h e s e n s e o f t h e g r e a t n e s s o r n o b ility
o f t h e s e tr a g ic p r o ta g o n is ts lie s in t h e ir g e n u in e a c c e p t a n c e o f t h e w r o n g s t h a t
t h e y h a v e d o n e a n d in t h e ir c a p a c ity to e x p e r ie n c e e n o r m o u s g u ilt a n d u n d e r g o
v irtu a l c ru c ifix io n w h ic h u ltim a te ly e n n o b le s t h e m . It is in d e e d t h e s p e c t a c le o f th e
triu m p h o f t h e h u m a n w o r th a s f a r a s t h a t triu m p h is h u m a n ly p o s s ib le .
304