MACBETH AS TRAGIC HERO
Author(s): Wayne C. Booth
Source: The Journal of General Education, Vol. 6, No. 1 (October 1951), pp. 17-25
Published by: Penn State University Press
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MACBETH AS TRAGIC HERO
Wayne
C. Booth
JL ut even in its simplest terms, the prob
lem Shakespeare
gave himself in Mac
beth was a tremendous one. Take a good
man, a noble man, a man admired by all
not
who know him?and
destroy him,
as the
and
emotionally,
only physically
Greeks destroyed their heroes, but also
were
morally and intellectually. As if this
not difficult enough as a dramatic hurdle,
while transforming him into one of the
most
mortals
conceivable,
despicable
maintain him as a tragic hero?that
is,
so
sympathetic that, when he
keep him
comes to his death, the audience will pity
rather than detest him and will be re
lieved to see him out of his misery rather
than pleased to see him destroyed. Put in
own terms: take a "noble"
Shakespeare's
man, full of "conscience" and "the milk
of human kindness," and make of him a
"dead butcher," yet keep him an object
of pity rather than hatred. If we thus
as it
reconstruct the
artificially
problem
have existed before the play was
might
written, we see that, in choosing these
"terminal points" and these terminal in
tentions, Shakespeare makes almost im
demands on his dramatic skill,
possible
same time he insures that,
although at the
ifhe succeeds at all, he will succeed mag
can be turned, it
nificently. If the trick
will inevitably be a great one.
One need only consider the many rela
tive failures in attempts at similar "plots"
and effects to realize the difficulties in
volved. When dramatists or novelists at
tempt the sympathetic-degenerative
plot,
almost always one or another of the fol
or transformations occurs:
lowing failures
(1) The feeling of abhorrence for the
Mr. Booth is a member of the faculty of
Haverford
College.
so strong that all
protagonist becomes
or novel
is lost, and the
sympathy
play
becomes "punitive"?that
the
reader's
is,
or
on
chief
spectator's
pleasure depends
his satisfaction in revenge or punishment.
(2) The protagonist is never really made
after all; he only seems
very wicked,
wicked by conventional
(and, by impli
standards and is really
cation, unsound)
a
(3)
highly admirable reform-candidate.
The
protagonist reforms in the end and
avoids his proper punishment.
(4) The
book or play itself becomes a "wicked"
work; that is, either deliberately or un
us side with
consciously the artist makes
his degenerated hero
against "morality."
If it is deliberate, we have
propaganda
works of one kind or another, often re
sembling the second type above; if it is
immo
unconscious, we get works whose
or
in
sadistic
rality (as
pornographic
treatments of the
good-girl-turned-whore,
makes
them unen
thief, or murderess)
as literature unless the reader or
joyable
spectator temporarily or permanently re
laxes his own standards of moral
judg
ment.
or transfor
Any of these failures
mations can be found in conjunction with
the most
frequent failure of all: the de
generation remains finally unexplained,
the forces employed to de
unmotivated;
stroy the noble man are found pitifully
tomake his fall seem credible.
inadequate
in works which
are somewhat
Even
successful, there is almost always some
a
shrinking from fully responsible engage
ment with the inherent difficulties. For
in Tender Is the
example,
Night, which
is inmany ways
toMac
similar
strikingly
beth, Fitzgerald waters down the effect
in several ways. Dick Diver,
Fitzgerald's
"noble" man, is destroyed, but he is de
stroyed only to helplessness?to
unpopu
17
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!8
JOURNAL
OF
larity and drunkenness and poverty; he
a "failure." The
becomes
signs of his
destruction are never grotesque acts of
or wickedness
of the kind com
cruelty
mitted by Macbeth or of a kind which for
the modern reader would be
analogous
in their
unsympathetic quality. Rather,
he speaks more
to people than
sharply
he used to; he is no longer charming. This
own way,
is indeed pitiful
enough, in its
but it is easy
too,
especially when
enough,
the artist chooses, as Fitzgerald does, to
of the
report the final demoralization
hero only vaguely and from a great dis
tance: one never sees Dick Divers
final
horrible moments as one sees Macbeth's.
So that, at the end of his downward
path,
Diver has been more sinned
against than
we have no obstacles to our
sinning, and
on the other hand, since the
But,
pity.
so great, our
fall has not been
nearly
pity
that the fall should have occurred at all
is attenuated,
compared with the awful
ness of the last hours of Macbeth. Other
attenuations follow from this one. If the
fall is not a very great one, the forces
needed to produce it need not be great
one
even in
(although
might argue that
Tender Is the Night they should have
been greater, for
credibility). Nicole and
a
general atmosphere of gloom and decay
are made to do a
job which inMacbeth
some of the richest
requires
degenerative
forces ever employed. If, then, compari
son on these structural
points is just, in
the
of
differences
between
spite
strong
the works, it indicates that in point of
difficulties faced?or, one should say, cre
inMacbeth
has it all
ated?Shakespeare
over
as he has it all over any
Fitzgerald,
one else I know of who has
attempted
this form.1
I
A complete study of how Macbeth
is
made to succeed in spite of?or rather be
1 It should
go without saying that in other
faced
tragedies
Shakespeare
But
the willingness
problems.
rather than little ones is
always
below ).
totally
to face
there
EDUCATION
GENERAL
different
ones
big
(see n. 2,
cause
of?the difficulties is perhaps be
one reader. It
the
yond
capacities of any
is certainly
But the ma
here.
impossible
never knows
devices
jor
employed?one
can
how "consciously"?by
Shakespeare
be enumerated and discussed quite sim
ply.
The first step in convincing us that
Macbeth's
fall is a genuinely tragic oc
currence is to convince us that there was,
a fall: we must believe that
in
reality,
once a man whom we
was
Macbeth
could admire, a man with great potenti
alities. One way to convince us would
have been to show him, as Fitzgerald
in action as an ad
shows Dick Diver,
mirable man. But, although this is pos
in a
sible in a leisurely novel, itwould,
time
the
needed
for
have
wasted
play,
which
with
events,
important
begin only
Macbeth's
great temptation at the con
clusion of the opening battle. Thus the
superior choice in this case (although it
would not necessarily always be so ) is to
begin your representation of the action
with the first real temptation to the fall
and to use testimony by other charac
ters to establish your
protagonist's prior
are thus
goodness. We
given, from the
beginning, sign after sign that Macbeth's
greatest nobility was reached at a point
just prior to the opening of the play.
the play begins, he has already
When
coveted the crown, as is shown by his ex
cessively nervous reaction to the witches'
prophecy; it is indeed likely that he has
means of obtain
already considered foul
ing it. But, in spite of this wickedness
as a
already present to his mind
possi
we have
reason to think
bility,
ample
a man
our admi
Macbeth
worthy of
ration.
He
is
"brave"
and
"valiant,"
a
calls him
"worthy gentleman"; Duncan
"noble Macbeth." These epithets have an
ironic quality only in retrospect; when
are first
one has no reason
they
applied,
are true
to doubt them. Indeed,
they
or
true
have
would
been
epithets,
they
a few
or months
if applied, say,
only
days
earlier.
Of course,
this testimony to his prior
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MACBETH
AS
virtue given by his friends in the midst
not carry the
of other business would
spectators for long with any sympathy
if itwere not continued in
for Macbeth
several other forms.We have the testi
mony of Lady Macbeth
(the unimpeach
able testimony of a "bad" person casti
a
:
gating the goodness of "good" person )
Yet do I fear thynature;
It is too full o' themilk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be
great,
Art not without ambition, but without
thou
The illness should attend it. What
wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play
false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win.
No verbal evidence would be enough,
however, ifwe did not see in Macbeth
himself signs of its validity, since we
have already seen many signs that he is
not the good man
that the witnesses
seem to believe. Thus the best evidence
we have of his essential
goodness is his
as
vacillation before the murder.
Just
is tormented and just as
Raskolnikov
we
ourselves?virtuous
theater
viewers
is tor
would be tormented, so Macbeth
mented before the prospect of his own
crime. Indeed, much as he wants
the
in Scene 3 against
he
decides
kingship,
the murder:
If chance will have me King, why, chance
may
Without
crown
my
me,
stir.
. . .
And when he firstmeets Lady Macbeth
he is resolved not to murder Duncan.
In
fact, as powerful a rhetorician as she is,
she has all she can do to get him back
on the course of murder.2
In addition, Macbeth's
ensuing solilo
not
the
quy
possible bad
only weighs
of
his act but
consequences
practical
shows him perfectly aware, in a way an
not be, of the moral
evil man would
values involved:
He's here in double trust:
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
TRAGIC
19
HERO
Strong both against the deed;
host,
Who
should against his murderer
door,
Not
then, as his
bear
Duncan
shut the
the knife myself. Besides,
this
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued,
against
The deep damnation of his taking-off. . . .
as we saw
we see
In this
speech
again,
in the
of
the
opening
play, Shakespeare's
the very
wonderful
economy:
speech
to best advantage
which shows Macbeth
is the one which shows the audience how
act is, since
very bad his contemplated
is blameless.
Duncan
One
need only
think of the same speech
if it were
a
dealing with
king who deserves to be
or if it were
assassinated
given by an
on Mac
other character commenting
as it
beth's action, to see how
right it is
stands.
After this soliloquy Macbeth announces
that he will not
again to Lady Macbeth
on
no further in
will
go
("We
proceed
this business"), but her eloquence
is too
much for him. Under her jibes at his "un
manliness," he progresses from a kind of
petulant, but still honorable,
boasting
2 This
ing about
scene
I am say
again what
of Shakespeare's
wil
difficulties
that are
a man who
Give
yourself
to an act, and then throw
illustrates
the importance
to give
himself
lingness
worth
surmounting.
has no real objections
at him to persuade
somebody
is insignificant,
the conflict
the
good
drama
man
him to that act:
the tension
slight,
an
weak.
Give
yourself
extremely
someone
set
to
and
him to
persuade
do themost horrible of deeds; inevitably, ifyou
rise to the occasion,
you must create a true giant
to
im
of a rhetorician
the almost
accomplish
create
task: you must
possible
persuasive
Lady
to write
Macbeth.
Or, again,
suppose
you want
a domestic
the tragedy of a man who
tragedy,
in a jealous
his wife
create
rage. You
strangles
a woman
a man
who
given to jealous rages and
sure
is known to be inclined to
infidelity;
enough,
she is unfaithful,
and he murders
her. Contrast
a man not inclined
to
that with Othello,
jealousy,
a woman
to Desdemona,
married
of spotless
all scandal,
and you see that
reputation,
beyond
has forced himself, as it were,
into
Shakespeare
big things:primarily Iago.
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20
JOURNAL
OF
GENERAL
( dare do all that may become a man;/
Who
dares do more is none"),
through
a state of amoral consideration of mere
("If I should fail?"), to com
expediency
a full un
plete resolution, but still with
of
the
wickedness
of his act
derstanding
("I am settled ... this terrible feat").
There is never any doubt, first, that he
is bludgeoned into the deed by Lady
s
Macbeth
superior rhetoric and force of
character and by the pressure of un
the
familiar circumstances
(including
and, second, that even in the
witches)
final decision to go through with it he
a
con
is
extremely troubled by
guilty
science ( "False face must hide what the
In the entire
false heart doth know").
is
he
dagger soliloquy
clearly suffering
from the realization of the horror of the
sees
"bloody business" ahead. He
fully
and painfully
the wickedness
of the
course he has chosen, but not until after
the deed, when the knocking has com
menced, do we realize how terrifyingly
is: "To know my
alive his conscience
't were best not know myself./
deed,
Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I
would
thou couldst!" This is the wish
of a "good" man who, though he has
a "bad" man, still thinks and
become
feels as a good man would.
To cite one last example of Shake
speare's pains in this matter, we have
the testimony to Macbeth's
character
offeredby Hecate (III, 5):
And which isworse, all you have done
Hath been but for a wayward son,
Spiteful and wrathful, who, as others do,
Loves forhis own ends, not foryou.
This reaffirmation that Macbeth
is not
a true son of evil comes,
interestingly
enough,
immediately after the murder
of Banquo, at a time when the audience
needs a reminder of Macbeth's
funda
mental nobility.
The evil of his acts is thus built upon
the knowledge that he is not a
naturally
evil man but a man who has every po
tentiality for goodness. This potentiality
and its frustration are the chief ingredi
EDUCATION
ents of the
tragedy ofMacbeth. Macbeth
is a man whose progressive external mis
and at the
fortunes seem to produce,
same time seem to be
produced by, his
parallel progression from great goodness
to
Our emotional in
great wickedness.
volvement
should not
(which perhaps
be simplified under the term "pity" or
a combination
"pity and fear") is thus
of two kinds of regret: (1) We
regret
man should
that any potentially
good
come to such a bad end: "What a
pity
that things should have gone this way,
thatthingsshouldbe thisway!" (2) We
regret even more the destruction of this
a man who is not
particular man,
only
morally
sympathetic but also intellec
tually and emotionally
interesting. In
these
both
kinds
of regret to
eliciting
such a high degree, Shakespeare
goes
and establishes
beyond his predecessors
trends which are stillworking themselves
out in literature. The first kind?never
used at all by classical dramatists, who
never
a
employed
genuinely degener
ative
been
plot?has
attempted again and
again by modern novelists. Their diffi
culty has usually been that they have
relied too completely on a general hu
mane
response in the reader and too
little on a realized prior height or po
tentiality from which to fall. The pro
are shown
to their
tagonists
succumbing
environment?or,
as
in
so
many
"socio
logical" novels, already succumbed?and
the reader is left to himself to infer that
something worth bothering about has
gone to waste, that things might have
been otherwise, that there is any real
reason to react
emotionally to the final
destruction. The second kind?almost un
known to classical dramatists, whose char
acters are never
or "fresh" in
"original"
the modern sense?has been
attempted in
ever
extremes
since
greater
Shakespeare,
until one finds many works
in which
mere interest in
characteristics
particular
completely supplants emotional response
to events
men with
involving
interesting
characteristics. The pathos of Bloom, for
is an attenuated pathos, just as
example,
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MACBETH
AS
is an attenuated
the comedy of Bloom
one is not
to
primarily moved
comedy;
or tears
events
involving
by
laughter
as in Macbeth,
but
great characters,
rather one is primarily interested in de
tails about characters. It can be argued
whether this is a gain or a loss to liter
ature, when considered in general. Cer
one would
rather read a modern
tainly,
novel like Ulysses, with all its faults on
its head, than many of the older dramas
or epics involving "great" characters in
events. But it can hardly be de
"great"
nied that one of Shakespeare's
triumphs
is his success in doing many things at
since
once which
lesser writers have
done only one at a time. He has all the
effect of classical
tragedy.
generalized
We
lament the "bad fortune" of a great
man who has known good fortune. To
this he adds the much more poignant
in observ
( at least to us ) pity one feels
of a great man
destruction
moral
the
ing
who has once known goodness. And yet
with all this he combines the pity one
feels when one observes a highly charac
one knows in
terized individual?whom
one is
in whom
as it were,
timately,
to destruction. One dif
interested?going
ference between watching Macbeth
go
the typical
to destruction and watching
modern hero, whether in the drama (say,
or in thenovel (say, Jake
Willy Loman)
or any other of Hemingway's
heroes),
there is some "going."
is that inMacbeth
doesn't have very far to
Willy Loman
on the verge of
he
fall;
begins the play
suicide, and at the end of the play he
if we as
has committed suicide. Even
is the time
sume that the "beginning"
covered in the earliest of the flashbacks,
we have not "far to go" from there to
destruction. It is true that our
Willy's
to exalt the
contemporary willingness
of the average man makes
potentialities
seem toiwa greater one than
Willy's fall
it really is, dramatically. But the reliance
on convention will, of course, sooner or
later dictate a decline in the play's effec
continues to be effec
tiveness. Macbeth
tive at least in part because
everything
TRAGIC
2i
HERO
for a complete response to a
action is given to us. A highly
complete
individualized, noble man is sent to com
plete moral, intellectual, and physical de
necessary
struction.
II
But no matter how carefully the ter
minal points of the drama are selected
and impressed on the spectator's mind,
the major problem of how to represent
such a "plot" still remains. Shakespeare
task of trying to
has the tremendous
two
streams
keep
contradictory dynamic
stream
the
of
moving
simultaneously:
events
Macbeth's
wick
showing
growing
edness and the stream of circumstances
our
sympa
producing and maintaining
In
for
him.
each
effect,
thy
succeeding
another step toward
atrocity, marking
so sur
must be
complete
depravity,
rounded by contradictory circumstances
as to make us feel that, in
spite of the
evidence before our eyes, Macbeth
is still
somehow admirable.
The first instance of this is the method
of treating Duncan's
murder. The chief
care in avoid
is
here
point
Shakespeare's
*
or
representation of
ing any rendering"
the murder itself. It is, in fact, not even
hear only the details of
narrated. We
how the guards reacted and how Mac
beth reacted to their cries. We see noth
ing. There is nothing about the actual
no
dagger strokes; there is
report of the
cries
of
the
dying
good old king. We
have only Macbeth's
conscience-stricken
lament for having committed the deed.
Thus what would be an intolerable act
if
depicted with any vividness becomes
seen
relatively bearable when
only after
ward in the light of Macbeth's
suffering
seem
and remorse. This may
ordinary
enough; it is always convenient to have
murders take place offstage. But if one
the
of this scene,
compares
handling
where the perpetrator must remain sym
pathetic, with the handling of the blind
ing of Gloucester, where the perpetrators
must be hated, one can see how
impor
tant such a detail can be. The
blinding
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22
JOURNAL
OF
GENERAL
an act,
is not so wicked
of Gloucester
in itself, as murder. If we had seen, say,
a
motivated Goneril come in
properly
from offstage wringing her hands and
a voice cry,
crying, "Methought I heard
no more.' Goneril does put out the
'Sleep
I am afraid to think
eyes of sleep...
I have done," and on thus for
what
a full scene, our reaction to the
nearly
to say,
whole
episode would, needless
be exactly contrary to what it now is.
A second precaution is the highly gen
eral
Duncan before his mur
portrayal of
der. It is necessary
only that he be
known as a "good king," the murder of
whom will be a wicked act. He must be
But
the type of benevolent monarch.
are care
more
particular characteristics
is nothing
fully kept from him. There
for us to love, nothing for us to "want
further existence for," within the
play.
We hear of his goodness; we do not see
it.We know practically no details about
him, and we have little, if any, personal
interest in him at the time of his death.
All the personal interest is reserved for
Macbeth
and Lady Macbeth.
So, again,
is
in the nar
the wickedness
played up
ration but played down in the represen
tation. We must identify Macbeth with
the murder of a blameless king, but only
we should be
intellectually; emotionally
concerned as far as is possible only with
the effects on Macbeth. We
know that
he has done the deed, but we feel pri
own
marily only his
suffering.
more
is
Banquo
considerably
"particu
larized" than was Duncan. Not only is he
also a good man, but we have seen him
as a
we know
acting
good man, and
a lot about him. We
saw his re
quite
action to the witches, and we know that
he has resisted temptations similar to
those of Macbeth. We have seen him in
conversation with Macbeth.
We
have
heard him in soliloquy. We
know him
to be very much like Macbeth,
both in
valor and in being the subject of prophe
cy. He thus has our lively sympathy; his
death is a personal, rather than a gen
eral, loss. Perhaps more important, his
EDUCATION
murder is actually shown on the stage.
His dying words are spoken in our pres
ence, and they are unselfishly directed
are forced to the
to saving his son. We
proper, though illogical, inference: it is
more wicked to kill
Banquo than to have
killed Duncan.
But we must still not lose our sympa
This is partially pro
thy for Macbeth.
vided for by the fact that the deed is
much more necessary than the previous
is a real
murder; Banquo
political dan
ger. But the important thing is again the
choice of what is represented. The mur
der is done by accomplices, so thatMac
beth is never shown in any real act of
wickedness. When we see him, he is suf
fering the torments of the banquet table.
Our incorrect emotional
inference: the
self-torture has already expiated the
guilt
of the crime.
The same devices work in the murder
of Lady Macduff and her children, the
third and last atrocity explicitly shown
in the play (except for the killing of
young Siward, which, being military, is
an
hardly
atrocity in this sense). Lady
Macduff is more vividly portrayed even
on
than Banquo,
although she appears
the stage for a much briefer time. Her
complaints against the absence of her
husband, her loving banter with her son,
and her stand against the murderers
make her as admirable as the little
boy
in defense of his
dies
himself, who
father's name. The murder of women
and children of such
is wicked
quality
is made
to feel.
indeed, the audience
And when we move to
see
and
England
the effect of the
on Macduff,
atrocity
our active
victims is
pity for Macbeth's
at the
of
the
high point
play. For the
first time,
for
Macbeth's
perhaps, pity
wars with
victims
really
pity for him,
and our desire for his downfall, to
pro
tect others and to protect himself from
his own further misdeeds,
to
begins
mount
in
consequence.
Yet even here Macbeth
is
as little
kept
"to blame" as possible. He does not do
the deed himself, and we can believe
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MACBETH
AS
that he would have been unable to, had
he seen the wife and child as we have
seen them. (The Orson Welles
movie
version contains many grotesque errors
of reading, but none worse than showing
on the scene
Macbeth
actively engaged
is much further re
of this crime.) He
from them than from his other
moved
victims; as far as we know, he has never
seen them.
are as remote and im
They
to him as they are immediate
personal
and personal to the audience, and per
sonal blame against him is thus attenu
ated. More important, however, immedi
tears we shift to
ately after MacdufFs
effect being
Macbeth's
scene?the
Lady
on us the fact that the
again to impress
for these crimes is always
punishment
as great as, or
greater than, the crimes
all three crimes are
themselves. Thus
followed immediately by scenes of suffer
ing and self-torture. Shakespeare works
almost as if he were following a master
to
mi ebook: By your choice of what
in
from
materials
the
represent
provided
your story, insure that each step in your
coun
protagonist's degeneration will be
teracted by mounting pity for him.
All this would certainly suffice to keep
at the center of our interest
Macbeth
and sympathy, even with all our mount
concern for his victims. But it is re
ing
in his character
inforced by qualities
separate and distinct from his moral
most important of
qualities. Perhaps the
these is his gift ( indirectly Shakespeare's
it is true, but we should remember
gift,
that in his maturer work
Shakespeare
does not bestow it indiscriminately on
all his characters) of expressing himself
in
naturally tend to
great poetry. We
feel with the character who speaks the
best poetry of the play, no matter what
never be mis
his deeds
(Iago would
as
if
his poetry did
protagonist
played
not rival, and sometimes surpass, Othel
lo's). When we add to this poetic gift
an
set of
extremely rich and concrete
characteristics, over and above his moral
a character which is
qualities, we have
in its own way more
sympathetic than
TRAGIC
23
HERO
any character portrayed in only moral
colors could be. Even the powers of vir
tue
to
gathering about his castle
destroy
him seem petty compared with his mam
moth sensitivity, his rich despair. When
he says:
my way of life
Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf;
And thatwhich should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have,
we
as
feel that he wants these things quite
a
more pas
honestly and
good deal
even the most virtuous
than
sionately
man could want
them. And we regret
the
truth
of
his conclusion that he
deeply
"must not look to have" them.
Ill
If Macbeth's
initial nobility, the man
ner of
representation of his atrocities,
and his rich poetic gift are all calculated
to create and sustain our
sympathy for
him throughout his movement
toward
destruction, the kind ofmistake he makes
own destruction is
in
initiating his
equal
our will
to
well
calculated
ly
heighten
ingness to forgive while deploring. On
one level it could, of course, be said that
he errs simply in being overambitious
and underscrupulous.
But this is only
true.What
allows
him to sacrifice
partly
his moral beliefs to his ambition is a
mistake of another kind?of a kind which
is, at least to modern
spectators, more
or credible than any conven
probable
tional tragic flaw or any traditional
error such as
tragic
mistaking the iden
a brother or not
of
tity
knowing that
is one's mother. Macbeth
one's wife
knows what he is
doing, yet he does not
know. He knows the
immorality of the
of the
act, but he has no conception
effects of the act on himself or on his
to murder of
surroundings. Accustomed
a "moral" sort, in battle, and
having
and successfully "carv'd out
valorously
his passage"
with "bloody
execution"
times
many
previously, he misunder
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24
Stands
JOURNAL
OF
GENERAL
dev
completely what will be the
on his own character if he
effect
astating
tries to carve out his passage in civil life.
on one level re
The murder of Duncan
sembles closely the kind of thing Mac
and he
beth has done professionally,
lacks the insight to see the great differ
ence between the two kinds of murder.
cannot foresee that success in the
He
firstmurder will only lead to the speech
"to be thus is nothing; But to be safely
thus," and to ever increasing degradation
and suffering for himself and for those
around him. Even though he has a kind
of double premonition of the effects of
the deed both on his own conscience and
on Duncan's
it were done
subjects ("If
is done, then't were well..."),
when't
he does not really understand. If he did
understand, he could not do the deed.
This ignorance is made more convinc
to a misunder
ing by being extended
to the
of
the
forces
leading him
standing
murder. Macbeth
does not really under
stand that he has two spurs "to prick the
sides" of his intent, besides his own vault
ing ambition. The first of these is, of
course, the witches and their prophecy.
A good deal of nonsense has been writ
ten about these witches, some in the di
rection of making
them totally respon
and some
sible for the action ofMacbeth
a fantastical repre
them
making
merely
sentation of Macbeth's mental state. Yet
are
they
quite clearly real and objective,
since they say and do things which Mac
as
beth could know nothing about?such
their presentation of the ambiguous facts
of Macduff's birth and the Birnam wood
trick. And equally they are not "fate,"
to
alone responsible for what happens
Macbeth. He deliberately chooses from
what they have to say only those things
which he wishes to hear; and he has al
ready felt the ambition to be king and
even
possibly to become king through
seem to be
they
regicide. Dramatically
here both as a needed additional goad to
his ambition and as a concrete instance
of Macbeth's
tragic misunderstanding.
EDUCATION
His deliberate and consistent mistaking
of what they have to say objectifies for
us his
of everything
misunderstanding
should realize
about his situation. He
that, if they are true oracles, both parts
of their prophecy must be fulfilled. He
makes themistake of acting criminally to
bring about the first part of the proph
ecy, and then acting criminally to pre
vent the fulfilment of the second part,
But only if they
concerning Banquo.
were not true oracles would
the slaying
of Duncan be necessary or the slaying of
use. Macbeth
tries to
Banquo be of any
and
choose
from
their
promises, and
pick
in
his
thus
aid
him
self-destruction.
they
The second force which Macbeth
does
not understand, and without which he
would find himself incapable of the mur
der, is Lady Macbeth.
She, of course, fills
several functions in the play, besides her
inherent interest as a character, which is
as
great indeed. But her chief function,
the textbook commonplace quite rightly
to themurder
has it, is to incite Macbeth
of Duncan.
has
realized the
Shakespeare
best possible form for this incitation. She
does not urge Macbeth with pictures of
the pleasures of rewarded ambition; she
does not allow his
to remain on
thoughts
the moral aspects of the problem, as they
would if he were left to himself. Rather,
she shifts the whole ground of the con
to
sideration
of Macbeth's
questions
valor. She twits him for cowardice, plays
it seem
upon the word "man," making
that he becomes more a man
by doing
themanly deed. She exaggerates her own
courage (although significantly she does
not offer to do the murder herself), to
make him fear to seem cowardly by com
parison. Macbeth's whole reputation for
seems at last to be at stake, and
bravery
even
questions of success and failure are
made to hang on his courage: "But screw
your courage to the sticking-place/And
we'll not fail." So that the whole of his
seems to
past achievement
depend for its
on his
meaning
capacity to go ahead
with the contemplated act. He performs
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MACBETH
AS
the act, and from that point his final de
struction is certain.
His tragic error, then, is at least three
fold: he does not understand the forces
working upon him to make him commit
the deed, neither his wife nor the weird
the dif
sisters; he does not understand
ferences between "bloody execution" in
civilian life and in his past military life;
his own
and he does not understand
does not know what will
character?he
be the effects of the evil act on his own
future happiness. Only one of these?the
of the witches' proph
misunderstanding
be
similar to, say,
considered
ecy?can
her brother's
of
ignorance
Iphigenia's
has realized that
identity. Shakespeare
simple ignorance of that sortwill not do
for the richly complex degenerative plot.
The hero here must be really aware of
the wickedness
of his act, in advance.
The more aware he can be?and
still
commit the act
greater
convincingly?the
the regret felt by the reader or spectator.
a
Being thus aware, he must act under
itmust
special kind ofmisunderstanding:
caused by such
be a misunderstanding
even a
man
forces
that
good
powerful
might crediblybe deceived by them into
TRAGIC
HERO
25
an atrocious
"knowingly"
performing
deed.
All these points are illustrated power
the final
fully in the contrast between
words of Malcolm
concerning Macbeth?
"This dead butcher and his fiendlike
the spectator's own
queen"?and
feelings
at the same
toward Macbeth
point. One
as
intends,
judges Macbeth,
Shakespeare
not
his
for
wicked acts but in the
merely
light of the total impression of all the in
cidents of the play. Malcolm
and Mac
duff do not know Macbeth
and the forces
that have worked on him; the spectator
does know him and, knowing him, can
feel great pity that a man with so much
for greatness
should have
potentiality
fallen so low. The pity is that
everything
was not otherwise, since it so
easily could
have been otherwise. Macbeth's
whole
life, from the time of the first visitation of
is felt to be itself a tragic
the witches,
error, one big pitiful mistake. And the
conclusion brings a flood of relief that
the awful blunder has played itself out,
thatMacbeth has at last been able to die,
still valiant, and is forced no longer to go
on
conse
enduring the knowledge of the
own
of
his
misdeeds.
quences
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