Shakespearean Tragedy Part 28

The result is frightful. He speaks no more, as before Duncan's murder, of honour or pity. That sleepless torture, he tells himself, is nothing but the sense of insecurity and the fear of retaliation. If only he were safe, it would vanish. And he looks about for the cause of his fear; and his eye falls on Banquo. Banquo, who cannot fail to suspect him, has not fled or turned against him: Banquo has become his chief counsellor. Why?

Because, he answers, the kingdom was promised to Banquo's children.

Banquo, then, is waiting to attack him, to make a way for them. The 'b.l.o.o.d.y instructions' he himself taught when he murdered Duncan, are about to return, as he said they would, to plague the inventor. _This_ then, he tells himself, is the fear that will not let him sleep; and it will die with Banquo. There is no hesitation now, and no remorse: he has nearly learned his lesson. He hastens feverishly, not to murder Banquo, but to procure his murder: some strange idea is in his mind that the thought of the dead man will not haunt him, like the memory of Duncan, if the deed is done by other hands.[222] 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.

Agonised 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 a.s.sembled 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 una.s.suaged. But he will not bear it. His guests have hardly left him when he turns roughly to his wife:

How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person At our great bidding?

Macduff it is that spoils his sleep. He shall perish,--he and aught else that bars the road to peace.

For mine own good All causes shall give way: I am in blood Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er: Strange things I have in head that will to hand, Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.

She answers, sick at heart,

You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

No doubt: but he has found the way to it now:

Come, we'll to sleep. My strange and self abuse Is the initiate fear that wants hard use; We are yet but young in deed.

What a change from the man who thought of Duncan's virtues, and of pity like a naked new-born babe! What a frightful clearness of self-consciousness in this descent to h.e.l.l, and yet what a furious force in the instinct of life and self-a.s.sertion that drives him on!

He goes to seek the Witches. He will know, by the worst means, the worst. He has no longer any awe of them.

How now, you secret, black and midnight hags!

--so he greets them, and at once he demands and threatens. They tell him he is right to fear Macduff. They tell him to fear nothing, for none of woman born can harm him. He feels that the two statements are at variance; infatuated, suspects no double meaning; but, that he may 'sleep in spite of thunder,' determines not to spare Macduff. But his heart throbs to know one thing, and he forces from the Witches the vision of Banquo's children crowned. The old intolerable thought returns, 'for Banquo's issue have I filed my mind'; and with it, for all the absolute security apparently promised him, there returns that inward fever. Will nothing quiet it? Nothing but destruction. Macduff, one comes to tell him, has escaped him; but that does not matter: he can still destroy:[223]

And even now, To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done: The castle of Macduff I will surprise; Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the sword His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls That trace him in's line. No boasting like a fool; This deed I'll do before this purpose cool.

But no more sights!

No, he need fear no more 'sights.' The Witches have done their work, and after this purposeless butchery his own imagination will trouble him no more.[224] He has dealt his last blow at the conscience and pity which spoke through it.

The whole flood of evil in his nature is now let loose. He becomes an open tyrant, dreaded by everyone about him, and a terror to his country.

She 'sinks beneath the yoke.'

Each new morn New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows Strike heaven on the face.

She weeps, she bleeds, 'and each new day a gash is added to her wounds.'

She is not the mother of her children, but their grave;

where nothing, But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile: Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air Are made, not mark'd.

For this wild rage and furious cruelty we are prepared; but vices of another kind start up as he plunges on his downward way.

I grant him b.l.o.o.d.y, Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, Sudden, malicious,

says Malcolm; and two of these epithets surprise us. Who would have expected avarice or lechery[225] in Macbeth? His ruin seems complete.

Yet it is never complete. 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 h.e.l.l and heaven. Nor would any soul to whom evil was congenial be capable of that 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 Iago would never have cared to have), and contrasts with them

Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not,

(and which Iago would have accepted with indifference). Neither can I agree with those who find in his reception of the news of his wife's death proof of alienation or utter carelessness. There is no proof of these in the words,

She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word,

spoken as they are by a man already in some measure prepared for such news, and now transported by the frenzy of his last fight for life. He has no time now to feel.[226] Only, as he thinks of the morrow when time to feel will come--if anything comes, the vanity of all hopes and forward-lookings sinks deep into his soul with an infinite weariness, and he murmurs,

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.

In the very depths a gleam of his native love of goodness, and with it a touch of tragic grandeur, rests upon him. The evil he has desperately embraced continues to madden or to wither his inmost heart. No experience in the world could bring him to glory in it or make his peace with it, or to forget what he once was and Iago and Goneril never were.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 194: See note BB.]

[Footnote 195: 'h.e.l.l is murky' (V. i. 35). This, surely, is not meant for a scornful repet.i.tion of something said long ago by Macbeth. He would hardly in those days have used an argument or expressed a fear that could provoke nothing but contempt.]

[Footnote 196: Whether Banquo's ghost is a mere illusion, like the dagger, is discussed in Note FF.]

[Footnote 197: In parts of this paragraph I am indebted to Hunter's _Ill.u.s.trations of Shakespeare_.]

[Footnote 198: The line is a foot short.]

[Footnote 199: It should be observed that in some cases the irony would escape an audience ignorant of the story and watching the play for the first time,--another indication that Shakespeare did not write solely for immediate stage purposes.]

[Footnote 200: Their influence on spectators is, I believe, very inferior. These scenes, like the Storm-scenes in _King Lear_, belong properly to the world of imagination.]

[Footnote 201: 'By yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed: I like not when a 'oman has a great peard' (_Merry Wives_, IV. ii. 202).]

[Footnote 202: Even the metaphor in the lines (II. iii. 127),

What should be spoken here, where our fate, Hid in an auger-hole, may rush and seize us?

was probably suggested by the words in Scot's first chapter, 'They can go in and out at awger-holes.']

[Footnote 203: Once, 'weird women.' Whether Shakespeare knew that 'weird' signified 'fate' we cannot tell, but it is probable that he did.

The word occurs six times in _Macbeth_ (it does not occur elsewhere in Shakespeare). The first three times it is spelt in the Folio _weyward_, the last three _weyard_. This may suggest a miswriting or misprinting of _wayward_; but, as that word is always spelt in the Folio either rightly or _waiward_, it is more likely that the _weyward_ and _weyard_ of _Macbeth_ are the copyist's or printer's misreading of Shakespeare's _weird_ or _weyrd_.]

[Footnote 204: The doubt as to these pa.s.sages (see Note Z) does not arise from the mere appearance of this figure. The idea of Hecate's connection with witches appears also at II. i. 52, and she is mentioned again at III. ii. 41 (cf. _Mid. Night's Dream_, V. i. 391, for her connection with fairies). It is part of the common traditional notion of the heathen G.o.ds being now devils. Scot refers to it several times. See the notes in the Clarendon Press edition on III. v. 1, or those in Furness's Variorum.

Of course in the popular notion the witch's spirits are devils or servants of Satan. If Shakespeare openly introduces this idea only in such phrases as 'the instruments of darkness' and 'what! can the devil speak true?' the reason is probably his unwillingness to give too much prominence to distinctively religious ideas.]

[Footnote 205: If this paragraph is true, some of the statements even of Lamb and of Coleridge about the Witches are, taken literally, incorrect.

What these critics, and notably the former, describe so well is the poetic aspect abstracted from the remainder; and in describing this they attribute to the Witches themselves what belongs really to the complex of Witches, Spirits, and Hecate. For the purposes of imagination, no doubt, this inaccuracy is of small consequence; and it is these purposes that matter. [I have not attempted to fulfil them.]]