MACBETH

The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

MACBETH and Lear, Othello and Hamlet, are usually reckoned

Shakespeare's four principal tragedies. Lear stands first for the

profound intensity of the passion; Macbeth for the wildness of the

imagination and the rapidity of the action; Othello for the

progressive interest and powerful alternations of feeling; Hamlet

for the refined development of thought and sentiment. If the force

of genius shown in each of these works is astonishing, their variety

is not less so. They are like different creations of the same mind,

not one of which has the slightest reference to the rest. This

distinctness and originality is indeed the necessary consequence of

truth and nature. Shakespeare's genius alone appeared to possess the

resources of nature. He is 'your only tragedy-maker'. His plays have

the force of things upon the mind. What he represents is brought

home to the bosom as a part of our experience, implanted in the

memory as if we had known the places, persons, and things of which

he treats. Macbeth is like a record of a preternatural and tragical

event. It has the rugged severity of an old chronicle with all that

the imagination of the poet can engraft upon traditional belief. The

castle of Macbeth, round which 'the air smells wooingly', and where

'the temple-haunting martlet builds', has a real subsistence in the

mind; the Weird Sisters meet us in person on 'the blasted heath';

the 'air-drawn dagger' moves slowly before our eyes; the 'gracious

Duncan', the 'blood-boltered Banquo' stand before us; all that

passed through the mind of Macbeth passes, without the loss of a

tittle, through ours. All that could actually take place, and all

that is only pos-sible to be conceived, what was said and what was

done, the workings of passion, the spells of magic, are brought

before us with the same absolute truth and vividness.--Shakespeare

excelled in the openings of his plays: that of Macbeth is the most

striking of any. The wildness of the scenery, the sudden shifting of

the situations and characters, the bustle, the expectations excited,

are equally extraordinary. From the first entrance of the Witches

and the description of them when they meet Macbeth:

--What are these

So wither'd and so wild in their attire,

That look not like the inhabitants of th' earth

And yet are on't?

the mind is prepared for all that follows.

This tragedy is alike distinguished for the lofty imagination it

displays, and for the tumultuous vehemence of the action; and the

one is made the moving principle of the other. The overwhelming

pressure of preternatural agency urges on the tide of human passion

with redoubled force. Macbeth himself appears driven along by the

violence of his fate like a vessel drifting before a storm: he reels

to and fro like a drunken man; he staggers under the weight of his

own purposes and the suggestions of others; he stands at bay with

his situation; and from the superstitious awe and breathless

suspense into which the communications of the Weird Sisters throw

him, is hurried on with daring impatience to verify their

predictions, and with impious and bloody hand to tear aside the veil

which hides the uncertainty of the future. He is not equal to the

struggle with fate and conscience. He now 'bends up each corporal

instrument to the terrible feat'; at other times his heart misgives

him, and he is cowed and abashed by his success. 'The deed, no less

than the attempt, confounds him.' His mind is assailed by the stings

of remorse, and full of 'preternatural solicitings'. His speeches

and soliloquies are dark riddles on human life, baffling solution,

and entangling him in their labyrinths. In thought he is absent and

perplexed, sudden and desperate in act, from a distrust of his own

resolution. His energy springs from the anxiety and agitation of his

mind. His blindly rushing forward on the objects of his ambition and

revenge, or his recoiling from them, equally betrays the harassed

state of his feelings.--This part of his character is admirably set

off by being brought in connexion with that of Lady Macbeth, whose

obdurate strength of will and masculine firmness give her the

ascendancy over her husband's faltering virtue. She at once seizes

on the opportunity that offers for the accomplishment of all their

wished-for greatness, and never flinches from her object till all is

over. The magnitude of her resolution almost covers the magnitude of

her guilt. She is a great bad woman, whom we hate, but whom we fear

more than we hate. She does not excite our loathing and abhorrence

like Regan and Goneril. She is only wicked to gain a great end; and

is perhaps more distinguished by her commanding presence of mind and

inexorable self-will, which do not suffer her to be diverted from a

bad purpose, when once formed, by weak and womanly regrets, than by

the hardness of her heart or want of natural affections. The

impression which her lofty determination of character makes on the

mind of Macbeth is well described where he exclaims:

--Bring forth men children only;

For thy undaunted mettle should compose

Nothing but males!

Nor do the pains she is at to 'screw his courage to the sticking-place',

the reproach to him, not to be 'lost so poorly in himself', the

assurance that 'a little water clears them of this deed', show anything

but her greater consistency in depravity. Her strong-nerved ambition

furnishes ribs of steel to 'the sides of his intent'; and she is herself

wound up to the execution of her baneful project with the same

unshrinking fortitude in crime, that in other circumstances she would

probably have shown patience in suffering. The deliberate sacrifice of

all other considerations to the gaining 'for their future days and

nights sole sovereign sway and masterdom', by the murder of Duncan, is

gorgeously expressed in her invocation on hearing of 'his fatal entrance

under her battlements':

--Come all you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here:

And fill me, from the crown to th' toe, top-full

Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,

Stop up the access and passage of remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall, you murthering 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 heav'n peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry, hold, hold!--

When she first hears that 'Duncan comes there to sleep' she is so

overcome by the news, which is beyond her utmost expectations, that

she answers the messenger, 'Thou'rt mad to say it': and on receiving

her husband's account of the predictions of the Witches, conscious

of his instability of purpose, and that her presence is necessary to

goad him on to the consummation of his promised greatness, she

exclaims:

--Hie thee hither,

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,

And chastise with me valour of my tongue

All that impedes thee from the golden round,

Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem

To have thee crowned withal.

This swelling exultation and keen spirit of triumph, this uncontrollable

eagerness of anticipation, which seems to dilate her form and take

possession of all her faculties, this solid, substantial flesh-and-blood

display of passion, exhibit a striking contrast to the cold, abstracted,

gratuitous, servile malignity of the Witches, who are equally

instrumental in urging Macbeth to his fate for the mere love of

mischief, and from a disinterested delight in deformity and cruelty.

They are hags of mischief, obscene panders to iniquity, malicious from

their impotence of enjoyment, enamoured of destruction, because they are

themselves unreal, abortive, half-existences, and who become sublime

from their exemption from all human sympathies and contempt for all

human affairs, as Lady Macbeth does by the force of passion! Her fault

seems to have been an excess of that strong principle of self-interest

and family aggrandizement, not amenable to the common feelings of

compassion and justice, which is so marked a feature in barbarous

nations and times. A passing reflection of this kind, on the resemblance

of the sleeping king to her father, alone prevents her from slaying

Duncan with her own hand.

In speaking of the character of Lady Macbeth, we ought not to pass

over Mrs. Siddons's manner of acting that part. We can conceive of

nothing grander. It was something above nature. It seemed almost as

if a being of a superior order had dropped from a higher sphere to

awe the world with the majesty of her appearance. Power was seated

on her brow, passion emanated from her breast as from a shrine; she

was tragedy personified. In coming on in the sleeping-scene, her

eyes were open, but their sense was shut. She was like a person

bewildered and unconscious of what she did. Her lips moved

involuntarily--all her gestures were involuntary and mechanical. She

glided on and off the stage like an apparition. To have seen her in

that character was an event in every one's life, not to be

forgotten.

The dramatic beauty of the character of Duncan, which excites the

respect and pity even of his murderers, has been often pointed out.

It forms a picture of itself. An instance of the author's power of

giving a striking effect to a common reflection, by the manner of

introducing it, occurs in a speech of Duncan, complaining of his

having been deceived in his opinion of the Thane of Cawdor, at the

very moment that he is expressing the most unbounded confidence in

the loyalty and services of Macbeth.

There is no art

To find the mind's construction in the face:

He was a gentleman, on whom I built

An absolute trust.

O worthiest cousin, [addressing himself to Macbeth]

The sin of my ingratitude e'en now

Was great upon me, &c.

Another passage to show that Shakespeare lost sight of nothing that

could in anyway give relief or heightening to his subject, is the

conversation which takes place between Banquo and Fleance

immediately before the murder-scene of Duncan.

Banquo. How goes the night, boy?

Fleance. The moon is down: I have not heard the clock.

Banquo. And she goes down at twelve.

Fleance. I take't, tis later, Sir.

Banquo. Hold, take my sword. There's husbandry in heav'n,

Their candles are all out.--

A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,

And yet I would not sleep: Merciful Powers,

Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature

Gives way to in repose.

In like manner, a fine idea is given of the gloomy coming on of

evening, just as Banquo is going to be assassinated.

Light thickens and the crow

Makes wing to the rooky wood.

. . . . .

Now spurs the lated traveller apace

To gain the timely inn.

Macbeth (generally speaking) is done upon a stronger and more

systematic principle of contrast than any other of Shakespeare's

plays. It moves upon the verge of an abyss, and is a constant

struggle between life and death. The action is desperate and the

reaction is dreadful. It is a huddling together of fierce extremes,

a war of opposite natures which of them shall destroy the other.

There is nothing but what has a violent end or violent beginnings.

The lights and shades are laid on with a determined hand; the

transitions from triumph to despair, from the height of terror to

the repose of death, are sudden and startling; every passion brings

in its fellow-contrary, and the thoughts pitch and jostle against

each other as in the dark. The whole play is an unruly chaos of

strange and forbidden things, where the ground rocks under our feet.

Shakespeare's genius here took its full swing, and trod upon the

furthest bounds of nature and passion. This circumstance will

account for the abruptness and violent antitheses of the style, the

throes and labour which run through the expression, and from defects

will turn them into beauties. 'So fair and foul a day I have not

seen,' &c. 'Such welcome and unwelcome news together.' 'Men's lives

are like the flowers in their caps, dying or ere they sicken.' 'Look

like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it.' The scene

before the castle-gate follows the appearance of the Witches on the

heath, and is followed by a midnight murder. Duncan is cut off

betimes by treason leagued with witchcraft, and Macduff is ripped

untimely from his mother's womb to avenge his death. Macbeth, after

the death of Banquo, wishes for his presence in extravagant terms,

'To him and all we thirst,' and when his ghost appears, cries out,

'Avaunt and quit my sight,' and being gone, he is 'himself again'.

Macbeth resolves to get rid of Macduff, that 'he may sleep in spite

of thunder'; and cheers his wife on the doubtful intelligence of

Banquo's taking-off with the encouragement--'Then be thou jocund:

ere the bat has flown his cloistered flight; ere to black Hecate's

summons the shard-born beetle has rung night's yawning peal, there

shall be done--a deed of dreadful note.' In Lady Macbeth's speech,

'Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't,' there is

murder and filial piety together, and in urging him to fulfil his

vengeance against the defenceless king, her thoughts spare the blood

neither of infants nor old age. The description of the Witches is

full of the same contradictory principle; they 'rejoice when good

kings bleed'; they are neither of the earth nor the air, but both;

'they should be women, but their beards forbid it'; they take all

the pains possible to lead Macbeth on to the height of his ambition,

only to betray him in deeper consequence, and after showing him all

the pomp of their art, discover their malignant delight in his

disappointed hopes, by that bitter taunt, 'Why stands Macbeth thus

amazedly?' We might multiply such instances everywhere.

The leading features in the character of Macbeth are striking

enough, and they form what may be thought at first only a bold,

rude, Gothic outline. By comparing it with other characters of the

same author we shall perceive the absolute truth and identity which

is observed in the midst of the giddy whirl and rapid career of

events. Macbeth in Shakespeare no more loses his identity of

character in the fluctuations of fortune or the storm of passion,

than Macbeth in himself would have lost the identity of his person.

Thus he is as distinct a being from Richard III as it is possible to

imagine, though these two characters in common hands, and indeed in

the hands of any other poet, would have been a repetition of the

same general idea, more or less exaggerated. For both are tyrants,

usurpers, murderers, both aspiring and ambitious, both courageous,

cruel, treacherous. But Richard is cruel from nature and

constitution. Macbeth becomes so from accidental circumstances.

Richard is from his birth deformed in body and mind, and naturally

incapable of good. Macbeth is full of 'the milk of human kindness,

is frank, sociable, generous. He is tempted to the commission of

guilt by golden opportunities, by the instigations of his wife, and

by prophetic warnings. Fate and metaphysical aid conspire against

his virtue and his loyalty. Richard, on the contrary, needs no

prompter, but wades through a series of crimes to the height of his

ambition from the ungovernable violence of his temper and a reckless

love of mischief. He is never gay but in the prospect or in the

success of his villanies; Macbeth is full of horror at the thoughts

of the murder of Duncan, which he is with difficulty prevailed on to

commit, and of remorse after its perpetration. Richard has no

mixture of common humanity in his composition, no regard to kindred

or posterity, he owns no fellowship with others, he is 'himself

alone'. Macbeth is not destitute of feelings of sympathy, is

accessible to pity, is even made in some measure the dupe of his

uxoriousness, ranks the loss of friends, of the cordial love of his

followers, and of his good name, among the causes which have made

him weary of life, and regrets that he has ever seized the crown by

unjust means, since he cannot transmit it to his own posterity:

For Banquo's issue have I 'fil'd my mind--

For them the gracious Duncan have I murther'd,

To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings.

In the agitation of his thoughts, he envies those whom he has sent

to peace. 'Duncan is in his grave; after life's fitful fever he

sleeps well.' It is true, he becomes more callous as he plunges

deeper in guilt, 'direness is thus rendered familiar to his

slaughterous thoughts', and he in the end anticipates his wife in

the boldness and bloodiness of his enterprises, while she, for want

of the same stimulus of action, is 'troubled with thick-coming

fancies that rob her of her rest', goes mad and dies.

Macbeth endeavours to escape from reflection on his crimes by

repelling their consequences, and banishes remorse for the past by

the meditation of future mischief. This is not the principle of

Richard's cruelty, which resembles the wanton malice of a fiend as

much as the frailty of human passion. Macbeth is goaded on to acts

of violence and retaliation by necessity; to Richard, blood is a

pastime.--There are other decisive differences inherent in the two

characters. Richard may be regarded as a man of the world, a

plotting, hardened knave, wholly regardless of everything but his

own ends, and the means to secure them.--Not so Macbeth. The

superstitions of the age, the rude state of society, the local

scenery and customs, all give a wildness and imaginary grandeur to

his character. From the strangeness of the events that surround him,

he is full of amazement and fear; and stands in doubt between the

world of reality and the world of fancy. He sees sights not shown to

mortal eye, and hears unearthly music. All is tumult and disorder

within and without his mind; his purposes recoil upon himself, are

broken and disjointed; he is the double thrall of his passions and

his evil destiny. Richard is not a character either of imagination

or pathos, but of pure self-will. There is no conflict of opposite

feelings in his breast. The apparitions which he sees only haunt him

in his sleep; nor does he live like Macbeth in a waking dream.

Macbeth has considerable energy and manliness of character; but then

he is 'subject to all the skyey influences'. He is sure of nothing

but the present moment. Richard in the busy turbulence of his

projects never loses his self-possession, and makes use of every

circumstance that happens as an instrument of his long-reaching

designs. In his last extremity we can only regard him as a wild

beast taken in the toils: we never entirely lose our concern for

Macbeth; and he calls back all our sympathy by that fine close of

thoughtful melancholy:

My way of life is fallen into the sear,

The yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age,

As honour, troops of friends, I 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.

We can conceive a common actor to play Richard tolerably well; we

can conceive no one to play Macbeth properly, or to look like a man

that had encountered the Weird Sisters. All the actors that we have

ever seen, appear as if they had encountered them on the boards of

Covent Garden or Drury Lane, but not on the heath at Fores, and as

if they did not believe what they had seen. The Witches of Macbeth

indeed are ridiculous on the modern stage, and we doubt if the

furies of Aeschylus would be more respected. The progress of manners

and knowledge has an influence on the stage, and will in time

perhaps destroy both tragedy and comedy. Filch's picking pockets, in

the Beggars' Opera, is not so good a jest as it used to be: by the

force of the police and of philosophy, Lillo's murders and the

ghosts in Shakespeare will become obsolete. At last there will be

nothing left, good nor bad, to be desired or dreaded, on the theatre

or in real life. A question has been started with respect to the

originality of Shakespeare's Witches, which has been well answered

by Mr. Lamb in his notes to the Specimens of Early Dramatic Poetry:

"Though some resemblance may be traced between the charms in Macbeth

and the incantations in this play (the Witch of Middleton), which is

supposed to have preceded it, this coincidence will not detract much

from the originality of Shakespeare. His Witches are distinguished

from the Witches of Middleton by essential differences. These are

creatures to whom man or woman plotting some dire mischief might

resort for occasional consultation. Those originate deeds of blood,

and begin bad impulses to men. From the moment that their eyes first

meet with Macbeth's, he is spellbound. That meeting sways his

destiny. He can never break the fascination. These Witches can hurt

the body; those have power over the soul.--Hecate in Middleton has a

son, a low buffoon: the hags of Shakespeare have neither child of

their own, nor seem to be descended from any parent. They are foul

anomalies, of whom we know not whence they are sprung, nor whether

they have beginning or ending. As they are without human passions,

so they seem to be without human relations. They come with thunder

and lightning, and vanish to airy music. This is all we know of

them.--Except Hecate, they have no names, which heightens their

mysteriousness. The names, and some of the properties which

Middleton has given to his hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters

are serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist with mirth. But,

in a lesser degree, the Witches of Middleton are fine creations.

Their power too is, in some measure, over the mind. They raise jars,

jealousies, strifes, 'LIKE A THICK SCURF O'ER LIFE.'"