“O worthiest cousin!”
on the entrance of the deeper traitor for whom Cawdor had made way! And
here in contrast with Duncan’s “plenteous joys,” Macbeth has nothing but
the common-places of loyalty, in which he hides himself with “our duties.”
Note the exceeding effort of Macbeth’s addresses to the king, his
reasoning on his allegiance, and then especially when a new difficulty,
the designation of a successor, suggests a new crime. This, however, seems
the first distinct notion, as to the plan of realising his wishes; and
here, therefore, with great propriety, Macbeth’s cowardice of his own
conscience discloses itself. I always think there is something especially
Shakespearian in Duncan’s speeches throughout this scene, such pourings
forth, such abandonments, compared with the language of vulgar dramatists,
whose characters seem to have made their speeches as the actors learn
them.
_Ib:_ Duncan’s speech:—
... “Sons, kinsmen, thanes,
And you whose places are the nearest, know,
We will establish our estate upon
Our eldest Malcolm, whom we name hereafter
The Prince of Cumberland: which honour must
Not unaccompanied, invest him only;
But signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine
On all deservers.”
It is a fancy;—but I can never read this and the following speeches of
Macbeth, without involuntarily thinking of the Miltonic Messiah and Satan.
_Ib._ sc. 5. Macbeth is described by Lady Macbeth so as at the same time
to reveal her own character. Could he have every thing he wanted, he would
rather have it innocently;—ignorant, as alas! how many of us are, that he
who wishes a temporal end for itself, does in truth will the means; and
hence the danger of indulging fancies.
Lady Macbeth, like all in Shakespeare, is a class individualised:—of high
rank, left much alone, and feeding herself with day-dreams of ambition,
she mistakes the courage of fantasy for the power of bearing the
consequences of the realities of guilt. His 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. Her speech:—
... “Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,” &c.—
is that of one who had habitually familiarised her imagination to dreadful
conceptions, and was trying to do so still more. Her invocations and
requisitions are all the false efforts of a mind accustomed only hitherto
to the shadows of the imagination, vivid enough to throw the every-day
substances of life into shadow, but never as yet brought into direct
contact with their own correspondent realities. She evinces no womanly
life, no wifely joy, at the return of her husband, no pleased terror at
the thought of his past dangers, whilst Macbeth bursts forth naturally—
“My dearest love”—
and shrinks from the boldness with which she presents his own thoughts to
him. With consummate art she at first uses as incentives the very
circumstances, Duncan’s coming to their house, &c., which Macbeth’s
conscience would most probably have adduced to her as motives of
abhorrence or repulsion. Yet Macbeth is not prepared:—
“We will speak further.”
_Ib._ sc. 6. The lyrical movement with which this scene opens, and the
free and unengaged mind of Banquo, loving nature, and rewarded in the love
itself, form a highly dramatic contrast with the laboured rhythm and
hypocritical over-much of Lady Macbeth’s welcome, in which you cannot
detect a ray of personal feeling, but all is thrown upon the “dignities,”
the general duty.
_Ib._ sc. 7. Macbeth’s speech:—
“We will proceed no further in this business:
He hath honour’d me of late; and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.”
Note the inward pangs and warnings of conscience interpreted into
prudential reasonings.