Scene 1st. Here we have the witches boiling their cauldron. It is
composed of various and contradictory materials;
Black spirits and white,
Red spirits and gray.
And so truth and falsehood are mingled in the promises to Macbeth which
immediately follow; and which are kept literally to the ear, but broken
fatally to the hope.
In the 2d Scene, the falsehood or ambiguity of _appearances_ is
illustrated in Lady Macduff’s complaint of her husband’s desertion,
which she attributes to fear and want of love; whilst Ross exhorts her
to confide in his fidelity and wisdom, though she may not be able to
understand his present conduct:
As for your husband,
He is noble, wise, judicious, and best knows
The fits o’ the season.
Of her son, she says, “Father’d he is, and yet he’s fatherless;” and
immediately after tells him that his father’s dead; and, according to
her understanding of the matter, so he was; not _literally_ but
_substantially_, as their guardian and protector. The boy denies it,
because he does not see the appropriate _effect_. “If he were dead,
you’d weep for him; if you would not, it were a good sign that I should
quickly have a new father.” Whatever may be the merit of this dialogue
between Lady Macduff and her son, in other respects it serves at least
to illustrate the theme. The same idea of ambiguity is now applied to
the relation between cause and effect, when a messenger enters, warns
her of the near approach of danger, and urges her to fly. Her first
exclamation is, “I have done no harm.” But she immediately adds,
I remember now
I am in this earthly world, where to do harm
Is often laudable; to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly.
The first part of the next scene (the 3d) is wholly occupied with the
idea of _ambiguous appearances_. Macduff arrives at the court of
England, and tenders his services to Malcolm, who, fearing that he is an
emissary of Macbeth, mistrusts him. He plays off false appearances upon
Macduff by slandering himself, thus bringing out Macduff’s true
disposition. A doctor now enters and introduces the idea of _causeless
effect_, telling how the king, with a mere touch, has healed the “evil.”
Ross, having just arrived from Scotland, describes the dreadful state of
the country, dwelling chiefly on the circumstance that the people have
become so _used_ to horrors, that they have almost ceased to note them.
He tells Macduff that his wife and children are “well,” purposely using
an ambiguous phrase, which Macduff understands literally, though Ross
means that they are at peace in their graves. When at length he comes to
reveal the truth, he begs Macduff not to confound the _relator_ with the
_author_ of the mischief. “Let not your ears despise my tongue forever,”
etc. Then tells him that his wife and children have been savagely
slaughtered; whereupon Macduff pulls his hat upon his brows, and Malcolm
begs him to “give sorrow words”—distinguishing justly between the
clamorous _show_ of grief and its silent _reality_. The _substance_ of
Ross’s words have struck Macduff, but in the agony of the moment he
cannot comprehend their _detail_. “My wife killed, too;” “Did you say
all?” He has not caught the _form_ of the expression though its _spirit_
has pierced his soul. There are few passages in Shakspeare more
affecting than this, or in which the “ground-idea” is more steadily kept
in view.
O, I could play the woman with mine eyes,
And braggart with my tongue,
exclaims Macduff; but he refrains from all _show_ of grief, and all
_profession_ of courage, and prays Heaven only to bring the fiend of
Scotland and himself “front to front.”