Part 17
But the fumes of the brain pass, and leave the stern, determined man of action:—
“Whiles I threat, he lives; Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.”
We have no such rant as this in Lady Macbeth. In the scenes of the murder, she does not befool herself with visions and poetry. She is practical, and her attention is given solely to the real facts about her. Contrast the simple language in which she speaks, while waiting for Macbeth, with his previous rhodomontade. Agitated, in great emotion, listening for sounds, doubting whether some mischance may not have befallen to prevent the murder, she speaks in short, broken sentences; but she does not liken her husband to Tarquin, and say now is the time when “witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate’s offerings,” nor employ this interval in making a poem full of conceits.
Macbeth goes in to the king, and commits the murder; no scruples of any kind prevent him. But when that is secure, he has a superstitious fit, and imagines phantom-voices, that talk as no phantoms ever did before. Still he is a coward in the presence of phantoms, and will not go back. The deed has been done, and ghosts alarm him.
But, as has been before observed, all this raving as usual passes by at once. In a half-hour he is as cold and calm as ever. The phantom-voices did not reach his conscience, and awakened no remorse. They were the children of superstition and imagination, and they vanished with cockcrow and daylight, leaving no trace behind in his memory. They have not altered his mood nor his plans.
We now come to consider Lady Macbeth’s character. At all points she was her husband’s opposite, or rather his complement. Where he was strong, she was weak; where he was weak, she was strong. He was poetical and visionary of nature; she was plain and practical. He was indirect, false, secretive; she, on the contrary, was vehement and impulsive. Between what she willed and what she did was a straight line. She was troubled by none of his superstitious fears or visions. Her imagination was feeble and inactive, her character was energetic; she saw only the object immediately before her, and she went to it with rapidity and directness of purpose. She was skillful in management and ready in contrivance, as women are apt to be; while Macbeth was wanting in both these qualities, as men generally are. For herself she seems to have had no ambition, and not personally to have coveted the position of queen. Her ambition is but the reflection of Macbeth’s, and her great crime was wrought in furtherance of his suggestions and promptings. Mistaking entirely his character at first, proud of his success for his sake, and rightly reading him so far as to see that his ambition, which was insatiable, grasped at the throne, she lent herself to the murder of Duncan, in the belief that a throne once obtained, Macbeth’s ambition would be satisfied. Her moral sense was inactive, and not sufficient to lead her to oppose his project. It was not, as we shall see, utterly wanting in her, as in Macbeth. She seems to have been warmly attached to Macbeth, and always, after the murder is committed, she endeavors to soothe and tranquillize him with gentle and affectionate words. But she could not understand his superstitious hesitations when once resolved on action. His poetry and his imaginative flights, as well as his visions, were to her incomprehensible, and she made the natural mistake of supposing him to be infirm of purpose. Her mind was one of management and detail. The determination and suggestion of the murder are his; the management and detail of it are hers. This is a master-stroke of Shakespeare’s, by which he at once distinguishes the masculine from the feminine nature. Man is quick to propose and suggest a plan in its general scope; woman is always superior in adjusting the details by which it may be carried into execution. Lady Macbeth’s nature was not wicked in itself; it was susceptible of deep feeling and remorse. But her moral sense was sluggish, while her impulses were sudden and vehement; and as such women generally are, she was irritably impatient of the postponement of any project already decided upon. She had a strong will, and gave expression to it in an exaggerated way:—
“I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this.”
This is but a vehement, passionate, and exaggerated way of saying that if she had sworn to herself to do _anything_, however shocking, as deliberately and determinedly as Macbeth had to commit this murder, she would do it in spite of consequences, and not like him be “afeard to be the same in thine own act and valor as thou art in desire.” She does not mean, nor did Shakespeare mean, that so hideous an act would be possible for her either to plan or to commit; but to prove her contempt of that condition of mind when “I dare not” waits upon “I would,” she seizes on the most horrible and repulsive act that she can imagine, and declares energetically that, shocking as that is, she would not hesitate to do even that, had she so sworn to do it as Macbeth had. Yet this wild and violent figure of speech is generally taken as the key of her whole character. It is nothing of the sort; for the very line preceding it proves that she had a tenderness of nature under all her energy, and a power of love as well as of will:—
“I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me.”
Well, despite that tenderness and love, which you, Macbeth, know I have, I would have done what is so contrary to all my nature, had I so sworn as you. Throughout this scene her sole object is to urge upon Macbeth, as vehemently as she can, the folly of dallying and hesitating to carry out a project which he alone had conceived, suggested, and determined, merely for fear of consequences and lest it should do him injury in the eyes of the world. He never feels nor suggests any moral objection; he does not pretend to feel it. His sole fear is lest he may not succeed; he only doubts whether it would not be better to postpone the execution of his project until a more fitting time. His decisions are less rapid than hers. She must at once act on the first strength of her resolve. She is impetuous, and would spring upon her prey at once. He, knowing that his fell purpose will only strengthen with meditation, and doubting whether the time has come to secure his object, proposes to postpone its execution. But there is no time for this. There are but a few hours in which all must be accomplished, and he is not ready with the detail. But to this proposal of postponement she says “No.” She knows that he never will rest till it is accomplished. Neither time nor place adhered when you “broke this enterprise to me,” she says; and now, when both “have made themselves,” execute your design, and no longer let “I dare not wait upon I would.” To this he feebly opposes, “If we should fail,” failure being the only thing that troubles him. She then suggests the plan in detail by which the murder can be effected; and he cries out, in a burst of admiration and delight,—
“Bring forth men-children only, For thy undaunted mettle should compose Nothing but males.”
Still, when the time approaches, Lady Macbeth needs all her courage, and she stimulates it with wine, lest it should break down:—
“That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold.”
She preserves her courage, however, to the end, never loses her self-possession, and takes care that the plan is carried out fully in all its details. But that accomplished, she utterly breaks down. She has over-calculated her strength; she was not utterly wicked, and her remorses are terrible. From this time forward we have no such scenes between her and her husband; he performs all his other murders alone, without her connivance or knowledge.
And here the main feature of this play must be kept in mind. Lady Macbeth dies of remorse for this her crime; she cannot forget it; it haunts her in her sleep; the damned spot cannot be washed from her conscience or her hand. What a fearful cry of remorse and agony is that of hers in her dream!—
“Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this _little_ hand! Oh! oh! oh!”
There is no poetizing here, no sentimental and figurative personifications; it is the cry of a wounded heart and conscience. It is written too in prose, not in verse. It is real, and not fantastic like the rant and poetry of Macbeth. That terrible night remains with her, and haunts her and tears her like a demon, and at last she dies of it.
How is it with Macbeth? Does the memory of that night torture him? Never for a moment. He plots new murders. He has tasted blood, and cannot live without it. On, on he goes, deeper and deeper into blood, till he is slain; and never, to the last, one cry of conscience.
Yet it is thought that Lady Macbeth urged on this amiable man, so infirm of purpose, so filled with the milk of human kindness, and was the mainspring of his crimes. Suffice it to say, in answer to this view, that after Duncan is killed he keeps her in complete ignorance of all he does, and his murders are thenceforward more terrible and pitiless, and with no faint shadow of excuse or apology. This cold-hearted villain stops at nothing; even her death does not awaken a throb in his heart. Is it not preposterous to suppose that the so-called fiend of the play, she who instigates and drives an unwilling victim to crime, should die of remorse for that crime; while the amiable accomplice, far from sharing any such feeling, only plunges deeper into crime when she does not instigate him, and develops at every step an increasing brutality and savageness of nature?
No; it is not the tall, dark, commanding, and imperious figure of Mrs. Siddons, with threatening brow and inflated nostrils, that represents Lady Macbeth; she is not at all of such character or features. She is of rather a delicate organization, of medium height, her hair inclining to red, her temperament nervous and sanguine, with a florid complexion and little hands. So was Lucrezia Borgia; and so was Lady Macbeth. She was personally fair and attractive. Can any one imagine Macbeth calling a dark, towering, imperious woman like Mrs. Siddons his “dearest love,” “dear wife,” or his “dearest chuck”?
But it is commonly thought that the murder of Duncan was suggested by Lady Macbeth, and that her husband was urged into it against his will and contrary to his nature. Such a view is utterly in contradiction of the play itself. The suggestion is entirely Macbeth’s, and he has resolved upon it before he sees her. The witches are a projection of his own desires and superstitions. They meet him at the commencement of the play, prophesying, in response to his own desires, that he is thane of Cawdor, and shall be king hereafter; but they respond also to his fears, by adding that Banquo’s children shall be kings. Those are the very points upon which all his thoughts hinge—his ambition to be king, his fears lest the throne shall pass from his family. Hence his hate of Banquo and Fleance. From this time forward he thinks of nothing else. As he rides across the heath, he is self-involved, abstracted, silent, sullen, revolving in his mind how to compass his designs, which are nothing less than the murder of the king. He does not dream that the prophecies of the weird women will accomplish themselves without his assistance, for they are projections of his own thoughts. He instantly receives news that he is made thane of Cawdor, and scarcely gives a thought to this honor, scarcely expresses his satisfaction; when the news is announced he says,—
“Glamis, and thane of Cawdor: _The greatest is behind._—Thanks for your pains.”
And then immediately his mind reverts to the promise that Banquo’s children shall be kings:—
“Do you not hope your children shall be kings, When those that gave the thane of Cawdor to me Promis’d no less to them?”
Then he falls again into gloomy silence, and talks to himself inwardly. What does he say and think? He resolves to murder the king:—
“This supernatural soliciting Cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success, Commencing in a truth? I’m thane of Cawdor. If good, why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings; My thought, whose _murder_ yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man, that function Is smother’d in surmise; and nothing is But what is not.”
Yes, already he dreams of murder. He sees not his way clear; he will trust to chance; but he dreams of murder. And full of these thoughts, he rushes to his wife to fill her mind with his project, to consult her as to how it can be carried into execution; for he cannot plan in detail; and though the thought crosses him, that
“If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, Without my stir,”
yet this is but a hope; for in the next scene he has determined to take the matter into his own hands and trust nothing to chance. As soon as he hears that Malcolm is made Prince of Cumberland and heir to the throne, he determines absolutely to kill the king:—
“The Prince of Cumberland!—That is a step On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap, For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires; The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be, Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.”
He has already written to Lady Macbeth; and his letter has but one thought and one theme,—the promise that he shall be king. Much as she fears his nature, she knows thoroughly his desires, and has faint glimpses of his real character; she knows that he _means_ to be king, and sees that he would “wrongly win;” that his ambition is great, and that his mind is filled solely with one idea. But she fears that he is “too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way;” and when she hears that Duncan is coming to the castle, and that Macbeth is hurrying to see her before the king’s arrival, she doubts his plan no longer. For a moment she is aghast. “Thou’rt mad to say it,” she says to the messenger who announces the king’s approach; for she sees that he comes to his death:—
“The raven himself is hoarse That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements.”
He has been lured here by Macbeth to compass his destruction; and in a moment Macbeth will be with her. Then, summoning up all her courage at once, she resolves to aid him in his ambitious and murderous design. She calls upon the “spirits that tend on mortal thoughts” to unsex her, to alter her nature, to make her cruel and remorseless, to let nothing intervene to shake her purpose; for she is not quite sure of herself. She knows what “compunctious visitings of nature” are, and she strengthens herself against them. She is not naturally cruel; and she cries out to the spirits to “stop up the access and passage to remorse” now open in her nature, to change her “milk for gall,” and to cover her with “the dunnest smoke of hell,” so that her
“keen knife _see_ not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, Hold, hold.”
In this tremendous apostrophe, in which she goads herself on to crime, the woman’s nature is plainly seen. Macbeth never prays to have his nature altered, to have any passages to remorse closed up; never fears “compunctious visitings of nature,” nor desires darkness to hide his knife, so that he may not _see_ the wound he makes. But she knows she is a woman, and that she needs to be unsexed, and feels that she is doing violence to her own nature; still her will is strong, and she cries down her misgivings, and resolves to aid Macbeth in his design.
Macbeth meets her in this mood. There is no salutation or greeting on his part; he has but one idea,—Duncan is coming, and is to be murdered. His first words are,—
“My dearest love, Duncan comes here to-night.”
Whereupon she asks, “And when goes hence?” “To-morrow,” he answers, and pauses; and adds, “as he purposes.” But in the look and in the pause Lady Macbeth has read his whole sold and intent. There is murder in that look; and she cries:—
“O, never Shall sun that morrow see! Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men May read strange matters.”
There is no explanation between them. He has conveyed all his intention by a look and a gesture, as she herself distinctly says. He has ridden headlong, as fast as horse could carry him, away from the king, full of this one idea; and the king has vainly “coursed him at the heels,” having the purpose, as he himself says, “to be his purveyor.” And his thoughts have spoken in his looks so unmistakably, that they are perfectly understood. If there be any doubt by whom the murder was suggested, it is made perfectly clear by what Lady Macbeth subsequently says to him in the next scene in which they are presented. When he begins to doubt whether the murder had not better be postponed, she says:—
“What beast was’t, then, That made you break this enterprise to me?”
It was not of my plotting, but of your own; “Nor time, nor place, did then adhere, and yet you would make both;” you desired it and still desire it, but are afraid of consequences. These words of hers would indeed seem to indicate that he had urged the crime upon her against her will at a previous interview not reported in the play, or perhaps by a letter; for she says distinctly, that when he broke the enterprise to her,—
“Nor _time_, nor _place_, Did then adhere, and yet _you would make both_: They have made themselves.”
It would plainly seem, therefore, that Macbeth had broken this enterprise to her, and urged it on her, even before the king had determined to come to his castle, and that he intended to make time and place. This would account completely for her opening speech, and for the fact that he does not make any explanation to her of his intentions other than by his look and intonation when they first meet; for certainly there is nothing in the play about the time and place of the murder except as herein indicated. It would also explain the surprise of Lady Macbeth when she hears that her husband is coming, and the king after him: “Thou’rt mad to say it,” she says; and “the raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements.” The time and place had made themselves, then; and it is on hearing this that she suddenly changes from calm to vehement emotion, and makes that wonderful apostrophe to the spirits to unsex her. She sees that all has been resolved, and that she has need of her utmost resolution.
There is no warrant of any kind that, in the simple words, “And when goes hence,” she meant more than she said. It was the most natural question that she could possibly ask. Granting that she intended equally with him to commit the murder, what is more natural than that she should wish to know how long the king was to stay, so as to know how soon it was necessary to carry out the plan of murder, and what time there was in which to make all the arrangements? Not only Macbeth pauses after saying “To-morrow” (so, at least, is the punctuation in all editions), before adding “as he purposes,” but Lady Macbeth, in her answer, says that she sees in his face that he intends that “never shall sun that morrow see.” Yet, in the recitation of these parts on the stage, and as generally read, the meaning is given to Lady Macbeth’s simple words; and Macbeth is made perfectly innocently to answer without showing in his look any “strange matter.” But the king is coming close on his heels; there is no time to arrange details; and Macbeth goes away to receive him, saying, “We will speak further.”
The characters, as exhibited in the next scenes, have been already sufficiently discussed. He shows his superstitions, his visions, his poetry, and his hesitations; she, with the stern determination of a woman who has screwed her courage to the sticking-place, is agitated by no visions, but, feeling the necessity of immediate action, she occupies herself in the arrangements of details, and thus dulls her conscience.
After all the excitements which have agitated Macbeth—after his soliloquy, in which he says there is no spur to prick the sides of his intent, but only vaulting ambition; but if he were sure of success, he would jump the life to come—there comes a moment when he either has or pretends to have a hesitation about proceeding further in “this business.” He does not hesitate for conscience’ sake, but because, being ambitious, he now would like to wear the golden opinions he has won, “in their newest gloss,” and not cast them aside so soon, before he has had the satisfaction of being wondered at and admired a little longer. He had gained praise and high position, and his vanity was gratified. He naturally would pause before committing a hideous murder. But he never pretends that this feeling comes from any moral sense. His mind has been too long strained with one thought; and, as in all men of excitable brain, there comes a moment of reaction. He cannot see his way clear. He fears the effect of his crime. He does not see how it can be done so that he may avoid suspicion, and attain the object beyond the murder and for which he commits it, without running too great risks, and thus exposing himself to the vengeance of the king’s friends. He fears that his “bloody instructions” may “return to plague the inventor”—not hereafter, but “_here_.” But what most troubles him is, that he cannot see the practical way, cannot arrange the details so as to secure a chance of avoiding suspicion. Here his wife comes to his aid. She has thought out a plan and arranged the details. She sternly opposes his proposal to abandon his design, for she knows that his hesitation is only for a moment, and that nothing less than to be king can ever satisfy him. Better, then, do the deed at once. His only opposition after this is, “If we should fail?” But as soon as he sees the feasibility of her plan, all his scruples are gone; he is more than convinced, he is delighted, and enters upon it with a joy which he does not pretend to conceal.