ACT IV.

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.”