  “Macbeth” stands in contrast throughout with Hamlet; in the manner of opening more especially. In the latter, there is a gradual ascent from the simplest forms of conversation to the language of impassioned intellect,—yet the intellect still remaining the seat of passion: in the former, the invocation is at once made to the imagination and the emotions connected therewith. Hence the movement throughout is the most rapid of all Shakespeare's plays; and hence also, with the exception of the disgusting passage of the Porter (Act ii. sc. 3), which I dare pledge myself to demonstrate to be an interpolation of the actors, there is not, to the best of my remembrance, a single pun or play on words in the whole drama. I have previously given an answer to the thousand times repeated charge against Shakespeare upon the subject of his punning, and I here merely mention the fact of the absence of any puns in Macbeth, as justifying a candid doubt, at least, whether even in these figures of speech and fanciful modifications of language, Shakespeare may not have followed rules and principles that merit and would stand the test of philosophic examination. And hence, also, there is an entire absence of comedy, nay, even of irony and philosophic contemplation in Macbeth,—the play being wholly and purely tragic. For the same cause, [pg 230] In Hamlet and Macbeth the scene opens with superstition; but, in each it is not merely different, but opposite. In the first it is connected with the best and holiest feelings; in the second with the shadowy, turbulent, and unsanctified cravings of the individual will. Nor is the purpose the same; in the one the object is to excite, whilst in the other it is to mark a mind already excited. Superstition, of one sort or another, is natural to victorious generals; the instances are too notorious to need mentioning. There is so much of chance in warfare, and such vast events are connected with the acts of a single individual,—the [pg 231] The Weird Sisters are as true a creation of Shakespeare's, as his Ariel and Caliban,—fates, furies, and materialising witches being the elements. They are wholly different from any representation of witches in the contemporary writers, and yet presented a sufficient external resemblance to the creatures of vulgar prejudice to act immediately on the audience. Their character consists in the imaginative disconnected from the good; they are the shadowy obscure and fearfully anomalous of physical nature, the lawless of human nature,—elemental avengers without sex or kin:— “Fair is foul, and foul is fair; Hover through the fog and filthy air.” How much it were to be wished in playing Macbeth, that an attempt should be made to introduce the flexile character-mask of the ancient pantomime;—that Flaxman would contribute his genius to the embodying and making sensuously perceptible that of Shakespeare! The style and rhythm of the Captain's speeches in the second scene should be illustrated by reference to the interlude in Hamlet, in which the epic is substituted for the tragic, in order to make the latter be felt as the real-life diction. In Macbeth the poet's object was to raise the mind at once to the high tragic tone, that the audience might be ready for the precipitate consummation of guilt in the early part of the play. The true reason for the first appearance of the Witches is to strike the key-note of the character of the whole drama, as is proved by their re-appearance in the third scene, after such an order of the king's as establishes their supernatural power of information. I say information,—for so it only is as to Glamis and Cawdor; the “king hereafter” was still contingent,—still in Macbeth's moral will; although, if he should yield to the temptation, and thus forfeit his free agency, the link of cause and effect more physico would then commence. I need not say, that the general idea is all that can be required from the poet,—not a scholastic logical consistency in all the parts so as to meet metaphysical objectors. But O! how truly Shakespearian is the opening of Macbeth's character given in the unpossessedness of Banquo's mind, wholly present to the present object,—an unsullied, unscarified mirror! And how strictly true to nature it is that Banquo, and not Macbeth [pg 233] “Good Sir, why do you start; and seem to fear Things that do sound so fair?” And then, again, still unintroitive, addresses the Witches:— ... “I' the name of truth, Are ye fantastical, or that indeed Which outwardly ye show?” Banquo's questions are those of natural curiosity,—such as a girl would put after hearing a gipsy tell her schoolfellow's fortune;—all perfectly general, or rather, planless. But Macbeth, lost in thought, raises himself to speech only by the Witches being about to depart:— “Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more:”— and all that follows is reasoning on a problem already discussed in his mind,—on a hope which he welcomes, and the doubts concerning the attainment of which he wishes to have cleared up. Compare his eagerness,—the keen eye with which he has pursued the Witches' evanishing— “Speak, I charge you!” with the easily satisfied mind of the self-uninterested Banquo:— “The air hath bubbles, as the water has, And these are of them:—Whither are they vanish'd?” and then Macbeth's earnest reply,— “Into the air; and what seem'd corporal, melted As breath into the wind.—Would they had stay'd!” Is it too minute to notice the appropriateness of the simile “as breath,” &c., in a cold climate? [pg 234]Still again Banquo goes on wondering like any common spectator,— “Were such things here as we do speak about?” whilst Macbeth persists in recurring to the self-concerning:— “Your children shall be kings. Ban. You shall be king. Macb. And thane of Cawdor too: went it not so?” So surely is the guilt in its germ anterior to the supposed cause, and immediate temptation! Before he can cool, the confirmation of the tempting half of the prophecy arrives, and the concatenating tendency of the imagination is fostered by the sudden coincidence:— “Glamis, and thane of Cawdor: The greatest is behind.” Oppose this to Banquo's simple surprise:— “What, can the devil speak true?” Ib. Banquo's speech:— “That, trusted home, Might yet enkindle you unto the crown, Besides the thane of Cawdor.” I doubt whether “enkindle” has not another sense than that of “stimulating;” I mean of “kind” and “kin,” as when rabbits are said to “kindle.” However, Macbeth no longer hears anything ab extra:— “Two truths are told, As happy prologues to the swelling act Of the imperial theme.” Then in the necessity of recollecting himself,— “I thank you, gentlemen.” Then he relapses into himself again, and every word of his soliloquy shows the early birth-date of his guilt. He is all-powerful without strength; [pg 235] “If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me Without my stir.” Lost in the prospective of his guilt, he turns round alarmed lest others may suspect what is passing in his own mind, and instantly vents the lie of ambition:— “My dull brain was wrought With things forgotten;”— and immediately after pours forth the promising courtesies of a usurper in intention:— ... “Kind gentlemen, your pains Are register'd where every day I turn The leaf to read them.” Ib. Macbeth's speech:— ... “Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings.” Warburton's note, and substitution of “feats” for “fears.” Mercy on this most wilful ingenuity of blundering, which, nevertheless, was the very Warburton of Warburton—his inmost being! “Fears,” here, are present fear-striking objects, terribilia adstantia. Ib. sc. 4. O! the affecting beauty of the death of Cawdor, and the presentimental speech of the king:— “There's no art To find the mind's construction in the face: He was a gentleman on whom I built An absolute trust.” Interrupted by— “O worthiest cousin!” on the entrance of the deeper traitor for whom [pg 236] 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. [pg 237]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 [pg 238] 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. Act ii. sc. 1. Banquo's speech:— “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.” The disturbance of an innocent soul by painful suspicions of another's guilty intentions and wishes, and fear of the cursed thoughts of sensual nature. Ib. sc. 2. Now that the deed is done or doing—now that the first reality commences, Lady Macbeth shrinks. The most simple sound strikes terror, the most natural consequences are horrible, whilst previously every thing, however awful, appeared a mere trifle; conscience, which before had been hidden to Macbeth in selfish and prudential fears, now rushes in upon him in her own veritable person:— “Methought I heard a voice cry—Sleep no more! I could not say Amen, When they did say, God bless us!” And see the novelty given to the most familiar images by a new state of feeling. [pg 239]Ib. sc. 3. This low soliloquy of the Porter and his few speeches afterwards, I believe to have been written for the mob by some other hand, perhaps with Shakespeare's consent; and that finding it take, he with the remaining ink of a pen otherwise employed, just interpolated the words— “I'll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.” Of the rest not one syllable has the ever-present being of Shakespeare. Act iii. sc. 1. Compare Macbeth's mode of working on the murderers in this place with Schiller's mistaken scene between Butler, Devereux, and Macdonald in Wallenstein.—(Part II. act iv. sc. 2.) The comic was wholly out of season. Shakespeare never introduces it, but when it may react on the tragedy by harmonious contrast. Ib. sc. 2. Macbeth's speech:— “But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep In the affliction of these terrible dreams That shake us nightly.” Ever and ever mistaking the anguish of conscience for fears of selfishness, and thus as a punishment of that selfishness, plunging still deeper in guilt and ruin. Ib. Macbeth's speech:— “Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till thou applaud the deed.” This is Macbeth's sympathy with his own feelings, and his mistaking his wife's opposite state. Ib. sc. 4.— “Macb. It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood: Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak; Augurs, and understood relations, have By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth The secret'st man of blood.” The deed is done; but Macbeth receives no comfort, no additional security. He has by guilt torn himself live-asunder from nature, and is, therefore, himself in a preternatural state: no wonder, then, that he is inclined to superstition, and faith in the unknown of signs and tokens, and super-human agencies. Act iv. sc. 1.— “Len. 'Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word Macduff is fled to England. Macb. Fled to England!” The acme of the avenging conscience. Ib. sc. 2. This scene, dreadful as it is, is still a relief, because a variety, because domestic, and therefore soothing, as associated with the only real pleasures of life. The conversation between Lady Macduff and her child heightens the pathos, and is preparatory for the deep tragedy of their assassination. Shakespeare's fondness for children is everywhere shown;—in Prince Arthur, in King John; in the sweet scene in the Winter's Tale between Hermione and her son; nay, even in honest Evans's examination of Mrs. Page's schoolboy. To the objection that Shakespeare wounds the moral sense by the unsubdued, undisguised description of the most hateful atrocity—that he tears the feelings without mercy, and even outrages the eye itself with scenes of insupportable horror—I, omitting Titus Andronicus, as not genuine, and excepting the scene of Gloster's blinding in Lear, answer boldly in the name of Shakespeare, not guilty. Ib. sc. 3. Malcolm's speech:— ... “Better Macbeth, Than such an one to reign.” The moral is—the dreadful effects even on the best minds of the soul-sickening sense of insecurity. Ib. How admirably Macduff's grief is in harmony with the whole play! It rends, not dissolves, the heart. “The tune of it goes manly.” Thus is Shakespeare always master of himself and of his subject,—a genuine Proteus:—we see all things in him, as images in a calm lake, most distinct, most accurate,—only more splendid, more glorified. This is correctness in the only philosophical sense. But he requires your sympathy and your submission; you must have that recipiency of moral impression without which the purposes and ends of the drama would be frustrated, and the absence of which demonstrates an utter want of all imagination, a deadness to that necessary pleasure of being innocently—shall I say, deluded?—or rather, drawn away from ourselves to the music of noblest thought in harmonious sounds. Happy he, who not only in the public theatre, but in the labours of a profession, and round the light of his own hearth, still carries a heart so pleasure-fraught! Alas for Macbeth! now all is inward with him; he has no more prudential prospective reasonings. His wife, the only being who could have had any seat in his affections, dies; he puts on despondency, the final heart-armour of the wretched, and would fain think every thing shadowy and unsubstantial, as indeed all things are to those who cannot regard them as symbols of goodness:— “Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more; it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” |
|
