NO. VII.—MACBETH.
A few more words on Macbeth as a work of art. There is a scene so trifling that, to such as are not prepared to look for meaning in our poet’s lightest word, it might seem almost superfluous. The “noble Macbeth” has returned from the battle where his victorious arm has saved his king and country. His heart is opened by the dangerous influence of prosperity, amid the high-beating joys of which the enemy of mankind has insinuated hopes of a deeper, more audacious, and guilty nature; but as yet they are but as hidden serpents beneath the flowers. The two scenes of the witches have been thrown in—like sublime strains of music from which an opera is to take its character, chilling the mind with vague and startling apprehensions. All this is done with a few strokes from the terrible master-hand.
A part of the effect produced by the commencement of this immense tragedy is owing to the contrast of the two mighty antagonist principles of human life—earthly good, on the one side, smiling in the sunshine, and allowing all who trust it to a full and fatal confidence, and, on the other, evil which an omnipotent and inscrutable Deity has placed in a mysterious juxtaposition, like a huge Maelstrom, and from which arises the necessity of ceaseless watchfulness and the energetic exercise of the moral faculties. We have all that, to an earthly mind, is noble, great, exciting and beautiful. Military glory is the idol which mankind has the most blindly worshiped. It has no good effect on the moral nature, but, on the contrary, has a tendency to inflate the soul with vain confidence and to give the man that most paltry and foolish of all weaknesses—a pompous idea of his own greatness. Military glory, then, at its height, appears to us at the outset of Macbeth. The brave, patriotic warrior has crushed the rebel and hurled back the invader from his country’s shore. The acclamations of the multitude hail the victor as he returns. He is for the moment invested with the moral glory of a Washington or a Cincinnatus. Not only does the nation he has saved regard him with delight and affection, but the king himself has no words to express his gratitude, and heaps him at once with thanks, honors and promises.
What a noble picture! The storm of war broken and passed away, leaving the political sky clearer than before—the good and venerable old king, whose great age does not permit him to share the dangers and glory of the actual combat, protected by the generous and brave hand of a faithful subject! The people’s apprehensions subside—the soldier returning to his field, the father embracing once more his wife and children—the hills and plains about to wave again with a plentiful harvest—the king left in safety and peace to form new benevolent plans for the security and happiness of his affectionate people—and Macbeth himself—at the pinnacle of a subject’s happiness—accompanied to his beautiful castle by his royal and grateful master—promoted in rank—improved in fortune—the favorite of his king—the savior of his country—what could Providence bestow more to make the world an Eden?
At this moment (Oh Earth! how true a shadowing forth it is of thy delusive and fatal snares!) the audience hear the tones of another world—the finger of another destiny, as unlike that which has charmed the minds of the multitudes whom we may suppose to have welcomed the conquering Macbeth, as was the hand which traced the writing on the wall at the feast of Belshazzar. At this moment, hovering in the air, the shadow gathers, and the destructive, the corrupting principle, inherent in human things—and which man was sent on earth to watch for and to cope with—falls across the path of the hero; dark and obvious enough to have betrayed to him his danger, had he been a pure and a pious man, but, through its withered and hideous disguise, appealing to his weakness—to his worst passions—with a fascinating power and a bewildering and intoxicating promise.
The colossal dimensions of this tragedy are one of its awful features. In it, Inverness is the world, the witches are sin, and Macbeth is the proud, aspiring representative of weak mortality, when unsupported by religion. The scene to which I have alluded above, and to which I call the reader’s attention, comes in amidst massive interests with such a minuteness of finish, and playfulness and sweetness of fancy, that one is struck with it as with some of those accidents accompanying great events in real life, and from their very insignificance contrasting with a tremendous power—a bird warbling—a violet blowing—or a limpid brook singing on its happy journey where a great battle is about to be fought; or an infant unconsciously smiling on the bosom of a dying father.
Macbeth has seen the weird sisters, has listened to their prophecy, has found one of their predictions verified. He is Thane of Cawdor! He has caught the dazzling dream of royalty with an eager and a determined hand. He has begun to weave in his ambitious brain the web of his vast designs. He has not only conceived—he has yielded to the dire suggestion whose horrid image unfixed his hair and made his “seated heart knock at his ribs,” against the use of nature. He has invoked the stars to hide their fires, that “light” may not see his “black and deep desires.” He has met his sinful and earthly wife, and in the interchange of a few portentous words, understood even before spoken, (for there is a freemasonry of guilt as well as of innocence and honor) he has resolved upon deep hypocrisy, prompt action, and the most tremendous guilt. That very night is to become memorable in the history of their lives and of the world, by a deed of eternal wo. The sun, now rolling calmly and brightly to his golden rest, is never to behold again the forth-going of the silver-haired old monarch, who, with his happy and triumphant suite, approaches the sweet castle of Inverness; and the raven has been, (by the deep conjuration of the blackest of human hearts,) supposed hoarse with ominous croakings at the sight of the happy and confiding king entering beneath those battlements.
With what consummate skill these innumerable ideas are presented to our imagination, and then (and here is the passage) what a transition from the gloomy and horrid depths of the corrupt human heart, to the perfume, radiance, tranquility, picturesqueness, and ever-soothing routine of external nature.