"But this," continues our chronicle, "was but a counterfeit zeal of equity showed by him against his natural inclination." Macbeth appeared at length in his true colors, and the same feeling of his position which had led him to seek public favor by justice changed justice into cruelty; "for the prick of conscience caused him ever to fear lest he should be served of the same cup as he had ministered to his predecessor." Now begins the Macbeth of the tragedy. The murder of Banquo, executed in the same manner and for the same reasons as those which Shakspeare ascribes to him, was followed by a great number of other crimes, so that "at length he found such sweetness by putting his nobles thus to death, that his earnest thirst after blood in this behalf might in no wise be satisfied." Certain wizards, in whom he placed great trust, had warned him to beware of Macduff, whose power, moreover, gave him great umbrage, and he only sought a pretext for giving vent to his hatred of him. Macduff, informed of his danger, passed over into England to invite Malcolm, who had taken refuge in that country, to return to claim his rights. Macbeth became acquainted with this plot, "for kings," says the chronicle, "have sharp sight like unto lynx, and long ears like unto Midas;" and Macbeth maintained spies in the houses of all the nobles of his realm. The flight of Macduff, the massacre of all his family, and his conversation with Malcolm, are all facts taken from the chronicle. Malcolm at first met Macduff's entreaties with objections based upon his own incontinence, and Macduff replied as in Shakspeare, with this addition only, "Make thyself king, and I shall convey the matter so wisely that thou shalt be so satisfied at thy pleasure in such secret wise that no man shall be aware thereof." The remainder of the scene is faithfully imitated by the poet; and all that concerns the death of Macbeth, the predictions that had been made to him, and the manner in which they were at once eluded and accomplished, is taken almost word for word from the chronicle, in which we see at last how, "by illusion of the devil, he defamed, with most terrible cruelty, his reign, which in the beginning was very profitable to the commonwealth." Macbeth had assassinated Duncan in the year 1040, and he was himself killed in 1057, after a reign of seventeen years. [Footnote 26]
[Footnote 26: Holinshed's Chronicle, "History of Scotland," vol. i., p. 168-176. The story of the murder of King Duff is contained in p. 150, 151. It was probably of the facts furnished by Hector Boëtius to this chronicle that Buchanan, when relating in a much more summary manner the history of Macbeth, said, "Multa hic fabulose quidam nostrorum affingunt; sed quia theatris aut Milesiis fabulis sunt aptiora quam historiæ, ea omitto."—Rerum. Scot. Hist., lib. vii.]
Such is a general view of the facts to which Shakspeare undertook to impart a soul and life. He places himself simply in the midst of the events and personages, and, setting all these inanimate things in motion with a breath, he enables us to witness the spectacle of their existence. Far from adding any thing to the incidents furnished him by the narrative from which he has borrowed his subject, he omits many things; he is especially careful to lop off every thing that might injure the simplicity of his progress, and embarrass the action of his personages; and he suppresses every thing that might prevent him from fathoming them with a single glance, and portraying them with a few bold touches. Macbeth, with all the crimes and great qualities ascribed to him by his history, would be too complicated a being; it would be necessary for him to possess at once too much ambition and too much virtue for one of his dispositions to maintain itself for any time in presence of the other, and too cumbrous machinery would be required to make the balance finally incline to one or the other side. Shakspeare's Macbeth is brilliant only by his warlike virtues, and especially by his personal bravery; he has only the qualities and the defects of a barbarian; brave, but not a stranger to the fear of peril when he believes in its proximity; cruel and sensitive by fits and starts; perfidious through his inconstancy; always ready to yield to any temptation that presents itself, whether it lead to crime or to virtue—he displays, in his ambition as well as in his criminality, that character of thoughtlessness and mobility which belongs to an almost savage state of civilization. His passions are imperious, but no series of reasonings and projects determines and governs them; they form a lofty tree, but one devoid of roots, which the least breeze may shake, and the fall of which is a disaster. Hence arises his tragic grandeur; it resides in his destiny more than in his character. Macbeth, if placed at a greater distance from the expectation of succession to the throne, would have remained virtuous; but his virtue, would have been restless, for it would have been merely the fruit of circumstance. His crime becomes a punishment to him, because it is circumstance which has forced him to commit it; this crime did not proceed from the depths of Macbeth's nature, and yet it clings to him, envelops him, enchains him, racks him in every part, and thus creates for him a troubled and irremissible destiny, in which the unhappy victim vainly writhes, doing nothing that does not plunge him still deeper, and with increasing despair, into the career which is henceforward prescribed to him by his implacable persecutor. Macbeth is one of those characters marked out in all superstitions to become the prey and instrument of the perverse spirit who takes pleasure in destroying them, because they have received some spark of the divine nature, and who, at the same time, meets with but few difficulties in his task, for the heavenly light darts but a few fleeting rays into their souls, which are obscured by storms at every instant.
Lady Macbeth is just exactly the wife of such a man, the product of the same state of civilization, and of the same habit of passions. She adds to this, moreover, the fact that she is a woman without prudence, without generality in her views, perceiving at once only a single part of a single idea, and giving herself up to it entirely, without ever admitting any thing that might distract or disturb her attention from it. The feelings which belong to her sex are not unknown to her; she loves her husband, knows the pleasures of a mother, and could not kill Duncan herself, because he resembled "her father as he slept;" but she aspires to be queen, and for this cause Duncan must die; she sees nothing in the death of Duncan but the pleasure of being queen; her courage is easy, for she does not perceive any thing to make her recoil from the deed. When her passion is satisfied and the action committed, then only will the other consequences be revealed to her as a novelty of which she previously had not the slightest anticipation. Those fears, and that necessity for new crimes, which her husband had foreseen at the outset, she has never thought of. She was quite willing to throw the crime upon the two chamberlains, but it was not her idea to kill them; she did not arrange the murder of Banquo, or the massacre of Macduff's family; she did not see so far forward; she had not even divined the effect which would be produced upon her by such a sight, when she entered the room in which Duncan lay dead. She leaves it in agitation, no longer contemning the terrors of her husband, but merely urging him not to dwell too much upon images, by which we see that she is beginning to feel herself besieged. The blow is struck, and will reveal itself in the admirable and terrible scene of her somnambulism: there we shall learn what becomes of a character apparently so immovable, when it is no longer sustained by the blind fury of passion. Macbeth has become hardened in crime, after having hesitated to commit it, because he knew its character; but we shall see his wife, succumbing beneath the knowledge which she has acquired too late, substitute one fixed idea for another, die to deliver herself from its influence, and punish, by the madness of despair, the crime which she was led to commit by the madness of ambition.
The other personages, introduced merely to fill up this great picture of the progress and destiny of crime, have no other color than that of the position given them by history. The Witches are, indeed, what they should be, and I do not know why it is the custom to exclaim with disgust against this portion of the representation of "Macbeth." When we see these vile creatures the arbiters of life and death, of all the chances and all the interests of humanity, disposing of them in accordance with the most contemptible caprices of their odious nature, to the terror which their power inspires is added the dread occasioned by their unreason, and the very absurdity of such a spectacle only augments its effect.
The style of "Macbeth" is remarkable, in its wild energy, for a refinement which we may indeed blame, but which it would be wrong to consider as contrary to truth as it is to naturalness. Refinement of language is not incompatible with rudeness of manners and ideas; it seems even to be rather common in times and positions in which general ideas are wanting. The mind, which can not remain idle, then attaches itself to the slightest verbal connections, takes delight in them, and makes a habit of them, which we meet with in all analogous positions. Nothing can be more far-fetched than the spirit of the literature of the Middle Ages; and what we know of the speech of savages contains many choice ideas. Refinement is the characteristic of the wits of the lower classes; and even the insults of the common people are sometimes composed with a quite singular fastidiousness, as if, at those times when anger excites their faculties, their mind seized with greater facility and abundance upon relations of this kind, the only ones which it was capable of attaining.
It is believed that "Macbeth" was performed in 1606. The idea of writing a tragedy upon this subject, which would necessarily be pleasing to King James, who had just ascended the throne of England, was probably suggested to Shakspeare by a short poetical dialogue, which the students of Oxford, in 1605, recited in Latin before the king, and in English before the queen, who had accompanied him to that city. The students were three in number, and probably spoke in turn. Their speech turned upon the prediction uttered to Banquo; and, in allusion to the triple salutation which Macbeth had received, they hailed James King of England, Scotland, and Ireland. They also hailed him King of France, which destroyed, somewhat gratuitously, the virtue of the number three.