iv. ii, iii.
In succeeding scenes we have this diabolical massacre carried out, and see the effect which the news of it has in rousing Macduff to his revenge; v. vii. 15.until in the final scene of all he feels that if Macbeth is slain and by no stroke of his, his wife and children's ghosts will for ever haunt him. Thus Macduff's function in the play is to be the agent not only of the grand nemesis which constitutes the whole plot, but also of a nemesis upon a private wrong which occupies the latter half of the play. And, putting our results together, we find that a Nemesis Action is the description alike of the whole plot and of the rise and fall which are its two halves.
The Oracular as one phase of Destiny: its partial revelation.
With Nemesis is associated in the play of Macbeth Destiny in two distinct phases. The first of these is the Oracular. In ancient thought, as Destiny was the supreme governor of the universe, so oracles were the revelation of Destiny; and thus the term 'the Oracles of God' is appropriately applied to the Bible as the Christian revelation. With the advent of Christianity the oracles became dumb. But the triumph of Christianity was for centuries incomplete; heathen deities were not extirpated, but subordinated to the supernatural personages of the new religion; A minor form of the Oracular in modern oracular beings.and the old oracles declined into oracular beings such as witches and wizards, and oracular superstitions, such as magic mirrors, dreams, apparitions—all means of dimly revealing hidden destiny. Shakespeare is never wiser than the age he is pourtraying; and accordingly he has freely introduced witches and apparitions into the machinery of Macbeth, though in the principles that govern the action of this, as of all his other plays, he is true to the modern notions of Providence and moral law. The Oracular Action: Destiny working from mystery to clearness;An oracle and its fulfilment make up a series of events eminently fitted to constitute a dramatic interest; and no form of ancient Drama and Story is more common than this of the 'Oracular Action.' Its interest may be formulated as Destiny working from mystery to clearness. At the commencement of an oracular story the fated future is revealed indeed, but in a dress of mystery, as when the Athenians are bidden to defend themselves with only wooden walls; but as the story of Themistocles develops itself, the drift of events is throwing more and more light on to the hidden meaning of the oracle, until by the naval victory over the Persians the oracle is at once clear and fulfilled.
The Oracular Action is so important an element in plot, that it may be worth while to prolong the consideration of it by noting the three principal varieties into which it falls, all of which are illustrated in the play of Macbeth. In each case the interest consists in tracing the working of Destiny out of mystery into clearness: the distinction between the varieties depends upon the agency by which Destiny works, and the relation of this agency to the original oracle. (1) by the agency of blind obedience;In the first variety Destiny is fulfilled by the agency of blind obedience. The Spartans, unfortunate in their war with the Messenians, enquire of an oracle, and receive the strange response that they must apply for a general to the Athenians, their hereditary enemies. But they resolve to obey the voice of Destiny, though to all appearance they obey at their peril; and the Athenians mock them by selecting the most unfit subject they can find—a man whose bodily infirmities had excluded him from the military exercises altogether. Yet in the end the faith of the Spartans is rewarded. It had been no lack of generalship that had caused their former defeats, but discord and faction in their ranks; now Tyrtæus turned out to be a lyric poet, whose songs roused the spirit of the Spartans and united them as one man, and when united, their native military talent led them to victory. Thus in its fulfilment the hidden meaning of the oracle breaks out into clearness: and blind obedience to the oracle is the agency by which it has been fulfilled.
(2) by the agency of free will;
In the second variety the oracle is fulfilled by the agency of indifference and free will: it is neither obeyed nor disobeyed, but ignored. One of the best illustrations is to be found in the plot of Sir Walter Scott's novel, The Betrothed. Its heroine, more rational than her age, resists the family tradition that would condemn her to sleep in the haunted chamber; overborne, however, by age and authority, she consents, and the lady of the bloody finger appears to pronounce her doom:
Widow'd wife, and wedded maid;
Betrothed, Betrayer, and Betrayed.
This seems a mysterious destiny for a simple and virtuous girl. The faithful attendant Rose declares in a burst of devotion that betrayed her mistress may be, but betrayer never; the heroine herself braces her will to dismiss the foreboding from her thoughts, and resolves that she will not be influenced by it on the one side or on the other. Yet it all comes about. Gratitude compels her to give her hand to the elderly Constable, who on the very day of betrothal is summoned away to the Crusade, from which, as it appears, he is never to return, leaving his spouse at once a widowed wife and a wedded maid. In the troubles of that long absence, by a perfectly natural series of events, gratitude again leads the heroine to admit to her castle her real deliverer and lover in order to save his life, and in protecting him amidst strange circumstances of suspicion to bid defiance to all comers. Finally the castle is besieged by the royal armies, and the heroine has to hear herself proclaimed a traitor by the herald of England; from this perplexity a deliverance is found only when her best friend saves her by betraying the castle to the king. So every detail in the unnatural doom has been in the most natural manner fulfilled: and the woman by whose action it has been fulfilled has been all the while maintaining the freedom of her will and persistently ignoring the oracle.