I followed him far on his wayward track,
And when, from wandering, I turned me back,
He whispered at parting, these words, methought,
To my hasty heart,—“Judge not! judge not!”
SHAKSPEARE.
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BY THEODORE S. FAY, AUTHOR OF “NORMAN LESLIE,” “THE COUNTESS IDA,” ETC.
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It is the fashion to consider Macbeth a spotless and noble soul, ensnared by the toils of the fiends, and pulled down from heaven to hell by the chance meeting of the weird sisters on the heath. There is a serious objection to this view. It makes machines of men. It takes from us the most obvious and sublime attribute of an immortal being, viz: free agency. If a high-minded and God-revering mortal is unprotected against the attacks of supernatural beings—if foul witches may watch for him in unguarded moments, and weave around his enchanted feet the fatal snares of crime and death, then are we truly a wretched race. But this is not Shakspeare’s creed. This is not the character of the tragedy. Macbeth was a villain. He had deliberately adopted vice as his god long before the fiends were permitted to patter with him. They come as a consequence not as a cause of wickedness. The withered and wild sisters on the blasted heath were conjured up by his own cherished weaknesses and secret deeds.[[4]] They were the haggard and hellish impersonations of his own hidden thoughts and passions. He was not the pure, generous, heaven-adoring person he is represented. The germs of his guilt he had received into his heart by himself years before, and they lay shooting there in silence, only waiting the quickening beam of opportunity—waiting the first, feeblest temptation to start forth in all their force. He was one of those fair-seeming men who pass for honest and noble. The world contains now, as then, many such. Many a man with an uplifted brow and a clear name, waits only occasion to prove himself a scoundrel. It is such specious hypocrites that gather around them (as the smell of carrion does the hawk and vulture) the plotting witches who watch for power over the children of men. They had never tempted the pure good old King Duncan. He might have passed the blasted heath every day of his life, and these hags would never have dreamed of appearing to him. His soul was not prepared for their wiles. But that of Macbeth—as well as that of his stern wife—was corrupted by the whole tenor of their previous life.