Had there been left no evidence of this, I should still have asserted it. The innocent—the pure in heart—they who daily commune with their Maker—who acknowledge their weakness and danger when left to themselves—and implore humbly at his feet his all-sufficient aid—never fall victims to the accursed fiends, whether they appear in the deformity of Paddock and Graymalkin, or disguised under the fair temptations of life.
But Shakspeare has left proof enough in his tragedy. He meant to show, not (as is frequently asserted) the downfall of noble grandeur and unsuspecting innocence, but the destruction of a fair-showing, unsuspected villain—the wreck of a ship whose outward semblance was tall and imposing, but which was unseaworthy and destined to go down before the first gale.
In the first place, why does not Banquo suffer from the fiends? He is with Macbeth when they appear. He even boldly addresses them, and at once—with the frank fearlessness of a noble and virtuous mind, conscious of its honesty, commands them, if they can read the future, to speak to him also.
“Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear your favors, nor your hate.”
Here is at once a man not to be tampered with. They promise him also as well as Macbeth a dazzling future good—a posterity of kings—but it in no way changes his plans of life, or raises the least idea in his mind of crime or intrigue. Even when, according to the prediction of the witches, Macbeth instantly receives intelligence, of his being thane of Cawdor, Banquo’s clear-seeing sense of right, his innocence of nature takes the true and virtuous view of the affair, looks, at a glance, through all the complicated web of the sisters’ plots, and keeps himself unsoiled, unendangered by them.
Banquo. “But ’tis strange;
And often-times, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray us
In deepest consequence.”