And pity, like a naked newborn babe,
Striding the blast, or heav’ns cherubim, hors’d
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.
But above all, as a hero he “is not without ambition.” Yet he is also “without the illness should attend it.” Naturally noble and ingenuous, his ambition up to this time had been rather than any thing else, an aimless, generous aspiring after that which should fill his own capacity, and sought no other reward for manly deeds than the doing them. It was consistent also with a state of high and pure moral feeling, as is not that which has always an end in view, and is always planning and plotting for it. Accordingly, we find it combined in him with great purity and ingenuousness of heart. “What he would highly, that would he holily.” Still it was dangerous, and, no guide to itself, was liable to take shape and direction from any conjunction of circumstances. Until now, however, he had gone with it securely and uprightly. He seems to have been kept in the path of duty and honor by the generous impulses of his nature, and perhaps more, with his peculiar openness, by the favorable influence of his kinsman the “good king Duncan,” whom he heartily loves and admires.
But now the trial is to come; to come too with circumstances, and at a time exactly adapted to overcome him. In the midst of an intoxicating self-complacency at his victory, a state of mind peculiarly genial for the reception of any suggestions favoring his promotion, he is met by three supernatural beings, (to him at least they were such,) in whom, from childhood, he had had an unwavering faith. That faith is confirmed by the almost instant fulfillment of two of their predictions. The third is unavoidably suggested to his mind as a necessary consequence. A strong conviction, amounting to a belief of destiny, that it must be fulfilled, seems from that time to have taken hold of his mind. And how is it to be done. His mind shrinks with ingenuous horror from the only way: he must murder the king. He strives to escape from the idea. His mind cannot, with all its ambition, and all its heroism, look clearly through the deed to its end. It cannot see in the wrong direction. It is untaught and unskilled in the ways of cunning wickedness. He is not sufficient master of himself to climb over the horror which rises before him. Nor yet has he energy enough to get away from it. That strong conviction of the necessity of the deed, full as much, at least, as the desirableness of its end, still enchains him. He might indeed have reflected that it lay with him to do it or not, but he does not, and perhaps it was hardly to be expected that he should. His ambition, which had been the habit of his life, and which he had hitherto trusted in as his good guide, has received a direction which he cannot change, towards a point from which he cannot divert it. He is as it were spell-bound. Still he cannot consent; he even decides not to do it. His newly-won honor, gratitude, reputation which was most dear to him, admiration for Duncan, and pity for him as his intended victim, all forbid. Here his wife comes in, and by some of the finest rhetoric of sophistry, sarcasm, and rebuke for his want of heroism, induces him to “bend himself up to the terrible feat.” The part of the play about this crisis is peculiarly fine. There is the dagger scene, in which conscience is seen exerting its full sway over a mind which owns it not. In the night scene, especially, the author seems to have exerted himself to bring in every thing that could add to the horror of the scene. Though we are not introduced to the murder, yet we are made so fully to participate in the horrors of the murderer, that the effect is greater than if it had been so. All indeed that is presented to the senses, is the most ordinary. The scene is rendered hideous by the knocking at the door, and the ill-timed jollity of the unconscious porter, more, perhaps, than by any thing else. Of Macbeth little more need be said, nor are we inclined to pursue the subject farther. Yet amidst all the dark and “strange deeds,” in which his heroism and the destiny of guilt involve him, and amidst all his desperation, he still exhibits longings for his former state of innocence and peace. For the murdered Duncan his feelings are none other than those of respectful compassion. In the very midst also of his deeds of guilt, and amidst his struggles with remorse, he reveals to his wife his anguish with the utmost tenderness of reposing affection. These things throw a softening over a character which would otherwise be purely abhorrent to our feelings. The idea of fate still clings to him, and the belief that by the murder of Duncan, he had more closely associated himself with those hellish beings who had led him on, adds yet another shade to the darkness of his mind. In an agony of desperation he consults them to learn, “by the worst means the worst.” From that hour, we feel that his doom is fixed; knowing that though
They “keep the words of promise to his ear,”
They’ll “break it to his hope.”
Thus it proves. Macbeth seeing one promise after another in which he had trusted, failing him, at last throws himself upon his own courage, which, as an acquired habit of the field at least, had never left him. With sword in hand he dies.