Excursions in Art and Letters

by William Wetmore Story

falls at once into poetic declamation about the night, and indulges himself in strange images and personifications. A man about to commit a murder who invents these conceits must be a poetical villain:—

“Now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate’s offerings; and wither’d murder,
Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost.”

Can anything be more extraordinary and elaborate than this pressing of one conceit upon another? Wither’d murder has a sentinel, the wolf, who howls his watch, and who with stealthy pace strides with Tarquin’s ravishing strides like a ghost! Shakespeare makes no other character systematically talk like this.

But the fumes of the brain pass, and leave the stern, determined man of action:—

“Whiles I threat, he lives;
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.”

We have no such rant as this in Lady Macbeth. In the scenes of the murder, she does not befool herself with visions and poetry. She is practical, and her attention is given solely to the real facts about her. Contrast the simple language in which she speaks, while waiting for Macbeth, with his previous rhodomontade. Agitated, in great emotion, listening for sounds, doubting whether some mischance may not have befallen to prevent the murder, she speaks in short, broken sentences; but she does not liken her husband to Tarquin, and say now is the time when “witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate’s offerings,” nor employ this interval in making a poem full of conceits.

Macbeth goes in to the king, and commits the murder; no scruples of any kind prevent him. But when that is secure, he has a superstitious fit, and imagines phantom-voices, that talk as no phantoms ever did before. Still he is a coward in the presence of phantoms, and will not go back. The deed has been done, and ghosts alarm him.

But, as has been before observed, all this raving as usual passes by at once. In a half-hour he is as cold and calm as ever. The phantom-voices did not reach his conscience, and awakened no remorse. They were the children of superstition and imagination, and they vanished with cockcrow and daylight, leaving no trace behind in his memory. They have not altered his mood nor his plans.

We now come to consider Lady Macbeth’s character. At all points she was her husband’s opposite, or rather his complement. Where he was strong, she was weak; where he was weak, she was strong. He was poetical and visionary of nature; she was plain and practical. He was indirect, false, secretive; she, on the contrary, was vehement and impulsive. Between what she willed and what she did was a straight line. She was troubled by none of his superstitious fears or visions. Her imagination was feeble and inactive, her character was energetic; she saw only the object immediately before her, and she went to it with rapidity and directness of purpose. She was skillful in management and ready in contrivance, as women are apt to be; while Macbeth was wanting in both these qualities, as men generally are. For herself she seems to have had no ambition, and not personally to have coveted the position of queen. Her ambition is but the reflection of Macbeth’s, and her great crime was wrought in furtherance of his suggestions and promptings. Mistaking entirely his character at first, proud of his success for his sake, and rightly reading him so far as to see that his ambition, which was insatiable, grasped at the throne, she lent herself to the murder of Duncan, in the belief that a throne once obtained, Macbeth’s ambition would be satisfied. Her moral sense was inactive, and not sufficient to lead her to oppose his project. It was not, as we shall see, utterly wanting in her, as in Macbeth. She seems to have been warmly attached to Macbeth, and always, after the murder is committed, she endeavors to soothe and tranquillize him with gentle and affectionate words. But she could not understand his superstitious hesitations when once resolved on action. His poetry and his imaginative flights, as well as his visions, were to her incomprehensible, and she made the natural mistake of supposing him to be infirm of purpose. Her mind was one of management and detail. The determination and suggestion of the murder are his; the management and detail of it are hers. This is a master-stroke of Shakespeare’s, by which he at once distinguishes the masculine from the feminine nature. Man is quick to propose and suggest a plan in its general scope; woman is always superior in adjusting the details by which it may be carried into execution. Lady Macbeth’s nature was not wicked in itself; it was susceptible of deep feeling and remorse. But her moral sense was sluggish, while her impulses were sudden and vehement; and as such women generally are, she was irritably impatient of the postponement of any project already decided upon. She had a strong will, and gave expression to it in an exaggerated way:—

“I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.”