After all the excitements which have agitated Macbeth—after his soliloquy, in which he says there is no spur to prick the sides of his intent, but only vaulting ambition; but if he were sure of success, he would jump the life to come—there comes a moment when he either has or pretends to have a hesitation about proceeding further in “this business.” He does not hesitate for conscience’ sake, but because, being ambitious, he now would like to wear the golden opinions he has won, “in their newest gloss,” and not cast them aside so soon, before he has had the satisfaction of being wondered at and admired a little longer. He had gained praise and high position, and his vanity was gratified. He naturally would pause before committing a hideous murder. But he never pretends that this feeling comes from any moral sense. His mind has been too long strained with one thought; and, as in all men of excitable brain, there comes a moment of reaction. He cannot see his way clear. He fears the effect of his crime. He does not see how it can be done so that he may avoid suspicion, and attain the object beyond the murder and for which he commits it, without running too great risks, and thus exposing himself to the vengeance of the king’s friends. He fears that his “bloody instructions” may “return to plague the inventor”—not hereafter, but “here.” But what most troubles him is, that he cannot see the practical way, cannot arrange the details so as to secure a chance of avoiding suspicion. Here his wife comes to his aid. She has thought out a plan and arranged the details. She sternly opposes his proposal to abandon his design, for she knows that his hesitation is only for a moment, and that nothing less than to be king can ever satisfy him. Better, then, do the deed at once. His only opposition after this is, “If we should fail?” But as soon as he sees the feasibility of her plan, all his scruples are gone; he is more than convinced, he is delighted, and enters upon it with a joy which he does not pretend to conceal.
During all these scenes, up to the murder of Duncan, Lady Macbeth is laboring under an excitement of mind which sustains her in carrying out the design of her husband. The time is purposely made very short—only a few hours between the arrival of Duncan and his death—so that she may not break down. All is hurry and movement, and arrangement of detail. There is no time for reaction. The very necessity for immediate action serves as an irritant to the nerves, and strains all her thoughts and feelings to an unnatural pitch. Still, when the murder is on the point of being done, she keeps up her courage by drink; for the strain is almost too great. In this excited state her inflamed will has got completely the command of her; and to have it all over, and not caring about the dreadful design longer, she says that had Duncan “not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it.” But though she can talk of dashing out the brains of her babe while it was smiling in her face, she was not, even in this excitement, able to strike Duncan, because she thought he looked like her father. Her woman’s hand would have failed her had she attempted it. But all her powers are bound up in this one design. She has come to a violent determination, and this she will carry out, come what may. She thrusts aside all compunction of conscience, and makes such a noise by action in her brain, that its still small voice cannot be heard.
Macbeth, on the contrary, is of a colder and more brutal nature. His determination is sullen, and it lies like an immovable rock on which the flames of his imagination burn like momentary fires of straw, and over which his superstitious visions pass like clouds or fogs, and then clear away, leaving the rock unchanged. Just before he commits the murder, Banquo comes in and tells him that the king
“hath been in unusual pleasure, and
Sent forth great largess to your offices.
This diamond he greets your wife withal,
By the name of most kind hostess; and shut up
In measureless content.”
But this does not touch Macbeth, nor induce a moment’s hesitation. Banquo then speaks of the three weird sisters, and says, “To you they have show’d some truth;” and Macbeth answers falsely:—
“I think not of them;
Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,
We’d spend it in some words upon that business,
If you would grant the time.”
Thus, cold and collected, he bids him “Good repose,” sends off the servant, and waits for the bell to ring, which is the sign that all is ready for him to murder Duncan. In this interval we have his three characteristic features brought out one after the other: the cloudy vision of the air-drawn dagger; then the straw-fire of his poetry about Hecate and withered murder’s sentinel, the wolf, and Tarquin’s ravishing strides; and, as these clear off, the stern, sullen resolution underneath—“Whiles I threat he lives;” “I go, and it is done.”
When the murder is done, the two are equally distinct in character,—she energetic and practical, he visionary and superstitious; and so they part.
Thus far, be it observed, Lady Macbeth has supposed her husband to be merely “infirm of purpose;” but the next scene is to open her eyes to a glimpse of his real character.
Macbeth has become perfectly calm and cold again in a few minutes, and makes his appearance immediately after the knocking. He is completely master of himself, offers to conduct Macduff to the king, and when Macduff says he knows it will be a “joyful trouble” to him, answers like a proverb, calmly, “The labor we delight in physics pain.” The king is then found dead, and the noise brings Lady Macbeth from her room. What a difference is now visible in the way in which she and he speak and act! When Macduff says, “Our royal master’s murdered!” she cries out, “Woe! alas! what, in our house?” and says not a word more. Macbeth, however, who is only afraid of shadows, but who, with the daylight, has no fear of looking at dead bodies, or adding one or two more with his sword, goes to the room of Duncan, and then reappears, without the faintest shadow of feeling, and makes a little hypocritical poem on the event:—