John M'lean - "Notes of a Twenty Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory"

Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch (Q) - "Poison Island"

Fredric Lozo - "Sequential Problem Solving"

William James - "Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals"

Books of The Times: In War and Floods, a Family’s Leitmotif of Love, Memories and Secrets
Amid a relentless string of layoffs and pay-freeze announcements, book publishers are clamping down on some of the business’s most glittery and cozy traditions.

Puttin’ Off the Ritz: The New Austerity in Publishing
Charlie Huston has written a smoking-hot new crime novel.

Books of The Times: They Vacuum Maggots, Don’t They? Novel Delves Into the Trauma Cleaning Trade
This city, known for its shrines and blazing autumn hills, is celebrating the millennial anniversary of an ancient book about love and loss among the imperial set.

A. C. Bradley - Shakespearean Tragedy

A >> A. C. Bradley >> Shakespearean Tragedy




The sinking of Lady Macbeth's nature, and the marked change in her
demeanour to her husband, are most strikingly shown in the conclusion of
the banquet scene; and from this point pathos is mingled with awe. The
guests are gone. She is completely exhausted, and answers Macbeth in
listless, submissive words which seem to come with difficulty. How
strange sounds the reply 'Did you send to him, sir?' to his imperious
question about Macduff! And when he goes on, 'waxing desperate in
imagination,' to speak of new deeds of blood, she seems to sicken at the
thought, and there is a deep pathos in that answer which tells at once
of her care for him and of the misery she herself has silently endured,

You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

We begin to think of her now less as the awful instigator of murder than
as a woman with much that is grand in her, and much that is piteous.
Strange and almost ludicrous as the statement may sound,[230] she is, up
to her light, a perfect wife. She gives her husband the best she has;
and the fact that she never uses to him the terms of affection which, up
to this point in the play, he employs to her, is certainly no indication
of want of love. She urges, appeals, reproaches, for a practical end,
but she never recriminates. The harshness of her taunts is free from
mere personal feeling, and also from any deep or more than momentary
contempt. She despises what she thinks the weakness which stands in the
way of her husband's ambition; but she does not despise _him_. She
evidently admires him and thinks him a great man, for whom the throne is
the proper place. Her commanding attitude in the moments of his
hesitation or fear is probably confined to them. If we consider the
peculiar circumstances of the earlier scenes and the banquet scene, and
if we examine the language of the wife and husband at other times, we
shall come, I think, to the conclusion that their habitual relations are
better represented by the later scenes than by the earlier, though
naturally they are not truly represented by either. Her ambition for her
husband and herself (there was no distinction to her mind) proved fatal
to him, far more so than the prophecies of the Witches; but even when
she pushed him into murder she believed she was helping him to do what
he merely lacked the nerve to attempt; and her part in the crime was so
much less open-eyed than his, that, if the impossible and undramatic
task of estimating degrees of culpability were forced on us, we should
surely have to assign the larger share to Macbeth.

'Lady Macbeth,' says Dr. Johnson, 'is merely detested'; and for a long
time critics generally spoke of her as though she were Malcolm's
'fiend-like queen.' In natural reaction we tend to insist, as I have
been doing, on the other and less obvious side; and in the criticism of
the last century there is even a tendency to sentimentalise the
character. But it can hardly be doubted that Shakespeare meant the
predominant impression to be one of awe, grandeur, and horror, and that
he never meant this impression to be lost, however it might be modified,
as Lady Macbeth's activity diminishes and her misery increases. I cannot
believe that, when she said of Banquo and Fleance,

But in them nature's copy's not eterne,

she meant only that they would some day die; or that she felt any
surprise when Macbeth replied,

There's comfort yet: they are assailable;

though I am sure no light came into her eyes when he added those
dreadful words, 'Then be thou jocund.' She was listless. She herself
would not have moved a finger against Banquo. But she thought his death,
and his son's death, might ease her husband's mind, and she suggested
the murders indifferently and without remorse. The sleep-walking scene,
again, inspires pity, but its main effect is one of awe. There is great
horror in the references to blood, but it cannot be said that there is
more than horror; and Campbell was surely right when, in alluding to
Mrs. Jameson's analysis, he insisted that in Lady Macbeth's misery there
is no trace of contrition.[231] Doubtless she would have given the world
to undo what she had done; and the thought of it killed her; but,
regarding her from the tragic point of view, we may truly say she was
too great to repent.[232]


2

The main interest of the character of Banquo arises from the changes
that take place in him, and from the influence of the Witches upon him.
And it is curious that Shakespeare's intention here is so frequently
missed. Banquo being at first strongly contrasted with Macbeth, as an
innocent man with a guilty, it seems to be supposed that this contrast
must be continued to his death; while, in reality, though it is never
removed, it is gradually diminished. Banquo in fact may be described
much more truly than Macbeth as the victim of the Witches. If we follow
his story this will be evident.

He bore a part only less distinguished than Macbeth's in the battles
against Sweno and Macdonwald. He and Macbeth are called 'our captains,'
and when they meet the Witches they are traversing the 'blasted
heath'[233] alone together. Banquo accosts the strange shapes without
the slightest fear. They lay their fingers on their lips, as if to
signify that they will not, or must not, speak to _him_. To Macbeth's
brief appeal, 'Speak, if you can: what are you?' they at once reply, not
by saying what they are, but by hailing him Thane of Glamis, Thane of
Cawdor, and King hereafter. Banquo is greatly surprised that his partner
should start as if in fear, and observes that he is at once 'rapt'; and
he bids the Witches, if they know the future, to prophesy to _him_, who
neither begs their favour nor fears their hate. Macbeth, looking back at
a later time, remembers Banquo's daring, and how

he chid the sisters,
When first they put the name of king upon me,
And bade them speak to him.

'Chid' is an exaggeration; but Banquo is evidently a bold man, probably
an ambitious one, and certainly has no lurking guilt in his ambition. On
hearing the predictions concerning himself and his descendants he makes
no answer, and when the Witches are about to vanish he shows none of
Macbeth's feverish anxiety to know more. On their vanishing he is simply
amazed, wonders if they were anything but hallucinations, makes no
reference to the predictions till Macbeth mentions them, and then
answers lightly.

When Ross and Angus, entering, announce to Macbeth that he has been made
Thane of Cawdor, Banquo exclaims, aside, to himself or Macbeth, 'What!
can the devil speak true?' He now believes that the Witches were real
beings and the 'instruments of darkness.' When Macbeth, turning to him,
whispers,

Do you not hope your children shall be kings,
When those that gave the Thane of Cawdor to me
Promised no less to them?

he draws with the boldness of innocence the inference which is really
occupying Macbeth, and answers,

That, trusted home,
Might yet enkindle you unto the crown
Besides the thane of Cawdor.

Here he still speaks, I think, in a free, off-hand, even jesting,[234]
manner ('enkindle' meaning merely 'excite you to _hope_ for'). But then,
possibly from noticing something in Macbeth's face, he becomes graver,
and goes on, with a significant 'but,'

But 'tis strange:
And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence.

He afterwards observes for the second time that his partner is 'rapt';
but he explains his abstraction naturally and sincerely by referring to
the surprise of his new honours; and at the close of the scene, when
Macbeth proposes that they shall discuss the predictions together at
some later time, he answers in the cheerful, rather bluff manner, which
he has used almost throughout, 'Very gladly.' Nor was there any reason
why Macbeth's rejoinder, 'Till then, enough,' should excite misgivings
in him, though it implied a request for silence, and though the whole
behaviour of his partner during the scene must have looked very
suspicious to him when the prediction of the crown was made good through
the murder of Duncan.

In the next scene Macbeth and Banquo join the King, who welcomes them
both with the kindest expressions of gratitude and with promises of
favours to come. Macbeth has indeed already received a noble reward.
Banquo, who is said by the King to have 'no less deserved,' receives as
yet mere thanks. His brief and frank acknowledgment is contrasted with
Macbeth's laboured rhetoric; and, as Macbeth goes out, Banquo turns with
hearty praises of him to the King.

And when next we see him, approaching Macbeth's castle in company with
Duncan, there is still no sign of change. Indeed he gains on us. It is
he who speaks the beautiful lines,

This guest of summer,
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve,
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle:
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed,
The air is delicate;

--lines which tell of that freedom of heart, and that sympathetic sense
of peace and beauty, which the Macbeth of the tragedy could never feel.

But now Banquo's sky begins to darken. At the opening of the Second Act
we see him with Fleance crossing the court of the castle on his way to
bed. The blackness of the moonless, starless night seems to oppress him.
And he is oppressed by something else.

A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep: merciful powers,
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose!

On Macbeth's entrance we know what Banquo means: he says to
Macbeth--and it is the first time he refers to the subject unprovoked,

I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters.

His will is still untouched: he would repel the 'cursed thoughts'; and
they are mere thoughts, not intentions. But still they are 'thoughts,'
something more, probably, than mere recollections; and they bring with
them an undefined sense of guilt. The poison has begun to work.

The passage that follows Banquo's words to Macbeth is difficult to
interpret:

I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:
To you they have show'd some truth.

_Macb._ I think not of them:
Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,
We would spend it in some words upon that business,
If you would grant the time.

_Ban._ At your kind'st leisure.

_Macb._ If you shall cleave to my consent, when 'tis,
It shall make honour for you.

_Ban._ So I lose none
In seeking to augment it, but still keep
My bosom franchised and allegiance clear,
I shall be counsell'd.

_Macb._ Good repose the while!

_Ban._ Thanks, sir: the like to you!

Macbeth's first idea is, apparently, simply to free himself from any
suspicion which the discovery of the murder might suggest, by showing
himself, just before it, quite indifferent to the predictions, and
merely looking forward to a conversation about them at some future time.
But why does he go on, 'If you shall cleave,' etc.? Perhaps he foresees
that, on the discovery, Banquo cannot fail to suspect him, and thinks it
safest to prepare the way at once for an understanding with him (in the
original story he makes Banquo his accomplice _before_ the murder).
Banquo's answer shows three things,--that he fears a treasonable
proposal, that he has no idea of accepting it, and that he has no fear
of Macbeth to restrain him from showing what is in his mind.

Duncan is murdered. In the scene of discovery Banquo of course appears,
and his behaviour is significant. When he enters, and Macduff cries out
to him,

O Banquo, Banquo,
Our royal master's murdered,

and Lady Macbeth, who has entered a moment before, exclaims,

Woe, alas!
What, in our house?

his answer,

Too cruel anywhere,

shows, as I have pointed out, repulsion, and we may be pretty sure that
he suspects the truth at once. After a few words to Macduff he remains
absolutely silent while the scene is continued for nearly forty lines.
He is watching Macbeth and listening as he tells how he put the
chamberlains to death in a frenzy of loyal rage. At last Banquo appears
to have made up his mind. On Lady Macbeth's fainting he proposes that
they shall all retire, and that they shall afterwards meet,

And question this most bloody piece of work
To know it further. Fears and scruples[235] shake us:
In the great hand of God I stand, and thence
Against the undivulged pretence[236] I fight
Of treasonous malice.

His solemn language here reminds us of his grave words about 'the
instruments of darkness,' and of his later prayer to the 'merciful
powers.' He is profoundly shocked, full of indignation, and determined
to play the part of a brave and honest man.

But he plays no such part. When next we see him, on the last day of his
life, we find that he has yielded to evil. The Witches and his own
ambition have conquered him. He alone of the lords knew of the
prophecies, but he has said nothing of them. He has acquiesced in
Macbeth's accession, and in the official theory that Duncan's sons had
suborned the chamberlains to murder him. Doubtless, unlike Macduff, he
was present at Scone to see the new king invested. He has, not formally
but in effect, 'cloven to' Macbeth's 'consent'; he is knit to him by 'a
most indissoluble tie'; his advice in council has been 'most grave and
prosperous'; he is to be the 'chief guest' at that night's supper. And
his soliloquy tells us why:

Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,
As the weird women promised, and, I fear,
Thou play'dst most foully for't: yet it was said
It should not stand in thy posterity,
But that myself should be the root and father
Of many kings. If there come truth from them--
As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine--
Why, by the verities on thee made good,
May they not be my oracles as well,
And set me up in hope? But hush! no more.

This 'hush! no more' is not the dismissal of 'cursed thoughts': it only
means that he hears the trumpets announcing the entrance of the King and
Queen.

His punishment comes swiftly, much more swiftly than Macbeth's, and
saves him from any further fall. He is a very fearless man, and still so
far honourable that he has no thought of acting to bring about the
fulfilment of the prophecy which has beguiled him. And therefore he has
no fear of Macbeth. But he little understands him. To Macbeth's
tormented mind Banquo's conduct appears highly suspicious. _Why_ has
this bold and circumspect[237] man kept his secret and become his chief
adviser? In order to make good _his_ part of the predictions after
Macbeth's own precedent. Banquo, he is sure, will suddenly and secretly
attack him. It is not the far-off accession of Banquo's descendants that
he fears; it is (so he tells himself) swift murder; not that the 'barren
sceptre' will some day droop from his dying hand, but that it will be
'wrenched' away now (III. i. 62).[238] So he kills Banquo. But the
Banquo he kills is not the innocent soldier who met the Witches and
daffed their prophecies aside, nor the man who prayed to be delivered
from the temptation of his dreams.

_Macbeth_ leaves on most readers a profound impression of the misery of
a guilty conscience and the retribution of crime. And the strength of
this impression is one of the reasons why the tragedy is admired by
readers who shrink from _Othello_ and are made unhappy by _Lear_. But
what Shakespeare perhaps felt even more deeply, when he wrote this play,
was the _incalculability_ of evil,--that in meddling with it human
beings do they know not what. The soul, he seems to feel, is a thing of
such inconceivable depth, complexity, and delicacy, that when you
introduce into it, or suffer to develop in it, any change, and
particularly the change called evil, you can form only the vaguest idea
of the reaction you will provoke. All you can be sure of is that it will
not be what you expected, and that you cannot possibly escape it.
Banquo's story, if truly apprehended, produces this impression quite as
strongly as the more terrific stories of the chief characters, and
perhaps even more clearly, inasmuch as he is nearer to average human
nature, has obviously at first a quiet conscience, and uses with evident
sincerity the language of religion.


3

Apart from his story Banquo's character is not very interesting, nor is
it, I think, perfectly individual. And this holds good of the rest of
the minor characters. They are sketched lightly, and are seldom
developed further than the strict purposes of the action required. From
this point of view they are inferior to several of the less important
figures in each of the other three tragedies. The scene in which Lady
Macduff and her child appear, and the passage where their slaughter is
reported to Macduff, have much dramatic value, but in neither case is
the effect due to any great extent to the special characters of the
persons concerned. Neither they, nor Duncan, nor Malcolm, nor even
Banquo himself, have been imagined intensely, and therefore they do not
produce that sense of unique personality which Shakespeare could convey
in a much smaller number of lines than he gives to most of them.[239]
And this is of course even more the case with persons like Ross, Angus,
and Lennox, though each of these has distinguishable features. I doubt
if any other great play of Shakespeare's contains so many speeches which
a student of the play, if they were quoted to him, would be puzzled to
assign to the speakers. Let the reader turn, for instance, to the second
scene of the Fifth Act, and ask himself why the names of the persons
should not be interchanged in all the ways mathematically possible. Can
he find, again, any signs of character by which to distinguish the
speeches of Ross and Angus in Act I. scenes ii. and iii., or to
determine that Malcolm must have spoken I. iv. 2-11? Most of this
writing, we may almost say, is simply Shakespeare's writing, not that of
Shakespeare become another person. And can anything like the same
proportion of such writing be found in _Hamlet_, _Othello_, or _King
Lear_?

Is it possible to guess the reason of this characteristic of _Macbeth_?
I cannot believe it is due to the presence of a second hand. The
writing, mangled by the printer and perhaps by 'the players,' seems to
be sometimes obviously Shakespeare's, sometimes sufficiently
Shakespearean to repel any attack not based on external evidence. It may
be, as the shortness of the play has suggested to some, that Shakespeare
was hurried, and, throwing all his weight on the principal characters,
did not exert himself in dealing with the rest. But there is another
possibility which may be worth considering. _Macbeth_ is distinguished
by its simplicity,--by grandeur in simplicity, no doubt, but still by
simplicity. The two great figures indeed can hardly be called simple,
except in comparison with such characters as Hamlet and Iago; but in
almost every other respect the tragedy has this quality. Its plot is
quite plain. It has very little intermixture of humour. It has little
pathos except of the sternest kind. The style, for Shakespeare, has not
much variety, being generally kept at a higher pitch than in the other
three tragedies; and there is much less than usual of the interchange of
verse and prose.[240] All this makes for simplicity of effect. And, this
being so, is it not possible that Shakespeare instinctively felt, or
consciously feared, that to give much individuality or attraction to the
subordinate figures would diminish this effect, and so, like a good
artist, sacrificed a part to the whole? And was he wrong? He has
certainly avoided the overloading which distresses us in _King Lear_,
and has produced a tragedy utterly unlike it, not much less great as a
dramatic poem, and as a drama superior.

I would add, though without much confidence, another suggestion. The
simplicity of _Macbeth_ is one of the reasons why many readers feel
that, in spite of its being intensely 'romantic,' it is less unlike a
classical tragedy than _Hamlet_ or _Othello_ or _King Lear_. And it is
possible that this effect is, in a sense, the result of design. I do not
mean that Shakespeare intended to imitate a classical tragedy; I mean
only that he may have seen in the bloody story of Macbeth a subject
suitable for treatment in a manner somewhat nearer to that of Seneca, or
of the English Senecan plays familiar to him in his youth, than was the
manner of his own mature tragedies. The Witches doubtless are
'romantic,' but so is the witch-craft in Seneca's _Medea_ and _Hercules
Oetaeus_; indeed it is difficult to read the account of Medea's
preparations (670-739) without being reminded of the incantations in
_Macbeth_. Banquo's Ghost again is 'romantic,' but so are Seneca's
ghosts. For the swelling of the style in some of the great
passages--however immeasurably superior these may be to anything in
Seneca--and certainly for the turgid bombast which occasionally appears
in _Macbeth_, and which seems to have horrified Jonson, Shakespeare
might easily have found a model in Seneca. Did he not think that this
was the high Roman manner? Does not the Sergeant's speech, as Coleridge
observed, recall the style of the 'passionate speech' of the Player in
_Hamlet_,--a speech, be it observed, on a Roman subject?[241] And is it
entirely an accident that parallels between Seneca and Shakespeare seem
to be more frequent in _Macbeth_ than in any other of his undoubtedly
genuine works except perhaps _Richard III._, a tragedy unquestionably
influenced either by Seneca or by English Senecan plays?[242] If there
is anything in these suggestions, and if we suppose that Shakespeare
meant to give to his play a certain classical tinge, he might naturally
carry out this idea in respect to the characters, as well as in other
respects, by concentrating almost the whole interest on the important
figures and leaving the others comparatively shadowy.


4

_Macbeth_ being more simple than the other tragedies, and broader and
more massive in effect, three passages in it are of great importance as
securing variety in tone, and also as affording relief from the feelings
excited by the Witch-scenes and the principal characters. They are the
passage where the Porter appears, the conversation between Lady Macduff
and her little boy, and the passage where Macduff receives the news of
the slaughter of his wife and babes. Yet the first of these, we are told
even by Coleridge, is unworthy of Shakespeare and is not his; and the
second, with the rest of the scene which contains it, appears to be
usually omitted in stage representations of _Macbeth_.

I question if either this scene or the exhibition of Macduff's grief is
required to heighten our abhorrence of Macbeth's cruelty. They have a
technical value in helping to give the last stage of the action the form
of a conflict between Macbeth and Macduff. But their chief function is
of another kind. It is to touch the heart with a sense of beauty and
pathos, to open the springs of love and of tears. Shakespeare is loved
for the sweetness of his humanity, and because he makes this kind of
appeal with such irresistible persuasion; and the reason why _Macbeth_,
though admired as much as any work of his, is scarcely loved, is that
the characters who predominate cannot make this kind of appeal, and at
no point are able to inspire unmingled sympathy. The two passages in
question supply this want in such measure as Shakespeare thought
advisable in _Macbeth_, and the play would suffer greatly from their
excision. The second, on the stage, is extremely moving, and Macbeth's
reception of the news of his wife's death may be intended to recall it
by way of contrast. The first brings a relief even greater, because here
the element of beauty is more marked, and because humour is mingled with
pathos. In both we escape from the oppression of huge sins and
sufferings into the presence of the wholesome affections of unambitious
hearts; and, though both scenes are painful and one dreadful, our
sympathies can flow unchecked.[243]

Lady Macduff is a simple wife and mother, who has no thought for
anything beyond her home. Her love for her children shows her at once
that her husband's flight exposes them to terrible danger. She is in an
agony of fear for them, and full of indignation against him. It does not
even occur to her that he has acted from public spirit, or that there is
such a thing.

Copyright (c) 2007. topmasterworks.com. All rights reserved.