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A. C. Bradley - Shakespearean Tragedy

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Here Lady Macbeth asserts (1) that Macbeth proposed the murder to her:
(2) that he did so at a time when there was no opportunity to attack
Duncan, no 'adherence' of 'time' and 'place': (3) that he declared he
wou'd _make_ an opportunity, and swore to carry out the murder.

Now it is possible that Macbeth's 'swearing' might have occurred in an
interview off the stage between scenes v. and vi., or scenes vi. and
vii.; and, if in that interview Lady Macbeth had with difficulty worked
her husband up to a resolution, her irritation at his relapse, in sc.
vii., would be very natural. But, as for Macbeth's first proposal of
murder, it certainly does not occur in our play, nor could it possibly
occur in any interview off the stage; for when Macbeth and his wife
first meet, 'time' and 'place' _do_ adhere; 'they have made themselves.'
The conclusion would seem to be, either that the proposal of the murder,
and probably the oath, occurred in a scene at the very beginning of the
play, which scene has been lost or cut out; or else that Macbeth
proposed, and swore to execute, the murder at some time prior to the
action of the play.[291] The first of these hypotheses is most
improbable, and we seem driven to adopt the second, unless we consent to
burden Shakespeare with a careless mistake in a very critical passage.

And, apart from unwillingness to do this, we can find a good deal to say
in favour of the idea of a plan formed at a past time. It would explain
Macbeth's start of fear at the prophecy of the kingdom. It would explain
why Lady Macbeth, on receiving his letter, immediately resolves on
action; and why, on their meeting, each knows that murder is in the mind
of the other. And it is in harmony with her remarks on his probable
shrinking from the act, to which, _ex hypothesi_, she had already
thought it necessary to make him pledge himself by an oath.

Yet I find it very difficult to believe in this interpretation. It is
not merely that the interest of Macbeth's struggle with himself and with
his wife would be seriously diminished if we felt he had been through
all this before. I think this would be so; but there are two more
important objections. In the first place the violent agitation described
in the words,

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,

would surely not be natural, even in Macbeth, if the idea of murder were
already quite familiar to him through conversation with his wife, and if
he had already done more than 'yield' to it. It is not as if the Witches
had told him that Duncan was coming to his house. In that case the
perception that the moment had come to execute a merely general design
might well appal him. But all that he hears is that he will one day be
King--a statement which, supposing this general design, would not point
to any immediate action.[292] And, in the second place, it is hard to
believe that, if Shakespeare really had imagined the murder planned and
sworn to before the action of the play, he would have written the first
six scenes in such a manner that practically all readers imagine quite
another state of affairs, and _continue to imagine it_ even after they
have read in scene vii. the passage which is troubling us. Is it likely,
to put it otherwise, that his idea was one which nobody seems to have
divined till late in the nineteenth century? And for what possible
reason could he refrain from making this idea clear to his audience, as
he might so easily have done in the third scene?[293] It seems very much
more likely that he himself imagined the matter as nearly all his
readers do.

But, in that case, what are we to say of this passage? I will answer
first by explaining the way in which I understood it before I was aware
that it had caused so much difficulty. I supposed that an interview had
taken place after scene v., a scene which shows Macbeth shrinking, and
in which his last words were 'we will speak further.' In this interview,
I supposed, his wife had so wrought upon him that he had at last yielded
and pledged himself by oath to do the murder. As for her statement that
he had 'broken the enterprise' to her, I took it to refer to his letter
to her,--a letter written when time and place did not adhere, for he did
not yet know that Duncan was coming to visit him. In the letter he does
not, of course, openly 'break the enterprise' to her, and it is not
likely that he would do such a thing in a letter; but if they had had
ambitious conversations, in which each felt that some half-formed guilty
idea was floating in the mind of the other, she might naturally take the
words of the letter as indicating much more than they said; and then in
her passionate contempt at his hesitation, and her passionate eagerness
to overcome it, she might easily accuse him, doubtless with
exaggeration, and probably with conscious exaggeration, of having
actually proposed the murder. And Macbeth, knowing that when he wrote
the letter he really had been thinking of murder, and indifferent to
anything except the question whether murder should be done, would easily
let her statement pass unchallenged.

This interpretation still seems to me not unnatural. The alternative
(unless we adopt the idea of an agreement prior to the action of the
play) is to suppose that Lady Macbeth refers throughout the passage to
some interview subsequent to her husband's return, and that, in making
her do so, Shakespeare simply forgot her speeches on welcoming Macbeth
home, and also forgot that at any such interview 'time' and 'place' did
'adhere.' It is easy to understand such forgetfulness in a spectator and
even in a reader; but it is less easy to imagine it in a poet whose
conception of the two characters throughout these scenes was evidently
so burningly vivid.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 291: The 'swearing' _might_ of course, on this view, occur off
the stage within the play; but there is no occasion to suppose this if
we are obliged to put the proposal outside the play.]

[Footnote 292: To this it might be answered that the effect of the
prediction was to make him feel, 'Then I shall succeed if I carry out
the plan of murder,' and so make him yield to the idea over again. To
which I can only reply, anticipating the next argument, 'How is it that
Shakespeare wrote the speech in such a way that practically everybody
supposes the idea of murder to be occurring to Macbeth for the first
time?']

[Footnote 293: It might be answered here again that the actor,
instructed by Shakespeare, could act the start of fear so as to convey
quite clearly the idea of definite guilt. And this is true; but we ought
to do our best to interpret the text before we have recourse to this
kind of suggestion.]




NOTE DD.

DID LADY MACBETH REALLY FAINT?


In the scene of confusion where the murder of Duncan is discovered,
Macbeth and Lennox return from the royal chamber; Lennox describes the
grooms who, as it seemed, had done the deed:

Their hands and faces were all badged with blood;
So were their daggers, which unwiped we found
Upon their pillows:
They stared, and were distracted; no man's life
Was to be trusted with them.

_Macb._ O, yet I do repent me of my fury
That I did kill them.

_Macd._ Wherefore did you so?

_Macb._ Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:
The expedition of my violent love
Outrun the pauser, reason. Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin laced with his golden blood;
And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature
For ruin's wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,
Steep'd in the colours of their trade, their daggers
Unmannerly breech'd with gore: who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make's love known?

At this point Lady Macbeth exclaims, 'Help me hence, ho!' Her husband
takes no notice, but Macduff calls out 'Look to the lady.' This, after a
few words 'aside' between Malcolm and Donalbain, is repeated by Banquo,
and, very shortly after, all except Duncan's sons _exeunt_. (The
stage-direction 'Lady Macbeth is carried out,' after Banquo's
exclamation 'Look to the lady,' is not in the Ff. and was introduced by
Rowe. If the Ff. are right, she can hardly have fainted _away_. But the
point has no importance here.)

Does Lady Macbeth really turn faint, or does she pretend? The latter
seems to have been the general view, and Whately pointed out that
Macbeth's indifference betrays his consciousness that the faint was not
real. But to this it may be answered that, if he believed it to be real,
he would equally show indifference, in order to display his horror at
the murder. And Miss Helen Faucit and others have held that there was no
pretence.

In favour of the pretence it may be said (1) that Lady Macbeth, who
herself took back the daggers, saw the old King in his blood, and
smeared the grooms, was not the woman to faint at a mere description;
(2) that she saw her husband over-acting his part, and saw the faces of
the lords, and wished to end the scene,--which she succeeded in doing.

But to the last argument it may be replied that she would not willingly
have run the risk of leaving her husband to act his part alone. And for
other reasons (indicated above, p. 373 f.) I decidedly believe that she
is meant really to faint. She was no Goneril. She knew that she could
not kill the King herself; and she never expected to have to carry back
the daggers, see the bloody corpse, and smear the faces and hands of the
grooms. But Macbeth's agony greatly alarmed her, and she was driven to
the scene of horror to complete his task; and what an impression it made
on her we know from that sentence uttered in her sleep, 'Yet who would
have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?' She had now,
further, gone through the ordeal of the discovery. Is it not quite
natural that the reaction should come, and that it should come just when
Macbeth's description recalls the scene which had cost her the greatest
effort? Is it not likely, besides, that the expression on the faces of
the lords would force her to realise, what before the murder she had
refused to consider, the horror and the suspicion it must excite? It is
noticeable, also, that she is far from carrying out her intention of
bearing a part in making their 'griefs and clamours roar upon his death'
(I. vii. 78). She has left it all to her husband, and, after uttering
but two sentences, the second of which is answered very curtly by
Banquo, for some time (an interval of 33 lines) she has said nothing. I
believe Shakespeare means this interval to be occupied in desperate
efforts on her part to prevent herself from giving way, as she sees for
the first time something of the truth to which she was formerly so
blind, and which will destroy her in the end.

It should be observed that at the close of the Banquet scene, where she
has gone through much less, she is evidently exhausted.

Shakespeare, of course, knew whether he meant the faint to be real: but
I am not aware if an actor of the part could show the audience whether
it was real or pretended. If he could, he would doubtless receive
instructions from the author.




NOTE EE.

DURATION OF THE ACTION IN _MACBETH_. MACBETH'S AGE. 'HE HAS NO
CHILDREN.'


1. The duration of the action cannot well be more than a few months. On
the day following the murder of Duncan his sons fly and Macbeth goes to
Scone to be invested (II. iv.). Between this scene and Act III. an
interval must be supposed, sufficient for news to arrive of Malcolm
being in England and Donalbain in Ireland, and for Banquo to have shown
himself a good counsellor. But the interval is evidently not long:
_e.g._ Banquo's first words are 'Thou hast it now' (III. i. 1). Banquo
is murdered on the day when he speaks these words. Macbeth's visit to
the Witches takes place the next day (III. iv. 132). At the end of this
visit (IV. i.) he hears of Macduff's flight to England, and determines
to have Macduff's wife and children slaughtered without delay; and this
is the subject of the next scene (IV. ii.). No great interval, then, can
be supposed between this scene and the next, where Macduff, arrived at
the English court, hears what has happened at his castle. At the end of
that scene (IV. iii. 237) Malcolm says that 'Macbeth is ripe for
shaking, and the powers above put on their instruments': and the events
of Act V. evidently follow with little delay, and occupy but a short
time. Holinshed's Macbeth appears to have reigned seventeen years:
Shakespeare's may perhaps be allowed as many weeks.

But, naturally, Shakespeare creates some difficulties through wishing to
produce different impressions in different parts of the play. The main
effect is that of fiery speed, and it would be impossible to imagine the
torment of Macbeth's mind lasting through a number of years, even if
Shakespeare had been willing to allow him years of outward success.
Hence the brevity of the action. On the other hand time is wanted for
the degeneration of his character hinted at in IV. iii. 57 f., for the
development of his tyranny, for his attempts to entrap Malcolm (_ib._
117 f.), and perhaps for the deepening of his feeling that his life had
passed into the sere and yellow leaf. Shakespeare, as we have seen,
scarcely provides time for all this, but at certain points he produces
an impression that a longer time has elapsed than he has provided for,
and he puts most of the indications of this longer time into a scene
(IV. iii.) which by its quietness contrasts strongly with almost all the
rest of the play.

2. There is no unmistakable indication of the ages of the two principal
characters; but the question, though of no great importance, has an
interest. I believe most readers imagine Macbeth as a man between forty
and fifty, and his wife as younger but not young. In many cases this
impression is doubtless due to the custom of the theatre (which, if it
can be shown to go back far, should have much weight), but it is shared
by readers who have never seen the play performed, and is then
presumably due to a number of slight influences probably incapable of
complete analysis. Such readers would say, 'The hero and heroine do not
speak like young people, nor like old ones'; but, though I think this is
so, it can hardly be demonstrated. Perhaps however the following small
indications, mostly of a different kind, tend to the same result.

(1) There is no positive sign of youth. (2) A young man would not be
likely to lead the army. (3) Macbeth is 'cousin' to an old man.[294] (4)
Macbeth calls Malcolm 'young,' and speaks of him scornfully as 'the boy
Malcolm.' He is probably therefore considerably his senior. But Malcolm
is evidently not really a boy (see I. ii. 3 f. as well as the later
Acts). (5) One gets the impression (possibly without reason) that
Macbeth and Banquo are of about the same age; and Banquo's son, the boy
Fleance, is evidently not a mere child. (On the other hand the children
of Macduff, who is clearly a good deal older than Malcolm, are all
young; and I do not think there is any sign that Macbeth is older than
Macduff.) (6) When Lady Macbeth, in the banquet scene, says,

Sit, worthy friends: my lord is often thus,
And hath been from his youth,

we naturally imagine him some way removed from his youth. (7) Lady
Macbeth saw a resemblance to her father in the aged king. (8) Macbeth
says,

I have lived long enough: my way[295] of life
Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf:
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I may not look to have.

It is, surely, of the old age of the soul that he speaks in the second
line, but still the lines would hardly be spoken under any circumstances
by a man less than middle-aged.

On the other hand I suppose no one ever imagined Macbeth, or on
consideration could imagine him, as _more_ than middle-aged when the
action begins. And in addition the reader may observe, if he finds it
necessary, that Macbeth looks forward to having children (I. vii. 72),
and that his terms of endearment ('dearest love,' 'dearest chuck') and
his language in public ('sweet remembrancer') do not suggest that his
wife and he are old; they even suggest that she at least is scarcely
middle-aged. But this discussion tends to grow ludicrous.

For Shakespeare's audience these mysteries were revealed by a glance at
the actors, like the fact that Duncan was an old man, which the text, I
think, does not disclose till V. i. 44.

3. Whether Macbeth had children or (as seems usually to be supposed) had
none, is quite immaterial. But it is material that, if he had none, he
looked forward to having one; for otherwise there would be no point in
the following words in his soliloquy about Banquo (III. i. 58 f.):

Then prophet-like
They hail'd him father to a line of kings:
Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,
And put a barren sceptre in my gripe,
Thence to be wrench'd with an unlineal hand,
No son of mine succeeding. If't be so,
For Banquo's issue have I filed my mind.

And he is determined that it shall not 'be so':

Rather than so, come, fate, into the list
And champion me to the utterance!

Obviously he contemplates a son of his succeeding, if only he can get
rid of Banquo and Fleance. What he fears is that Banquo will kill him;
in which case, supposing he has a son, that son will not be allowed to
succeed him, and, supposing he has none, he will be unable to beget one.

I hope this is clear; and nothing else matters. Lady Macbeth's child (I.
vii. 54) may be alive or may be dead. It may even be, or have been, her
child by a former husband; though, if Shakespeare had followed history
in making Macbeth marry a widow (as some writers gravely assume) he
would probably have told us so. It may be that Macbeth had many children
or that he had none. We cannot say, and it does not concern the play.
But the interpretation of a statement on which some critics build, 'He
has no children,' has an interest of another kind, and I proceed to
consider it.

These words occur at IV. iii. 216. Malcolm and Macduff are talking at
the English Court, and Ross, arriving from Scotland, brings news to
Macduff of Macbeth's revenge on him. It is necessary to quote a good
many lines:

_Ross._ Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes
Savagely slaughter'd: to relate the manner,
Were, on the quarry of these murder'd deer,
To add the death of you.

_Mal._ Merciful heaven!
What, man! ne'er pull your hat upon your brows;
Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.

_Macd._ My children too?

_Ross._ Wife, children, servants, all
That could be found.

_Macd._ And I must be from thence!
My wife kill'd too?

_Ross._ I have said.

_Mal._ Be comforted:
Let's makes us medicines of our great revenge,
To cure this deadly grief.

_Macd._ He has no children. All my pretty ones?
Did you say all? O hell-kite! All?
What, all my pretty chickens and their dam
At one fell swoop?

_Mal_. Dispute it like a man.

_Macd._ I shall do so;
But I must also feel it as a man:
I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me.--

Three interpretations have been offered of the words 'He has no
children.'

(_a_) They refer to Malcolm, who, if he had children of his own, would
not at such a moment suggest revenge, or talk of curing such a grief.
Cf. _King John_, III. iv. 91, where Pandulph says to Constance,

You hold too heinous a respect of grief,

and Constance answers,

He talks to me that never had a son.

(_b_) They refer to Macbeth, who has no children, and on whom therefore
Macduff cannot take an adequate revenge.

(_c_) They refer to Macbeth, who, if he himself had children, could
never have ordered the slaughter of children. Cf. _3 Henry VI._ V. v.
63, where Margaret says to the murderers of Prince Edward,

You have no children, butchers! if you had,
The thought of them would have stirred up remorse.

I cannot think interpretation (_b_) the most natural. The whole idea of
the passage is that Macduff must feel _grief_ first and before he can
feel anything else, _e.g._ the desire for vengeance. As he says directly
after, he cannot at once 'dispute' it like a man, but must 'feel' it as
a man; and it is not till ten lines later that he is able to pass to the
thought of revenge. Macduff is not the man to conceive at any time the
idea of killing children in retaliation; and that he contemplates it
_here_, even as a suggestion, I find it hard to believe.

For the same main reason interpretation (_a_) seems to me far more
probable than (_c_). What could be more consonant with the natural
course of the thought, as developed in the lines which follow, than that
Macduff, being told to think of revenge, not grief, should answer, 'No
one who was himself a father would ask that of me in the very first
moment of loss'? But the thought supposed by interpretation (_c_) has
not this natural connection.

It has been objected to interpretation (_a_) that, according to it,
Macduff would naturally say 'You have no children,' not 'He has no
children.' But what Macduff does is precisely what Constance does in the
line quoted from _King John_. And it should be noted that, all through
the passage down to this point, and indeed in the fifteen lines which
precede our quotation, Macduff listens only to Ross. His questions 'My
children too?' 'My wife killed too?' show that he cannot fully realise
what he is told. When Malcolm interrupts, therefore, he puts aside his
suggestion with four words spoken to himself, or (less probably) to Ross
(his relative, who knew his wife and children), and continues his
agonised questions and exclamations. Surely it is not likely that at
that moment the idea of (_c_), an idea which there is nothing to
suggest, would occur to him.

In favour of (_c_) as against (_a_) I see no argument except that the
words of Macduff almost repeat those of Margaret; and this fact does not
seem to me to have much weight. It shows only that Shakespeare might
easily use the words in the sense of (_c_) if that sense were suitable
to the occasion. It is not unlikely, again, I think, that the words came
to him here because he had used them many years before;[296] but it does
not follow that he knew he was repeating them; or that, if he did, he
remembered the sense they had previously borne; or that, if he did
remember it, he might not use them now in another sense.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 294: So in Holinshed, as well as in the play, where however
'cousin' need not have its specific meaning.]

[Footnote 295: 'May,' Johnson conjectured, without necessity.]

[Footnote 296: As this point occurs here, I may observe that
Shakespeare's later tragedies contain many such reminiscences of the
tragic plays of his young days. For instance, cf. _Titus Andronicus_, I.
i. 150 f.:

In peace and honour rest you here, my sons,

* * * * *

Secure from worldly chances and mishaps!
Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells,
Here grow no damned drugs: here are no storms,
No noise, but silence and eternal sleep,

with _Macbeth_, III. ii. 22 f.:

Duncan is in his grave;
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further.

In writing IV. i. Shakespeare can hardly have failed to remember the
conjuring of the Spirit, and the ambiguous oracles, in _2 Henry VI._ I.
iv. The 'Hyrcan tiger' of _Macbeth_ III. iv. 101, which is also alluded
to in _Hamlet_, appears first in _3 Henry VI._ I. iv. 155. Cf. _Richard
III._ II. i. 92, 'Nearer in bloody thoughts, but not in blood,' with
_Macbeth_ II. iii. 146, 'the near in blood, the nearer bloody'; _Richard
III._ IV. ii. 64, 'But I am in So far in blood that sin will pluck on
sin,' with _Macbeth_ III. iv. 136, 'I am in blood stepp'd in so far,'
etc. These are but a few instances. (It makes no difference whether
Shakespeare was author or reviser of _Titus_ and _Henry VI._).]




NOTE FF.

THE GHOST OF BANQUO.


I do not think the suggestions that the Ghost on its first appearance is
Banquo's, and on its second Duncan's, or _vice versa_, are worth
discussion. But the question whether Shakespeare meant the Ghost to be
real or a mere hallucination, has some interest, and I have not seen it
fully examined.

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