COMMENTARY
From William Hazlett's Characters of Shakespeare's Plays.
Macbeth and Lear, Othello and Hamlet, are
usually reckoned Shakespear's four principal
tragedies. Lear stands first for the profound
intensity of the passion; Macbeth for the
wildness of the imagination and the rapidity
of the action; Othello for the progressive interest
and powerful alternations of feeling;
Hamlet for the refined developement of thought
and sentiment. If the force of genius shewn
in each of these works is astonishing, their
variety is not less so. They are like different
creations of the same mind, not one of
which has the slightest reference to the rest.
This distinctness and originality is indeed the
necessary consequence of truth and nature.
Shakespear's genius alone appeared to possess
the resources of nature. He is "your only tragedy
maker." His plays have the force of things
upon the mind. What he represents is brought
home to the bosom as a part of our experience,
implanted in the memory as if we had known
the places, persons, and things of which he
treats. Macbeth is like a record of a preternatural
and tragical event. It has the rugged
severity of an old chronicle with all that
the imagination of the poet can engraft upon
traditional belief. The castle of Macbeth,
round which "the air smells wooingly," and
where "the temple-haunting martlet builds,"
has a real subsistence in the mind; the Weird
Sisters meet us in person on "the blasted heath;"
the "air-drawn dagger" moves slowly before
our eyes; the "gracious Duncan," the "blood-boultered
Banquo" stand before us; all that
passed through the mind of Macbeth passes,
without the loss of a little, through our's. All
that could actually take place, and all that is
only possible to be conceived, what was said
and what was done, the workings of passion,
the spells of magic, are brought before us with
the same absolute truth and vividness.--Shakespear
excelled in the openings of his plays:
that of Macbeth is the most striking of any.
The wildness of the scenery, the sudden shifting
of the situations and characters, the bustle, the
expectations excited, are equally extraordinary.
From the first entrance of the Witches and the
description of them when they meet Macbeth,
What are these
So wither'd and so wild in their attire,
That look not like the inhabitants of th' earth
And yet are on't?
the mind is prepared for all that follows.
This tragedy is alike distinguished for the lofty
imagination it displays, and for the tumultuous
vehemence of the action; and the one is made
the moving principle of the other. The overwhelming
pressure of preternatural agency urges
on the tide of human passion with redoubled
force. Macbeth himself appears driven along
by the violence of his fate like a vessel drifting
before a storm; he reels to and fro like
a drunken man; he staggers under the weight
of his own purposes and the suggestions of
others; he stands at bay with his situation;
and from the superstitious awe and breathless
suspense into which the communications of the
Weird Sisters throw him, is hurried on with
daring impatience to verify their predictions,
and with impious and bloody hand to tear aside
the veil which hides the uncertainty of the future.
He is not equal to the struggle with fate
and conscience. He now "bends up each
corporal instrument to the terrible feat;" at
other times his heart misgives him, and he is
cowed and abashed by his success. "The deed,
no less than the attempt, confounds him." His
mind is assailed by the stings of remorse, and full
of "preternatural solicitings." His speeches
and soliloquies are dark riddles on human life,
baffling solution, and entangling him in their labyrinths.
In thought he is absent and perplexed,
sudden and desperate in act, from a distrust of
his own resolution. His energy springs from
the anxiety and agitation of his mind. His
blindly rushing forward on the objects of his ambition
and revenge, or his recoiling from them,
equally betrays the harassed state of his feelings.--This
part of his character is admirably set off
by being brought in connection with that of Lady
Macbeth, whose obdurate strength of will and
masculine firmness give her the ascendancy over
her husband's faultering virtue. She at once
seizes on the opportunity that offers for the
accomplishment of all their wished-for greatness,
and never flinches from her object till all is
over. The magnitude of her resolution almost
covers the magnitude of her guilt. She is a great
bad woman, whom we hate, but whom we fear
more than we hate. She does not excite our
loathing and abhorrence like Regan and Gonerill.
She is only wicked to gain a great end;
and is perhaps more distinguished by her commending
presence of mind and inexorable self-will,
which do not suffer her to be diverted from
a bad purpose, when once formed, by week and
womanly regrets, than by the hardness of her
heart or want of natural affections. The impression
which her lofty determination of character
makes on the mind of Macbeth is well
described where he exclaims,
Bring forth men children only;
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males!
Nor do the pains she is at to "screw his courage
to the sticking-place", the reproach to him,
not to be "lost so poorly in himself," the assurance
that "a little water clears them of this
deed," shew any thing but her greater consistency
in depravity. Her strong-nerved ambition
furnishes ribs of steel to "the sides of his
intent;" and she is herself wound up to the execution
of her baneful project with the same unshrinking
fortitude in crime, that in other circumstances
she would probably have shewn
patience in suffering. The deliberate sacrifice
of all other considerations to the gaining "for
their future days and nights sole sovereign sway
and masterdom," by the murder of Duncan, is
gorgeously expressed in her invocation on hearing
of "his fatal entrance under her battlements:"
Come all you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here:
And fill me, from the crown to th' toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night!
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heav'n peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, hold, hold!
When she first hears that "Duncan comes there
to sleep" she is so overcome by the news, which
is beyond her utmost expectations, that she
answers the messenger, "Thou'rt mad to say
it:" and on receiving her husband's account of
the predictions of the Witches, conscious of his
instability of purpose, and that her presence is
necessary to goad him on to the consummation
of his promised greatness, she exclaims
Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the velour of my tongue
All that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crowned withal.
This swelling exultation and keen spirit of triumph,
this uncontroulable eagerness of anticipation,
which seems to dilate her form and take
possession of all her faculties, this solid, substantial
flesh and blood display of passion, exhibit
a striking contrast to the cold, abstracted,
gratuitous, servile malignity of the witches, who
are equally instrumental in urging Macbeth to
his fate for the mere love of mischief, and from
a disinterested delight in deformity and cruelty.
They are hags of mischief, obscene panders
to iniquity, malicious from their impotence of
enjoyment, enamoured of destruction, because
they are themselves unreal, abortive, half-existences,
who become sublime from their
exemption from all human sympathies and contempt
for all human affairs, as Lady Macbeth
does by the force of passion! Her fault seems
to have been an excess of that strong principle
of self-interest and family aggrandizement, not
amenable to the common feelings of compassion
and justice, which is so marked a feature in
barbarous nations and times. A passing reflection
of this kind, on the resemblance of the
sleeping king to her father, alone prevents her
from slaying Duncan with her own hand.
In speaking of the character of Lady Macbeth,
we ought not to pass over Mrs. Siddons's
manner of acting that part. We can conceive
of nothing grander. It was something above
nature. It seemed almost as if a being of a superior
order had dropped from a higher sphere to
awe the world with the majesty of her appearance.
Power was seated on her brow, passion
emanated from her breast as from a shrine; she
was tragedy personified. In coming on in the
sleeping scene, her eyes were open, but their
sense was shut. She was like a person bewildered
and unconscious of what she did. Her
lips moved involuntarily--all her gestures were
involuntary and mechanical. She glided on and
off the stage like an apparition. To have seen
her in that character was an event in every one's
life, not to be forgotten.
The dramatic beauty of the character of Duncan,
which excites the respect and pity even
of his murderers, has been often pointed out.
It forms a picture of itself. An instance of the
author's power of giving a striking effect to a
common reflection, by the manner of introducing
it, occurs in a speech of Duncan, complaining
of his having been deceived in his opinion of
the Thane of Cawdor, at the very moment that
he is expressing the most unbounded confidence
in the loyalty and services of Macbeth.
There is no art
To find the mind's construction in the face:
He was a gentleman, on whom I built
An absolute trust.
O worthiest cousin, (addressing himself to Macbeth)
The sin of my ingratitude e'en now
Was great upon me.
Another passage to shew that Shakespear lost
sight of nothing that could in any way give
relief or heightening to his subject, is the conversation
which takes place between Banquo
and Fleance immediately before the murder-scene
of Duncan.
Banquo. How goes the night, boy?
Fleance. The moon is down: I have not heard the clock.
Banquo. And she goes down at twelve.
Fleance. I take't, 'tis later, Sir.
Banquo. Hold, take my sword. There's husbandry in heav'n,
Their candles are all out.
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.
In like manner, a fine idea is given of the
gloomy coming on of evening, just as Banquo
is going to be assassinated,
Light thickens and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood,"
...
Now spurs the lated traveller apace
To gain the timely inn.
Macbeth (generally speaking) is done upon
a stronger and more systematic principle of contrast
than any other of Shakespear's plays. It
moves upon the verge of an abyss, and is a constant
struggle between life and death. The
action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful.
It is a huddling together of fierce extremes, a war
of opposite natures which of them shall destroy
the other. There is nothing but what has a
violent end or violent beginnings! The lights
and shades are laid on with a determined hand;
the transitions from triumph to despair, from
the height of terror to the repose of death, are
sudden and startling; every passion brings in
its fellow - contrary, and the thoughts pitch
and jostle against each other as in the dark.
The whole play is an unruly chaos of strange
and forbidden things, where the ground rocks
under our feet, Shakespear's genius here took
its full swing, and trod upon the farthest bounds
of nature and passion. This circumstance will
account for the abruptness and violent antitheses
of the style, the throes and labour which run
through the expression, and from defects will
turn them into beauties. "So fair and foul a day
I have not seen," ... "Such welcome and unwelcome
news together." "Men's lives are like
the flowers in their caps, dying or ere they sicken."
"Look like the innocent flower, but be the
serpent under it." The scene before the castle
gate follows the appearance of the Witches on
the heath, and is followed by a midnight murder.
Duncan is cut off betimes by treason leagued
with witchcraft, and Macduff is ripped untimely
from his mother's womb to avenge his death.
Macbeth, after the death of Banquo, wishes for
his presence in extravagant terms, "To him and
all we thirst," and when his ghost appears, cries
out, "Avaunt and quit my sight," and being
gone, he is "himself again." Macbeth resolves
to get rid of Macduff, that "he may sleep in
spite of thunder;" and cheers his wife on the
doubtful intelligence of Banquo's taking-off with
the encouragement--"Then be thou jocund: ere
the bat has flown his cloistered flight; ere to
black Hecate's summons the shard-born beetle
has rung night's yawning peal, there shall be
done--a deed of dreadful note." In Lady Macbeth's
speech "Had he not resembled my father
as he slept, I had done 't," there is murder and
filial piety together, and in urging him to fulfil
his vengeance against the defenseless king, her
thoughts spare the blood neither of infants nor
old age. The description of the Witches is full
of the same contradictory principle; they "rejoice
when good kings bleed," they ate neither
of the earth nor the air, but both; "they
should be women, but their beards forbid it;"
they take all the pains possible to lead Macbeth
on to the height of his ambition, only
to betray him in deeper consequence, and after
strewing him all the pomp of their art, discover
their malignant delight in his disappointed
hopes, by that bitter taunt, "Why stands Macbeth
thus amazedly?" We might multiply such
instances every where.
The leading features in the character of
Macbeth are striking enough, and they form
what may be thought at first only a bold, rude,
Gothic outline. By comparing it with other
characters of the same author we shall perceive
the absolute truth and identity which is
observed in the midst of the giddy whirl and
rapid career of events. Macbeth in Shakespear
no more loses his identity of character in the
fluctuations of fortune or the storm of passion,
than Macbeth in himself would have lost the
identity of his person. Thus he is as distinct a
being from Richard III as it is possible to imagine,
though these two characters in common
hands, and indeed in the hands of any other
poet, would have been a repetition of the same
general idea, more or less exaggerated. For
both are tyrants, usurpers, murderers, both aspiring
and ambitious, both courageous, cruel,
treacherous. But Richard is cruel from nature
and constitution. Macbeth becomes so from
accidental circumstances. Richard is from his
birth deformed in body and mind, and naturally
incapable of good. Macbeth is full of "the
milk of human kindness," is frank, sociable,
generous. He is tempted to the commission of
guilt by golden opportunities, by the instigations
of his wife, and by prophetic warnings.
Fate and metaphysical aid conspire against his
virtue and his loyalty. Richard on the contrary
needs no prompter, but wades through a series
of crimes to the height of his ambition from
the ungovernable violence of his temper and a
reckless love of mischief. He is never gay but
in the prospect or in the success of his villainies:
Macbeth is full of horror at the thoughts of the
murder of Duncan, which he is with difficulty
prevailed on to commit, and of remorse after its
perpetration. Richard has no mixture of common
humanity in his composition, no regard to
kindred or posterity, he owns no fellowship with
others, he is "himself alone." Macbeth is
not destitute of feelings of sympathy, is accessible
to pity, is even made in some measure the
dupe of his uxoriousness, ranks the loss of
friends, of the cordial love of his followers, and
of his good name, among the causes which have
made him weary of life, and regrets that he has
ever seized the crown by unjust means, since he
cannot transmit it to his posterity
For Banquo's issue have I 'fil'd my mind--
For them the gracious Duncan have I murther'd,
To make them kings, the seed of Banquo kings.
In the agitation of his thoughts, he envies those
whom he has sent to peace. "Duncan is in his
grave; after life's fitful fever he sleeps well."
It is true, he becomes more callous as he plunges
deeper in guilt, "direness is thus rendered familiar
to his slaughterous thoughts," and he in
the end anticipates his wife in the boldness and
bloodiness of his enterprises, while she for want
of the same stimulus of action, is "troubled
with thick-coming fancies that rob her of her
rest," goes mad and dies. Macbeth endeavours
to escape from reflection on his crimes by repelling
their consequences, and banishes remorse
for the past by the meditation of future mischief.
This is not the principle of Richard's cruelty,
which resembles the wanton malice of a fiend
as much as the frailty of human passion. Macbeth
is goaded on to acts of violence and retaliation
by necessity; to Richard, blood is a pastime.--There
are other decisive differences inherent
in the two characters. Richard may be regarded
as a man of the world, a plotting, hardened knave,
wholly regardless of every thing but his own
ends, and the means to secure them--Not so
Macbeth. The superstitions of the age, the
rude state of society, the local scenery and customs,
all give a wildness and imaginary grandeur
to his character. From the strangeness of the
events that surround him, he is full of amazement
and fear; and stands in doubt between
the world of reality and the world of fancy. He
sees sights not strewn to mortal eye, and hears
unearthly music. All is tumult and disorder
within and without his mind; his purposes recoil
upon himself, are broken and disjointed;
he is the double thrall of his passions and his
evil destiny. Richard is not a character either
of imagination or pathos, but of pure self-will.
There is no conflict of opposite feelings in his
breast. The apparitions which he sees only
haunt him in his sleep; nor does he live like
Macbeth in a waking dream. Macbeth has
considerable energy and manliness of character;
but then he is "subject to all the skyey influences."
He is sure of nothing but the present
moment. Richard in the busy turbulence of
his projects never loses his self-possession, and
makes use of every circumstance that happens
as an instrument of his long-reaching designs.
In his last extremity we can only regard him as
a wild beast taken in the toils: we never entirely
lose our concern for Macbeth; and he
calls back all our sympathy by that fine close of
thoughtful melancholy--
My way of life is fallen into the sear,
The yellow leaf; and that which should accompany old age,
As honour, troops of friends, I must not look to have;
But in their stead, curses not loud but deep,
Mouth-honour, breath, which the poor heart
Would fain deny and dare not.
We can conceive a common actor to play
Richard tolerably well; we can conceive no
one to play Macbeth properly, or to look like a
man that had encountered the Weird Sisters.
All the actors that we have ever seen, appear as
if they had encountered them on the boards of
Covent-garden or Drury-lane, but not on the
heath at Fores, and as if they did not believe what
they had seen. The Witches of Macbeth indeed
are ridiculous on the modern stage, and we
doubt if the furies of Aeschylus would be more
respected. The progress of manners and knowledge
has an influence on the stage, and will in
time perhaps destroy both tragedy and comedy.
Filch's picking pockets, in the Beggars' Opera,
is not so good a jest as it used to be: by the
force of the police and of philosophy, Lillo's
murders and the ghosts in Shakespear will become
obsolete. At last there will be nothing
left, good nor bad, to be desired or dreaded, on
the theatre or in real life. A question has been
started with respect to the originality of Shakespear's
Witches, which has been well answered
by Mr. Lamb in his notes to the "Specimens
of Early Dramatic Poetry":
"Though some resemblance may be traced
between the charms in Macbeth, and the incantations
in this play, (the Witch of Middleton)
which is supposed to have preceded it,
this coincidence will not detract much from the
originality of Shakespear. His Witches are distinguished
from the Witches of Middleton by
essential differences. These are creatures to
whom man or woman plotting some dire mischief
might resort for occasional consultation.
Those originate deeds of blood, and begin bad
impulses to men. From the moment that their
eyes first meet with Macbeth's, he is spellbound.
That meeting sways his destiny. He
can never break the fascination. These Witches
can hurt the body; those have power over the
soul. Hecate in Middleton has a son, a low
buffoon: the hags of Shakespear have neither
child of their own, nor seem to be descended
from any parent. They are foul anomalies, of
whom we know not whence they are sprung,
nor whether they have beginning or ending. As
they are without human passions, so they seem
to be without human relations. They come
with thunder and lightning, and vanish to airy
music. This is all we know of them.--Except
Hecate, they have no names, which heightens
their mysteriousness. The names, and some of
the properties which Middleton has given to
his hags, excite smiles. The Weird Sisters are
serious things. Their presence cannot co-exist
with mirth. But, in a lesser degree, the Witches
of Middleton are fine creations. Their power
too is, in some measure, over the mind. They
raise jars, jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf
o'er life."
PLAY HISTORY
Although we cannot give a precise date of composition for Macbeth, the play was written after 1603 and before 1610. It is dated after the accession of King James I, in the former year, and before Dr. Simon Forman, a playgoer and astrologer, wrote his diary, in the latter year. In his diary, Dr. Forman writes that he attended a production of the play on April 20, 1610. The following is an excerpt from Forman's account of the performance:
In Mackbeth at the Globe, 1610, the 20 of Aprill, Saturday, ther was to be observed, firste, howe Mackbeth and Bancko, two noble men of Scotland, ridinge thorowe a wod, thes stode before them three women feiries or nimphes, and saluted Mackbeth, sayinge three tyms unto him, Haille, Mackbeth, King of Codon; for thou shall be a Kinge, but shall beget no kinds, etc. Then said Bancko, what all to Mackbeth, and nothing to me? Yes, said the nymphes, haille to thee, Bancko, thou shall beget kinges, yet be no kinge; and so they departed and cam to the coutre of Scotland to Dunkin, King of Scotes and yt was in the days of Edward the COnfessor. And Dunkin had them both kindly wellcom, and made Mackbeth forthwith Prince of Northumberland, and sent him hom to his own castlel, and appointed Mackbeth to provide for him, for he would sup with him the next day at night, and did soe.
And Mackbeth contrived to kill Dunkin and thorowe the persuasion of his wife did that night murder the kinge in his own castell, beinge his guest; and ther were many prodigies seen that night and the day before. And when Mackbeth had murdered the kinge, the blod on his handes could not be washed off by any means, nor from his wives hands, which handed the bluddi daggers in hiding them, which by means they became both much amazed and affronted. The murder being knowne, Dunkin's two sonns fled, the one to England, the other to Walles, to save themselves. They beinge fled, they were supposed guilty of the murder of their father, which was nothing so. Then was Mackbeth crowned kingse; and then he, for feare of Bancko, his old companion, that he should beget kinges but be no kinge himself, he contrived the death of Bancko, and caused him to be murdered on his way as he rode. The next night, beinge at supper with his noble men whom he had to bid to a feaste, to the which also Bancko should have com, he began to speak of noble Bancko, and to wish that he wer ther. And as he did thus, standing up to drink a carouse to him, the ghoste of Bancko came and sate down in his cheier be-hind him. And he, turning about to sit down again, sawe the ghoste of Bancko, which fronted him so, that he fell into a greate passion of fear and fury, utteringe many words about his murder, by which, when they hard that Bancko was murdered, they suspected Mackbeth. Then Mack Dove fled to England to the kinges sonn, and soon they raised an army and cam to Scotland, and at Dunstonanyse overthrue Mackbeth. In the meantime, whille Macdove was in England, Mackbeth slew Mackdove's wife and children, and after in the battle Mackdove slewe Macbeth. Observe also howe Mackbeth's quen did rise inthe night in her slepe, and walked and talked and confessed all, and the doctor noted her words.
Some scholars believe that Macbeth was written before 1607, based on possible allusions to Shakespeare's work in Thomas Mddleton's play,
It is quite plausible that there is a reference to the ghost of Banquo in both the The Puritan and The Knight of the Burning Pestle; however, it is equally likely that the similarities are pure coincidence. "As the whole situation [in The Puritan] is part of the plan prepared by Pye-board and as no device is more common among Elizabethan dramatists than the clearing of the stage by an invitation to dinner, it seems by no means certain that we have here a deliberate reference to the appearance of Banquo's ghost at Macbeth's feast" (Maxwell 118).
As we can see, neither the date of composition nor the date of first performance for Macbeth can be confirmed. But, in their quest to place any date on the play, most scholars conclude that Macbeth was first performed in London, between 1605 and 1606.
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