Part 28 (2/2)
says Malcolm; and two of these epithets surprise us. Who would have expected avarice or lechery[225] in Macbeth? His ruin seems complete.
Yet it is never complete. To the end he never totally loses our sympathy; we never feel towards him as we do to those who appear the born children of darkness. There remains something sublime in the defiance with which, even when cheated of his last hope, he faces earth and h.e.l.l and heaven. Nor would any soul to whom evil was congenial be capable of that heart-sickness which overcomes him when he thinks of the 'honour, love, obedience, troops of friends' which 'he must not look to have' (and which Iago would never have cared to have), and contrasts with them
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not,
(and which Iago would have accepted with indifference). Neither can I agree with those who find in his reception of the news of his wife's death proof of alienation or utter carelessness. There is no proof of these in the words,
She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word,
spoken as they are by a man already in some measure prepared for such news, and now transported by the frenzy of his last fight for life. He has no time now to feel.[226] Only, as he thinks of the morrow when time to feel will come--if anything comes, the vanity of all hopes and forward-lookings sinks deep into his soul with an infinite weariness, and he murmurs,
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death.
In the very depths a gleam of his native love of goodness, and with it a touch of tragic grandeur, rests upon him. The evil he has desperately embraced continues to madden or to wither his inmost heart. No experience in the world could bring him to glory in it or make his peace with it, or to forget what he once was and Iago and Goneril never were.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 194: See note BB.]
[Footnote 195: 'h.e.l.l is murky' (V. i. 35). This, surely, is not meant for a scornful repet.i.tion of something said long ago by Macbeth. He would hardly in those days have used an argument or expressed a fear that could provoke nothing but contempt.]
[Footnote 196: Whether Banquo's ghost is a mere illusion, like the dagger, is discussed in Note FF.]
[Footnote 197: In parts of this paragraph I am indebted to Hunter's _Ill.u.s.trations of Shakespeare_.]
[Footnote 198: The line is a foot short.]
[Footnote 199: It should be observed that in some cases the irony would escape an audience ignorant of the story and watching the play for the first time,--another indication that Shakespeare did not write solely for immediate stage purposes.]
[Footnote 200: Their influence on spectators is, I believe, very inferior. These scenes, like the Storm-scenes in _King Lear_, belong properly to the world of imagination.]
[Footnote 201: 'By yea and no, I think the 'oman is a witch indeed: I like not when a 'oman has a great peard' (_Merry Wives_, IV. ii. 202).]
[Footnote 202: Even the metaphor in the lines (II. iii. 127),
What should be spoken here, where our fate, Hid in an auger-hole, may rush and seize us?
was probably suggested by the words in Scot's first chapter, 'They can go in and out at awger-holes.']
[Footnote 203: Once, 'weird women.' Whether Shakespeare knew that 'weird' signified 'fate' we cannot tell, but it is probable that he did.
The word occurs six times in _Macbeth_ (it does not occur elsewhere in Shakespeare). The first three times it is spelt in the Folio _weyward_, the last three _weyard_. This may suggest a miswriting or misprinting of _wayward_; but, as that word is always spelt in the Folio either rightly or _waiward_, it is more likely that the _weyward_ and _weyard_ of _Macbeth_ are the copyist's or printer's misreading of Shakespeare's _weird_ or _weyrd_.]
[Footnote 204: The doubt as to these pa.s.sages (see Note Z) does not arise from the mere appearance of this figure. The idea of Hecate's connection with witches appears also at II. i. 52, and she is mentioned again at III. ii. 41 (cf. _Mid. Night's Dream_, V. i. 391, for her connection with fairies). It is part of the common traditional notion of the heathen G.o.ds being now devils. Scot refers to it several times. See the notes in the Clarendon Press edition on III. v. 1, or those in Furness's Variorum.
Of course in the popular notion the witch's spirits are devils or servants of Satan. If Shakespeare openly introduces this idea only in such phrases as 'the instruments of darkness' and 'what! can the devil speak true?' the reason is probably his unwillingness to give too much prominence to distinctively religious ideas.]
[Footnote 205: If this paragraph is true, some of the statements even of Lamb and of Coleridge about the Witches are, taken literally, incorrect.
What these critics, and notably the former, describe so well is the poetic aspect abstracted from the remainder; and in describing this they attribute to the Witches themselves what belongs really to the complex of Witches, Spirits, and Hecate. For the purposes of imagination, no doubt, this inaccuracy is of small consequence; and it is these purposes that matter. [I have not attempted to fulfil them.]]
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