Macbeth that form is made the transparent vehicle of a truth coeval and coextensive with the workings of human guilt. In their literal character the Weird Sisters answer to something that was, and is not; in their symbolical character, they answer to something that was, and is, and will abide ; for they represent the mysterious action and reaction between the evil mind and external nature. For the external world serves in some sort as a lookingglass wherein we behold the image of our inner man. And the evil suggestions, which seem to us written in the face or speaking from the mouth of outward objects and occasions, are in reality but projections from our own evil hearts. In a moral sense, the world around us only gives us back ourselves; its aspect is but a reflection of what we bring to it. So that, if the things we look on seem inviting us to crime, it is only because our depraved lusts and most frail affections construe their innocent meanings into wicked invitations. In the spirit and virtue of this principle, the Weird Sisters symbolize the inward moral history of each and every man; and therefore they may be expected to live in the faith of reason so long as the present moral order or disorder of things shall last. So that they may be aptly enough described as poetical or mythical impersonations of evil influences. They body forth in living forms the fearful echo which the natural world gives back to the evil that speaks out from the human heart. And the secret of their power over Macbeth lies mainly in that they present to him his embryo wishes and half-formed thoughts. At one time they harp his fear aright, at another his hope; and this too before his hope and fear have distinctly reported themselves in his consciousness; and, by thus harping them, nurse them into purpose and draw them into act. As men often know they would something, yet know not clearly what they would, till an articulation of it, or what seems such, comes to them from without. For so we are naturally made conscious of what is within us by the shadow it casts in the light of occasion; and therefore it is that trials and opportunities have such an effect in revealing us to ourselves. Character of Macbeth. All which may serve to suggest the real nature and scope of the Weird influences on the action of the play. The office of the Weird Sisters is not so properly to deprave as to develop the characters whereon they act. They do not create the evil heart, they only untie the evil hands. They put nothing into Macbeth's mind, but merely draw out what was already there; breathing fructification upon his indwelling germs of sin, and thus acting as mediators between the secret upspringing purpose and the final accomplishment of crime. He was already minded to act as he does, only there needed something to "trammel up the consequence"; which, in his apprehension, is just what the Weird Sisters do. Accordingly it well appears in the course of the play that the thought of murdering Duncan is by no means new to Macbeth. Perhaps I ought to remark here that, as the Scottish crown was elective in a certain line, Macbeth's claim to it was legally as good as Duncan's till the vote was declared; while his consciousness of superior fitness for the office might naturally have filled him with high expectations. At all events, it is plain enough that he has more than dallied with the purpose of retrieving that disappointment by crime; he has entertained it seriously, and has had talks with his wife about it; she no doubt encouraging him in it with all her fiery vehemence of spirit. In his boldness of imagination he was then even ready to make an opportunity for the deed; and it is a profound stroke of nature that, when the opportunity makes itself to his hands, its effect is to unman him. This is evident from his wife's stinging reproaches when at last his resolution falters and breaks down : "Was the hope drunk wherein you 'dress'd yourself?" 66 When you durst do it, then you were a man ; and, "Nor time nor place did then adhere, and yet you would make both." These plainly refer to conversations they have formerly, perhaps often, had on the subject. So that in the salutation of the Weird Sisters Macbeth just meets with an external temptation to that which he has been inwardly tempted or instigated to before. Yet he cannot all at once rest secure in the thoughts which at that prophetic greeting spring up within him; and therefore it is that he "burns in desire to question them further." Fears and scruples as to the consequence still shake him: a general pledge of security is not enough: he craves to know further how and whence the means of safety are to come; his faith in the Weird promise not being strong enough at first to silence the warnings of experience, reinforced as these are by the instinctive apprehensions of conscience : But in these cases We still have judgment here; that we but teach It seems worthy of remark how Buchanan represents the salutation of the Weird Sisters to have been the coinage of Macbeth's dreams; as if his mind were so swollen with ambitious thoughts, that these haunt his pillow and people his sleep and afterwards, when a part of the dream came to pass without his help, this put him upon working out a fulfilment of the remainder. Nor, in this view of the matter, is it easy to see but that a dream would every way satisfy the moral demands of the case, though it might not answer the conditions of the drama. It is wisely ordered that the Weird Sisters meet Macbeth "in the day of success," when the exultations of victory would naturally prompt such a mind as his to catch at ambitious hopes. And "the early birth-date of his guilt" appears in that, on hearing the first Weird salutation, he is instantly seized with a kind of mental delirium. This comes out in what Banquo says: Good sir, why do you start, and seem to fear I'the name of truth, Are ye fantastical? or that indeed Of noble having and of royal hope, That he seems rapt withal: to me you speak not. If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow, and which will not, Macbeth's behaviour as here indicated is profoundly symptomatic of his moral predispositions. It is a full revelation of his criminal aptitudes that so startles and surprises him into a rapture of meditation. The Weird greeting is as a spark to a magazine of wickedness in him; and he is at once seized with a trance of terror at the result: Between the acting of a dreadful thing Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection. "So surely," says Coleridge, "is the guilt in its germ anterior to the supposed cause and immediate temptation." Whether the Weird Sisters "look into the seeds of time" or not, they manifestly look into the seeds of Macbeth's char-acter; and they drop just the right stuff on them to make them sprout, as is evident from the fact that they instantly do sprout. And it was their insight of the unhatched eggs of evil within him, that drew them to him. Macbeth has another like trance of guilty thought and terror, when the messengers come from the King, and hail him Thane of Cawdor, and thus give his faith a fresh start against the misgivings of prudence and conscience: Macb. [To himself.] Glamis, and Thane of Cawdor! Might yet enkindle you unto the crown, Besides the Thane of Cawdor. 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 us In deepest consequence. Macb [To himself.] Two truths are told, As happy prologues to the swelling act Of the imperial theme! -I thank you, gentlemen. - |