Attend to that "start" of Macbeth, Talboys. NORTH. TALBOYS. He might well start on being told of a sudden, by such seers, that he was hereafter to be King of Scotland. NORTH. There was more in the start than that, my lad, else Shakspeare would not have so directed our eyes to it. say again-it was the start of a murderer. I TALBOYS. And what if I say it was not? But I have the candour to confess, that I am not familiar with the starts of murderers-so may possibly be mistaken. NORTH. Omit what intervenes-and give us the Soliloquy, Talboys. But before you do so, let me merely remind you that Macbeth's mind, from the little he says in the interim, is manifestly ruminating on something bad, ere he breaks out into Soliloquy. TALBOYS. "Two truths are told, As happy prologues to the swelling act Of the imperial theme. I thank you, gentlemen.- Cannot be ill-cannot be good:-If ill, Why hath it given me earnest of success, My thought whose murder is yet but fantastical But what is not." NORTH. Now, my dear Talboys, you will agree with me in thinking that this first great and pregnant, although brief soliloquy, stands for germ, type, and law of the whole Play, and of its criticism-and for clue to the labyrinth of the Thane's character. "Out of this wood do not desire to go." Out of it I do not expect soon to go. I regard William as a fair Poet and a reasonable Philosopher; but as a supereminent Play-wright. The First Soliloquy must speak the nature of Macbeth, else the Craftsman has no skill in his trade. A Soliloquy reveals. That is its function. Therein is the soul heard and seen discoursing with itself-within itself; and if you carry your eye through—up to the First Appearance of Lady Macbeth-this Soliloquy is distinctly the highest point of the Tragedy-the tragic acme-or dome-or pinnacle-therefore of power indefinite, infinite. On this rock I stand, a Colossus ready to be thrown down by-an Earthquake. Pushed off by-a shove. BULLER. NORTH. Not by a thousand Buller-power. Can you believe, Buller, that the word of the Third Witch, "that shalt be KING HEREAFTER," sows the murder in Macbeth's heart, and that it springs up, flowers, and fruits with such fearful rapidity? Why-Yes and No. BULLER. NORTH. Attend, Talboys, to the words "supernatural soliciting." What "supernatural soliciting" to evil is there here? Not a syllable had the Weird Sisters breathed about Murder. But now there is much soliloquizing-and Cawdor contemplates himself objectively-seen busy upon an elderly gentleman called Duncan-after a fashion that so frightens him subjectively-that Banquo cannot help whispering to Rosse and Angus "See how our partner's rapt!" TALBOYS. "My thought whose murder's yet fantastical." I agree with you, sir, in suspecting that he must have thought of the murder. NORTH. It is from no leaning towards the Weird Sisters-whom I never set eyes on but once, and then without interchanging a word, leapt momentarily out of this world into that pitch-pot of a pond in Glenco-it is, I say, from no leaning towards the Weird Sisters that I take this view of Macbeth's character. No "sublime flashes of generosity, magnanimity, tenderness, and every exalted quality that can dignify and adorn the human mind," do I ever suffer to pass by without approbation, when coruscating from the character of any welldisposed man, real or imaginary, however unaccountable at other times his conduct may appear to be; but Shakspeare, who knew Macbeth better than any of us, has here assured us that he was in heart a murderer-for how long he does not specify-before he had ever seen a birse on any of the Weird Sisters' beards. But let's be canny. Talboys-pray, what is the meaning of the word "soliciting," "preternatural soliciting," in this Soliloquy? TALBOYS. Soliciting, sir, is, in my interpreting, “an appealing, intimate visitation." NORTH. Right. The appeal is general-as that challenge of a trumpet-Fairy Queen, book III., canto xii., stanza 1— which, all indeterminate, is notwithstanding a challenge-operates, and is felt as such. TALBOYS. 66 So a thundering knock at your door-which may be a friend or an enemy. It comes as a summoning. It is more than internal urging and inciting of me by my own thoughts-for mark, sir, the rigour of the word supernatural," which throws the soliciting off his own soul upon the Weirds. The word is really undetermined to pleasure or pain-the essential thought being that there is a searching or penetrating provocative-a stirring up of that which lay dead and still. Next is the debate whether this intrusive, and pungent, and stimulant assault of a presence and an oracle be good or ill? NORTH. Does the hope live in him for a moment that this home-visiting is not ill— that the Spirits are not ill? They have spoken truth so far-ergo, the Third "All hail!" shall be true, too. But more than that-they have spoken truth. Ergo, they are not spirits of Evil. That hope dies in the same instant, submerged in the stormy waves which the blast from hell arouses. The infernal revelation glares clear before him-a Crown held out by the hand of Murder. One or two struggles occur. Then the truth stands before him fixed and immutable" Evil, be thou my good." He is dedicated and passive to fate. I cannot comprehend this so feeble debate in the mind of a good man—I cannot comprehend any such debate at all in the mind of a previously settled and determined murderer; but I can comprehend and feel its awful significancy in the mind of a man already in a most perilous moral condition. SEWARD. The "start" shows that the spark has caught-it has fallen into a tun of gunpowder. The touch of Ithuriel's spear. TALBOYS. NORTH. May we not say, then, that perhaps the Witches have shown no more than this-the Fascination of Contact between Passion and Opportunity? SEWARD. To Philosophy reading the hieroglyphic; but to the People what? To them they are a reality. They seize the imagination with all power. They come like "blasts from hell"-like spirits of Plague, whose breath-whose very sight kills. "Within them Hell They bring, and round about them; nor from Hell The contagion of their presence, in spite of what we have been saying, almost reconciles my understanding to what it would otherwise revolt from, the suddenness with which the penetration of Macbeth into futurity lays fast hold upon Murder. BULLER. Pretty fast-though it gives a twist or two in his handling. SEWARD. Lady Macbeth herself corroborates your judgment and Shakspeare's on her husband's character. Does she? TALBOYS. SEWARD. She does. In that dreadful parley between them on the night of the Murder-she reminds him of a time when "Nor time nor place Did then adhere, and yet you would make both ; They have made themselves, and that their fitness now This mark you, sir-must have been before the Play began! NORTH. I have often thought of the words-and Shakspeare himself has so adjusted the action of the Play as that, since the encounter with the Weirds, no opportunity had occurred to Macbeth for the "making of time and place." Therefore it must, as you say, have been before it. Buller, what say you now? Gagged. BULLER. NORTH. True, she speaks of his being "full of the milk of human kindness." The words have become favourites with us, who are an affectionate and domestic people-and are lovingly applied to the loving; but Lady Macbeth attached no such profound sense to them as we do; and meant merely that she thought her husband would, after all, much prefer greatness unbought by blood; and, at the time she referred to, it is probable he would; but that she meant no more than that, is plain from the continuation of her praise, in which her ideas get not a little confused; and her words, interpret them as you will, leave nothing "milky" in Macbeth at all. Milk of human kindness, indeed! TALBOYS. "What thou would'st highly, That would'st thou holily; would'st not play false, And yet would'st wrongly win: thou'dst have great Glamis, And that which rather thou dost fear to do, Than wishest should be undone." 999 That is her Ladyship's notion of the "milk of human kindness!" "I wish somebody would murder Duncan-as for murdering him myself, I am much too tender-hearted and humane for perpetrating such cruelty with my own hand!" BULLER. Won't you believe a Wife to be a good judge of her Husband's disposition? NORTH. Not Lady Macbeth. For does not she herself tell us, at the same time, that he had formerly schemed how to commit Murder? Gagged again. BULLER. NORTH. I see no reason for doubting that she was attached to her husband; and Shakspeare loved to put into the lips of women beautiful expressions of lovebut he did not intend that we should be deceived thereby in our moral judg ments. SEWARD. Did this ever occur to you, sir? Macbeth, when hiring the murderers who are to look after Banquo and Fleance, cites a conversation in which he had demonstrated to them that the oppression under which they had long suffered, and which they had supposed to proceed from Macbeth, proceeded really from Banquo? My firm belief is that it proceeded from Macbeth-that their suspicion was right—that Macbeth is misleading them—and that Shakspeare means you to apprehend this. But why should Macbeth have oppressed his inferiors, unless he had been-long since-of a tyrannical nature? He oppresses his inferiors-they are sickened and angered with the world-by his oppressionhe tells them 'twas not he but another who had oppressed them and that other at his instigation-they willingly murder. An ugly affair altogether. NORTH. Very. But let us keep to the First Act and see what a hypocrite Macbeth has so very soon become-what a savage assassin! He has just followed up his Soliloquy with these significant lines "Come what come may, Time and the hour run through the roughest day;" when he recollects that Banquo, Rosse, and Angus are standing near. Richard himself is not more wily-guily-smily-and oily; to the Lords his condescension is already quite kingly— Kind gentlemen, your pains TALBOYS. And soon after, to the King how obsequious! "The service and the loyalty I owe, In doing it, pays itself. Your Highness' part Is to receive our duties; and our duties Are to your throne and state, children, and servants; Which do but what they should by doing everything Safe toward you love and honour." What would Payne Knight have said to all that? This to his King, whom he has resolved, first good opportunity, to murder! NORTH. Duncan is now too happy for this wicked world. 66 My plenteous joys, Wanton in fulness, seek to hide themselves Invaders-traitors-now there are none. Peace is restored to the Land-the Now was the time for "the manly but ineffectual struggle of every exalted quality that can dignify and exalt the human mind" for a few sublime flashes at least of generosity and tenderness, et cetera-now when the Gracious Duncan is loading him with honours, and, better than all honours, lavishing on him the boundless effusions of a grateful and royal heart. The Prince of Cumberland! Ha, ha! "The Prince of Cumberland!-That is a step On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap, But the remorseless miscreant becomes poetical 66 Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires: Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see!" The milk of human kindness has coagulated into the curd of inhuman ferocity and all this--slanderers say—is the sole work of the Weird Sisters! No. His wicked heart-because it is wicked-believes in their Prophecy-the end is assured to him-and the means are at once suggested to his own slaughterous nature. No supernatural soliciting here, which a better man would not successfully have resisted. I again repudiate-should it be preferred against me-the charge of a tendresse towards the Bearded Beauties of the Blasted Heath; but rather would I marry them all Three-one after the other-nay all three at once, and as many more as there may be in our Celtic Mythology-than see your Sophia, Seward, or, Buller, your We know your affection, my dear sir, for your goddaughter. She is insured. NORTH, Well, this Milk of Human Kindness is off at a hand-gallop to Inverness. The King has announced a Royal Visit to Macbeth's own Castle. But Cawdor had before this despatched a letter to his lady, from which Shakspeare has given us an extract. And then, as I understand it, a special messenger besides, to say "the King comes here to-night." Which of the two is the more impatient to be at work 'tis hard to say; but the idea of the murder originated with the male Prisoner. We have his wife's word for it-she told him so to his face--and he did not deny it. We have his own word for it--he told himself so to his own face-and he never denies it at any time during the play. TALBOYS. You said, a little while ago, sir, that you believed Macbeth and his wife were a happy couple. NORTH. Not I. I said she was attached to him-and I say now that the wise men are not of the Seven, who point to her reception of her husband, on his arrival at home, as a proof of her want of affection. They seem to think she ought to have rushed into his arms-slobbered upon his shoulder-and so forth. For had he not been at the Wars? Pshaw! The most tender-hearted Thanesses of those days-even those that kept albums-would have been ashamed of weeping on sending their Thanes off to battle-much more on receiving them back in a sound skin-with new honours nodding on their plumes. Lady Macbeth was not one of the turtle-doves-fit mate she for the King of the Vultures. I am too good an ornithologist to call them Eagles. She received her mate fittingly-with murder in her soul; but more cruel-more selfish than he, she could not be-nor, perhaps, was she less; but she was more resolute and resolution even in evil-in such circumstances as hers-seems to argue a superior nature to his, who, while he keeps vacillating, as if it were between good and evil, betrays all the time the bias that is surely inclining him to evil, into which he makes a sudden and sure wheel at last. BULLER. The Weirds-the Weirds!-the Weirds have done it all! |