The Man Shakespeare and His Tragic Life Story Part 3

"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The mult.i.tudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red."

There is a great deal of the poet-neuropath and very little of the murderer for ambition's sake in this lyrical hysteria. No wonder Lady Macbeth declares she would be ashamed "to wear a heart so white." It is all Hamlet over again, Hamlet wrought up to a higher pitch of intensity.

And here it should be remembered that "Macbeth" was written three years after "Hamlet" and probably just before "Lear"; one would therefore expect a greater intensity and a deeper pessimism in Macbeth than in Hamlet.

The character-drawing in the next scene is necessarily slight. The discovery of the murder impels every one save the protagonist to action, but Macbeth finds time even at the climax of excitement to coin Hamlet-words that can never be forgotten:

"There's nothing serious in mortality;"

and the description of Duncan:

"His silver skin laced with his golden blood"

--as sugar'd sweet as any line in the sonnets, and here completely out of place.

In these first two acts the character of Macbeth is outlined so firmly that no after-touches can efface the impression.

Now comes a period in the drama in which deed follows so fast upon deed, that there is scarcely any opportunity for characterization. To the casual view Macbeth seems almost to change his nature, pa.s.sing from murder to murder quickly if not easily. He not only arranges for Banquo's a.s.sa.s.sination, but leaves Lady Macbeth innocent of the knowledge. The explanation of this seeming change of character is at hand. Shakespeare took the history of Macbeth from Holinshed's Chronicle, and there it is recorded that Macbeth murdered Banquo and many others, as well as Macduff's wife and children. Holinshed makes Duncan have "too much of clemencie," and Macbeth "too much of crueltie."

Macbeth's actions correspond with his nature in Holinshed; but Shakespeare first made Macbeth in his own image--gentle, bookish and irresolute--and then found himself fettered by the historical fact that Macbeth murdered Banquo and the rest. He was therefore forced to explain in some way or other why his Macbeth strode from crime to crime. It must be noted as most characteristic of gentle Shakespeare that even when confronted with this difficulty he did not think of lending Macbeth any tinge of cruelty, harshness, or ambition. His Macbeth commits murder for the same reason that the timorous deer fights--out of fear.

"To be thus is nothing; But to be safely thus. Our fears in Banquo Stick deep, and in his royalty of nature Reigns that which would be feared":

And again:

"There is none but he Whose being I do fear":...

This proves, as nothing else could prove, the all-pervading, attaching kindness of Shakespeare's nature. Again and again Lady Macbeth saves the situation and tries to shame her husband into stern resolve, but in vain; he's "quite unmann'd in folly."

Had Macbeth been made ambitious, as the commentators a.s.sume, there would have been a sufficient motive for his later actions. But ambition is foreign to the Shakespeare-Hamlet nature, so the poet does not employ it. Again and again he returns to the explanation that the timid grow dangerous when "frighted out of fear." Macbeth says:

"But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep In the affliction of these terrible dreams That shake us nightly."

In pa.s.sing I may remark that Hamlet, too, complains of "bad dreams."

In deep Hamlet melancholy, Macbeth now begins to contrast his state with Duncan's:

"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."

Lady Macbeth begs him to sleek o'er his rugged looks, be bright and jovial. He promises obedience; but soon falls into the dark mood again and predicts "a deed of dreadful note." Naturally his wife questions him, and he replies:

"Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pityful day, And with thy b.l.o.o.d.y and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale."

No other motive for murder is possible to Shakespeare-Macbeth but fear.

Banquo is murdered, but still Macbeth cries:

"I am cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in To saucy doubts and fears."

The scene with the ghost of Banquo follows, where-in Macbeth again shows the nervous imaginative Hamlet nature. His next speech is mere reflection, and again Hamlet might have framed it:

"the time has been That when the brains were out the man would die And there an end": ...

But while fear may be an adequate motive for Banquo's murder, it can hardly explain the murder of Macduff's wife and children. Shakespeare feels this, too, and therefore finds other reasons natural enough; but the first of these reasons, "his own good," is not especially characteristic of Macbeth, and the second, while perhaps characteristic, is absurdly inadequate: men don't murder out of tediousness:

"For mine own good All causes shall give way: I am in blood[1]

Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er."

[Footnote 1: It seems to me probable that Shakespeare, unable to find an adequate motive for murder, borrowed this one from "Richard III." Richard says:

"But I am in So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin"--

This is an explanation following the fact rather than a cause producing it--an explanation, moreover, which may be true in the case of a fiendlike Richard, but is not true of a Macbeth.]

Take it all in all, this latter reason is as poor a motive for cold-blooded murder as was ever given, and Shakespeare again feels this, for he brings in the witches once more to predict safety to Macbeth and adjure him to be "b.l.o.o.d.y, bold and resolute." When they have thus screwed his courage to the sticking place as his wife did before, Macbeth resolves on Macduff's murder, but he immediately recurs to the old explanation; he does not do it for his "own good" nor because "returning is tedious "; he does it

"That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, And sleep in spite of thunder."

It is fair to say that Shakespeare's Macbeth is so gentle-kind, that he can find no motive in himself for murder, save fear. The words Shakespeare puts into Hubert's mouth in "King John" are really his own confession:

"Within this bosom never enter'd yet The dreadful motion of a murderous thought."

The murders take place and the silly scenes in England between Malcolm and Macduff follow, and then come Lady Macbeth's illness, and the characteristic end. The servant tells Macbeth of the approach of the English force, and he begins the wonderful monologue:

"my May of life Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf; And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, 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."

Truly this is a strange murderer who longs for "troops of friends," and who at the last push of fate can find in himself kindness enough towards others to sympathize with the "poor heart." All this is pure Hamlet; one might better say, pure Shakespeare.

We are next led into the field with Malcolm and Macduff, and immediately back to the castle again. While the women break into cries, Macbeth soliloquizes in the very spirit of bookish Hamlet:

"I have almost forgot the taste of fears.

The time has been, my senses would have cooled To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir As life were in 't."

The whole pa.s.sage, and especially the "dismal treatise," recalls the Wittenberg student with a magic of representment.

The death of the Queen is announced, and wrings from Macbeth a speech full of despairing pessimism, a bitterer mood than ever Hamlet knew; a speech, moreover, that shows the student as well as the incomparable lyric poet:

"She should have died hereafter: There would have been a time for such a word.-- 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. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing."

Macbeth's philosophy, like Hamlet's, ends in utter doubt, in a pa.s.sion of contempt for life, deeper than anything in Dante. The word "syllable"

in this lyric outburst is as characteristic as the "dismal treatise" in the previous one, and more characteristic still of Hamlet is the likening of life to "a poor player."

The messenger tells Macbeth that Birnam Wood has begun to move, and he sees that the witches have cheated him. He can only say, as Hamlet might have said:

"I 'gin to be aweary of the sun, And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.-- Ring the alarum bell! Blow wind! Come, wrack!

At least we'll die with harness on our back."

And later he cries: