The Character of Macbeth

MacBeth / The Character of Macbeth is presented as a mature man of definitely established character, successful in certain fields of activity and enjoying an enviable reputation. We must not conclude, there, that all his volitions and actions are predictable; Macbeth's character, like any other man's at a given moment, is what is being made out of potentialities plus environment, and no one, not even Macbeth himself, can know all his inordinate self-love whose actions are discovered to be-and no doubt have been for a long time- determined mainly by an inordinate desire for some temporal or mutable good. Macbeth is actuated in his conduct mainly by an inordinate desire for worldly honors; his delight lies primarily in buying golden opinions from all sorts of people. But we must not, therefore, deny him an entirely human complexity of motives. For example, his fighting in Duncan's service is magnificent and courageous, and his evident joy in it is traceable in art to the natural pleasure which accompanies the explosive expenditure of prodigious physical energy and the euphoria which follows. He also rejoices no doubt in the success which crowns his efforts in battle - and so on. He may even conceived of the proper motive which should energize back of his great deed: The service and the loyalty I owe, In doing it, pays itself. But while he destroys the king's enemies, such motives work but dimly at best and are obscured in his consciousness by more vigorous urges. In the main, as we have said, his nature violently demands rewards: he fights valiantly in order that he may be reported in such terms a "valour's minion" and "Bellona's bridegroom"' he values success because it brings spectacular fame and new titles and royal favor heaped upon him in public. Now so long as these mutable goods are at all commensurate with his inordinate desires - and such is the case, up until he covets the kingship - Macbeth remains an honorable gentleman. He is not a criminal; he has no criminal tendencies. But once permit his self-love to demand a satisfaction which cannot be honorably attained, and he is likely to grasp any dishonorable means to that end which may be safely employed. In other words, Macbeth has much of natural good in him unimpaired; environment has conspired with his nature to make him upright in all his dealings with those about him. But moral goodness in him is undeveloped and indeed still rudimentary, for his voluntary acts are scarcely brought into harmony with ultimate end. As he returns from victorious battle, puffed up with self-love which demands ever-increasing recognition of his greatness, the demonic forces of evil-symbolized by the Weird Sisters-suggest to his inordinate imagination the splendid prospect of attaining now the greatest mutable good he has ever desired. These demons in the guise of witches cannot read his inmost thoughts, but from observation of facial expression and other bodily manifestations they surmise with comparative accuracy what passions drive him and what dark desires await their fostering. Realizing that he wishes the kingdom, they prophesy that he shall be king. They cannot thus compel his will to evil; but they do arouse his passions and stir up a vehement and inordinate apprehension of the imagination, which so perverts the judgment of reason that it leads his will toward choosing means to the desired temporal good. Indeed his imagination and passions are so vivid under this evil impulse from without that "nothing is but what is not"; and his reason is so impeded that he judges, "These soliciting cannot be evil, cannot be good." Still, he is provided with so much natural good that he is able to control the apprehensions of his inordinate imagination and decides to take no step involving crime. His autonomous decision not to commit murder, however, is not in any sense based upon moral grounds. No doubt he normally shrinks from the unnaturalness of regicide; but he so far ignores ultimate ends that, if he could perform the deed and escape its consequences here upon this bank and shoal of time, he'd jump the life to come. Without denying him still a complexity of motives - as kinsman and subject he may possibly experience some slight shade of unmixed loyalty to the King under his roof-we may even say that the consequences which he fears are not at all inward and spiritual, It is to be doubted whether he has ever so far considered the possible effects of crime and evil upon the human soul-his later discovery of horrible ravages produced by evil in his own spirit constitutes part of the tragedy. Hi is mainly concerned, as we might expect, with consequences involving the loss of mutable goods which he already possesses and values highly. After the murder of Duncan, the natural good in him compels the acknowledgment that, in committing the unnatural act, he has filed his mind and has given his eternal jewel, the soul, into the possession of those demonic forces which are the enemy of mankind. He recognizes that the acts of conscience which torture him are really expressions of that outraged natural law, which inevitably reduced him as individual to the essentially human. This is the inescapable bond that keeps him pale, and this is the law of his own natural from whose exactions of devastating penalties he seeks release: Come, sealing night... And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale. He conceives that quick escape from the accusations of conscience may possibly be effected by utter extirpation of the precepts of natural law deposited in his nature. And he imagines that the execution of more bloody deeds will serve his purpose. Accordingly, then, in the interest of personal safety and in order to destroy the essential humanity in himself, he instigates the murder of Banquo. But he gains no satisfying peace because he's conscience still obliges him to recognize the negative quality of evil and the barren results of wicked action. The individual who once prized mutable goods in the form of respect and admiration from those about him, now discovers that even such evanescent satisfactions are denied him: And that which should accompany old age, As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but, in their stead, Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not. But the man is conscious of a profound abstraction of something far more precious that temporal goods. His being