MACBETH AND LADY MACBETH.-A STUDY.

BY ALICE E. CARTER, FRANKLIN, MASS.

A child may gaze in wide-eyed wonder at the sea. Its deep blue, its madly-leaping waves, its long, white ripples on the sand may delight him. If a lavish tide lay at his feet tinted shells and rounded pebbles,—if only one of either, that is his portion; but to affirm what elements compose the mass, to sound its depths, and tell of its resources, and explain its mysteries of motion, are for the scientist. So the simple student may read with wondering enjoyment this great tragedy, Macbeth, but it is not for his own wisdom to determine its natal day, nor to decide how much of it is from Shakespeare's own hand, and how much from contemporary assistants or later revisers. Neither is it for him to criticise wisely the plot and action, nor to dilate upon its words and phrases. His portion is that which his mind can as easily grasp and hold, as the tiny palm of the child can clasp the shell. The characters of the play, then, are the student's rich portion. Schlegel has said, "Earnestness is the essence of tragic representation." He also says, "Earnestness is the direction of our mental powers to some aim." Because of her earnestness, Lady Macbeth is the most tragic character of this play.

There seem to be as many Lady Macbeths as there are critics upon this tragedy, since each one has, in words, painted her unlike any other one's representation, and no one wholly like the original,— Shakespeare's portrait of her. Would it be possible for a student who had never read the play to conceive what she must have been, were he to read all the critics? The Germans would exalt her into a character of rare virtue; the French would pronounce her a depraved woman. One represents her as the tempted, the other as the tempter, in the crime which darkens this tragedy. Not long since one woman exclaimed, "Lady Macbeth! what a villainous character!" Yet no woman-critic has yet condemned her as wholly unworthy. Some one has recently proved by logic that the muchslandered Xantippe was an amiable and docile spouse. Surely, only by some syllogism could Lady Macbeth be proved less than an accessory to a terrible crime. It is not attempted to prove her an innocent woman, but to urge all who analyze her character to gaze as long at the good in it as at the evil.

Involuntarily the wish comes that the poet had told us the exact ages of this ambitious pair, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and had given us some hint of their personal appearance. Would it not help us to better understand them? Freisen, a German author, argues very reasonably that they were "not at all advanced in age." Mrs. Jameson pictures Lady Macbeth as an exception, in personal appearance, to the Celtic race. Mrs. Siddons imagines her a delicate blonde beauty. Bucknil pleases to call her "a tawny, blonde Rachael, with gray eyes," and adds, “Probably she was small, for it is the smaller sort of women whose emotional fire is most fierce." Campbell, however, called her "a sister of Milton's Lucifer, externally majestic and beautiful.” All this proves that each one may have his own ideal.

Before my eyes Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand pictured thus forever: He, a stalwart Scotch soldier, of noble physique, just in early manhood she, in early womanhood, wondrously beautiful externally, of that type of beauty which inspires passionate love in a man like Macbeth; viz., a petite, lithe figure, whose every attitude and motion display a nameless grace; her Celtic ancestry gives her fair hair; her face possesses that cold, white beauty which repels while it attracts. Her eyes are dark blue, fascinating, treacherous, cruel, before their gaze one quails. Macbeth loves her ardently. Her's is a cold nature, kindled into its only possible warmth by the power of his love toward her. All the affection of which she is capable she gives to him, and in it she is constant. His fierce love burns out to the ashes of selfishness. In the heart of each lies innate ambition, the dominant passion in each. It is a fateful bond of sympathy. Circumstances over which, as free and responsible beings, they have a certain control, press upon them. Instead of resisting their temptation they yield, and terrible events follow.

The circumstances are: for Macbeth a prophetic salutation by the "wierd sisters," immediate office, and the honor of the king's visit. The events that follow: murder, sovereignty, remorse, and retribution for each; insanity and self-destruction (probably) for her; defeat and death for him.

Says Lamartine, "Such is Macbeth! It is crime! It is remorse! It is the weakness of a strong man opposed to the seductions of a perverted and passionate woman." Rather, would we say, it is the weakness of a cowardly and selfish man whose insatiable ambition alone is his ruin and hers. The guilt of conceiving the idea of the murder is not hers, and the guilt of the deed, Macbeth's alone. We have the play itself for authority in this assertion. Murder has

been in his thought long before his meeting with the witches; there is nothing in their words to suggest a crime, but rather to withhold from it. "All hail, Macbeth! that shalt be king hereafter," they say. Guiltily he starts; then becomes oblivious of all surroundings. broods over the prophecy.

"If Chance will have me king, why Chance may crown me,

Without my stir,"

he exclaimed one hour; but in another,

"Stars, hide your fires,

Let not light see my black and deep desires."

He

Then he writes to his wife,-and in this fragment of a letter the poet gives us the key that unlocks the secret purpose of Macbeth's heart:

"This have I thought good to deliver to thee, my dearest partner of greatness, that thou mightest not lose the dues of rejoicing by being ignorant of what greatness is promised thee."

To me the sound is, "What greatness I promise thee." Previous to this letter he has surely in some way revealed to her the blackness of his heart, for later, in anger at his fickleness, she exclaims:

"What beast was it, then,

That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man."

These are very significant words. Do they not point to some preceding plan of his, which the poet, with true art, does not otherwise. make manifest? The origin of the crime is in the heart of Macbeth, and, yet, had there been no Lady Macbeth he would, though he dallied with the knife, have used it at last. We know the impression of this letter on Lady Macbeth:

"Glamis thou art! and Cawdor! and shalt
be king hereafter."

she exclaims, and from this moment dates her share in the crime. Wretched captives to ambition, bound by the same chain, one cannot go forward nor backward now without dragging the other! It is not that she is more desirous of the throne than is Macbeth; not that she is inured to wickedness; not because of her great love for her husband; but because of the oneness of their ambition, and her greater earnestness, that she instantly prepares for action. Macbeth, her lord, has already pointed out the path to power, it will lead over the

body of their king, but that matters not. A strange thing happens. From this moment the fate of Duncan is in her hands. It is she who leads, and Macbeth who follows as a creeping shadow. Behold how markedly self-reliant she is!

"Hie thee hither! that I may pour my spirits in thine ear,
And chastise with the valor of my tongue."

She towers above him in superiority of intellect. This is one reason of her influence over him. Knowing his consuming desire, her firm mind having once determined to attain the crown with her husband, her spirit of resolution makes her dare anything. With her perseverance, there is no thought of retracing her steps. "If we fail?" asks Macbeth, once, trembling. "We fail!" comes promptly, with superb scorn.

She lacks in her

There is nothing to hold her back from crime. nature any touch of piety; she is utterly devoid of superstition; for her there is only a conflict between her ambition and her womanliWhat else is shown in her flerce soliloquy? When she has once steeled herself, there remains only the task of continually bringing back to his purpose her fickle husband.

ness.

His seems the finer

On the other hand, let us glance at Macbeth. nature, and hence is more susceptible to temptations of any kind. It is like an Æolian harp,-responsive to the lightest breath of fair or foul influence. It is almost impossible to define his traits of character. They are like kaleideoscopic bits: in different poises the grouping differs. In battle he is brave, but before an hallucination of his own brain, despicably weak. Now he is loving and tender; again, cold hearted and selfish, He is imbued with darkest superstition, possesses a "fatally facile imagination," and a surface-show of religious feeling. So he vacillates, and, as it were, plays with the dagger that he fears to use. There is no conscience in his dalliance, but only dread of possible consequences to himself when the Each word betrays this.

the miserable
deed is done.

If we look closely into all the actions of the two, we shall be led

to believe in their youth. Duncan comes to the castle of Macbeth. With indiscretion in word and action, the treacherous hosts hurry to the execution of their fell purpose. He gives Banquo cause to suspect him; she almost betrays her purpose to the messenger Their hospitality to the king is overdone. Macbeth leaves the supper-room, causing inquiry to be made for him; together they agree upon the signal of a bell for the moment to commit the crime at which we shudder; he kills the chamberlains; she faints in the hour of discovery. All this seems to prove their inexperience in crime.

Through all these terrible scenes, whose horror the poet has deepened by so much of the supernatural, Macbeth leans upon his wife, is inspired with courage by her taunts, unconsciously learns from her dissimilation and self-control,-of which he makes use later,—and, in terror after the deed, is soothed by her calm.

But behold his selfishness! On the morrow succeeding this night of horror comes the discovery. The physical strength of the man is not affected by the severe mental strain. It is otherwise with the woman. From the moment of unnatural excitement when she invoked the aid of the "spirits that tend on mortal thoughts" until that of discovery, there has been no respite for her. The cord, too long and too tensely strained, snaps,—the bow is useless.

"Look to the lady!" cries Macbeth. Is he too cowardly or too selfish to support her now? Were it possible to believe Lady Macbeth an Amazon in stature and strength, endowed with a mind gross enough to accord with such a body, then her fainting could not be real,-must be feigned. Then to believe in her subsequent insanity, which assumes such a delicate nervous organization as would ill compare with a mass of bones and flesh, one must believe her womanish. swoon genuine.

Very soon we find the remorseless Macbeth plotting for the "taking off" of Banquo. Ah! surely it was not the sin, but the odium of the deed that had daunted him. A thrall to ambition, cruelty is his only service now! This second crime is easier; he needs not a woman to help him, but can use a woman's arguments to hired murderers! Is it wholly policy, or only cowardice, that prevents him from taking with his own hand Banquo's life?

But Lady Macbeth, we hear one sigh in secret from her: "Naught's had; all's spent." Is not this incipient remorse? Macbeth breaks in upon her discontent, and in a flash her tone is changed to light bantering of her husband. Call it affection, or pride, or a subtle fear of him,-whichever emotion it may be,- is she not at this moment a womanly woman?