“Macbeth” is a play that focuses on the rise and fall of a man struggling to get as much power as he can. This journey begins on a heath when Macbeth is hailed after as Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor and “King hereafter”. The most former is already a reality and the second swiftly becomes so. It is in the latter that Macbeth’s downfall lies. A bloody drama comprising of the murder of King Duncan, Macduff, his children and wife, Banquo and the horror of almost everyone else ensues.
It is often, therefore, suggested that the witches were instrumental in orchestrating this tragic sequence of events. Supporters of such a view would point to the fact that it is in the witches speeches that first mention of Macbeth gaining the Kingdom exists, that thereafter a considerable amount of discussion is taken up with how to bring about such a prediction, that on their second appearance and that when they again make predictions those too come to fruition or even that, by virtue of being supernatural, they have an unprecedented influence on characters. Such actualities of the play frequently lead audiences to, almost certainly incorrectly, believe that the play is composed out of a fabric of predestined and inevitable events. In short; that all characters' fates have been preordained by the witches.
In approaching this idea it is firstly important to remove from one’s mind any personal beliefs on fate, not least because such views are predominantly based on the all knowing goodness of a god-like character and here there is only Shakespeare and because, more obviously, Shakespeare needn’t have felt the same way. Secondly it is important to regard the nature of tragedy itself and how consistent and idea of fate is with that. This is important because in all other tragedies certain rules can be seen to be observed, ideas of form and of how a Shakespearian tragedy should progress. There is generally a tipping point during act three, after which the audience realises that the downfall of the hero is inevitable. The progression of plot is always through the medium of organic character traits. Each character, acting his part, in a way that is understandable to the audience, is part of the machine which delivers the foreseeable, terrible end. Indeed most all of the skill in dramatisation is connected in some way to the ability Shakespeare has of creating characters which behave this way, particularly in his crafting of the Heros. Afterall, these characters are required to do great and frightful deeds by the plays end, for such a thing to happen, and by the hand of a character the audience typically sympathises with: the character has to be one of abnormally extreme passion, unique, awe-inspiring. This greatness of being gives the tragic effect, produces a play that shows man something wonderful of himself. The ending of comic plays (which do not culminate in disaster) is largely testament to the fact that the characters therein have failed to reach what A.C. Bradley called “tragic dimensions”. Moreover, and as Bradley also points out, the end of the Merchant of Venice disappoints because it does not end in death and seems inconsistent with Shylock’s character. That is not to say that because other tragedies follow these loose formulae that Macbeth should too, only that it would be strange that it shouldn’t and that, if that was the case, one would assume the reason would be obvious. Moreover, one would assume that the audience might wince a little because the idea of “fate” in Macbeth would surely be destructive to any sense of tragedy. One would notice a lack of feeling, as is the case at the end of the Merchant of Venice, the pure evil of Iago and the improbability of the first actions of Lear.
If consistency with previous and established norms of form were not evidence enough then one could always look towards how the supernatural have influenced characters in other plays. In Hamlet, for example, the ghost always run in parallel to Hamlet, enhancing and highlighting the parts of his character that make him tragic, that lead to his depth. The ghost does not however, influence his will in anyway and it is his reaction to the ghost that moves the play forward. Its presence is seen to be influential but not controlling. Perhaps even influential is to give it too much credit for though Hamlet reacts to it he does so in a way not so different than the audience might expect of him, no different than he might, even, to other characters.
Bradley has “The prophecies of the Witches are presented simply as dangerous circumstances with which Macbeth has to deal: they are dramatically on the same level as the story of the Ghost in Hamlet, or the falsehoods told by Iago to Othello. Macbeth is, in the ordinary sense, perfectly free to regard them: and if we speak of degrees of freedom, he is even more free than Hamlet who was crippled by melancholy when the ghost appeared to him”
So to say that the witches are a supernatural influence and that, in itself, made them an exception would not be true. Indeed some critics have even gone as far as to suggest that the witches, at least in part, subscribe to traditional structure. In so far as, as a symbol of the beginning, they recur after the major turning point, usually around act three. As evidence of this there is the appearance of the ghost in Hamlet, during his visit to his mother’s chamber, the exile of King Lear mirroring the banishment of Cordelia and who can deny that the line “She has deceived her father, and may thee.” echoes in the audiences mind as Othello denounces Desdemona. This form summates the previous action by reminding of the beginning and readies the viewer for the final push towards the tragic end.
But analysis of form is helpful only to a point, not least because it relies on presidents set by previous works and approaching Macbeth with preconceptions. On examination of character, a stronger case can be built for the exclusion of fate from any considerations.
This assessment is best begun by probing Macbeth’s character. The initial contrast between him and Banquo is strong and is indicative of problems in Macbeth. He is startled upon hearing the witches predictions and seemingly ashamed to think of believing it (“Good sir, why do you start; and seem to fear/Things that do sound so fair?”). On learning of the truth in their prediction that he will be Thane of Cawdor, his thoughts turn instantly to the throne and how he might acquire that too.
I am thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.
These thoughts arrive with him instantaneously. Arguably, Macbeth’s earlier discomfort on hearing the witches’ predictions was a result of a guilty and ambitious heart, one which had already dreamt up, enjoyed and discarded the idea of royal murder. It is perhaps also a fear of a knowing self, a Macbeth aware of his weakness to ambition and of the likelihood that he might use the witches’ predictions as a mandate to achieve the outcome they predicted. There is also the “burned in desire to question them further”, in Macbeth’s letter to his wife, to be considered. Interestingly this letter is written in prose, a form which usually indicates either temporary mental incapacity or an unintelligent character. The argument could be made that Macbeth’s ambition was so disturbed by the witches that he temporarily lost his composure and articulation.
Coleridge has: Superstition, of one sort or another, is natural to victorious generals; the instances are too notorious to need mentioning. There is so much of chance in warfare, and such vast events are connected with the acts of a single individual,—the representative, in truth, of the efforts of myriads, and yet to the public and, doubtless, to his own feelings, the aggregate of all,—that the proper temperament for generating or receiving superstitious impres-sions is naturally produced. Hope, the master element of a commanding genius, meeting with an active and combining intellect, and an imagination of just that degree of vividness which disquiets and impels the soul to try to realize its images, greatly increases the creative power of the mind; and hence the images become a satisfying world of themselves
And yet no immediate change is seen in Banquo. Indeed, some argue whether the knowledge changed him at all. He answers the witches honestly and curiously, as if they were to him simply an oddity, a fortune teller at a fair. His retort to them comes across as part jibe part fascination.
My noble partner
You greet with present grace and great prediction
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,
Speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear
Your favours nor your hate.
Perhaps Macbeth's soliloquy at the outset of act one, scene seven is the most telling as to his hamartia. It is in this soliloquy where the battle between a basic humanity within himself and his own ambition is outlined. He opens with words implying a concession to his ambition
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success; that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here
But then quickly progresses onto the evil of such a deed, the basity.
He's here in double trust;
First, as I am his kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then, as his host,
Who should against his murderer shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan
Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
So clear in his great office, that his virtues
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against
The deep damnation of his taking-off;
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,
Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horsed
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,
That tears shall drown the wind.
The speech finally climaxes in perhaps the most important yielding of all his speeches, at least the most crucial to understanding his downfall. He concedes that, if he should kill Duncan, he cannot hope to justify it by any means other than to say he was ambitious. This kind of killing might seem particularly alien to both himself and the audience when contrasted with the recent battle, in which there was so much mention of honour and a sense of justice in action.
I have no spur
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself
And falls on the other.
It is in this state of consideration, of a weighing up of the evils of his intentions that Lady Macbeth arrives and begins chastising him. She jibes at him
Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely?
Yes, yes and yes. What Macbeth is fighting is the temptation that his ambition taunts him with. Though he never tied himself to carrying out the murder as much as Lady Macbeth wishes to persuade him he did hint that he would consent. After all, he could simply have exited refusing to talk any more about the idea but instead he left her with "We will speak further". When they first spoke on it they were closer to the time of the event, closer to the temptation, to the promise of the witches that it would come to be as he wished it; and how quickly he is bent back into familiarity with that temptation! Within thirty lines of his wife’s entry he questions “If we should fail”, the murder is almost done and twenty lines later he has entirely yielded to his temptation.
I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know
The difference in nature of the fall from grace which both Macbeth and wife are to suffer is hinted at by the contrast between the two. While both are spurred on by their own ambition Macbeth is markedly more intelligent, understanding, capable of realising at least some of the effect his actions might have; in short Macbeth is blatantly of tragic dimensions and Lady Macbeth is blatantly not. In their discourse Lady Macbeth focuses solely on the actualities of any plans she makes and considers her plans as if the future and the present are almost the same. As if the action required to turn one into another is slight. This is tied to the fact that she has very little conception of the effect her actions will have on both herself and her surroundings. Act one has “Thy letters have transported me beyond/This ignorant present, and I feel now/The future in the instant.”. Her initial seeming control is a façade, to Macbeth and to herself but the above line belies her later troubles. However, even in those, she is literal. Indeed, often times critics remark that what makes the sleep walking scene so haunting is how very literal it is, consisting only of echoes of the past, of actualities that were. It is the reality and not the hallucinations, as is so with her husband, that conveys to the audience her horror. She is not truly struggling against her ambition but propelled forward by it, unaware that her own humanity could not tolerate the actions she was to force herself through. Her ambition is blinding and in that blindness she gives something to the greatness of her husband. She contrasts with Macbeth who actively chooses his course, more aware of the consequences than his wife. It is this choice, this downfall, which propels him into tragic dimensions by drawing attention to the fact that he is conscience of wronging not just those he kills but part of himself. It is the inner most human part of him that is later to cause him such trouble and his realisation of this makes him the greater of his wife.
And yet, his wife was no more responsible than the witches for his actions. She acted merely as one who highlighted and played on specific and already prominent elements of his character, namely his ambition. Much of his later actions, including his hallucinations, can be best summarised as being a battle of his intellect and humanity struggling against his ambition. The eventual ending is heralded not by a return to a kind of normality, as could be said to be the case in other great tragedies, like Hamlet, King Lear or Othello but rather a decent into evil as ambition smothers and kills his protesting better instincts. An end that, perhaps even Macbeth suspected when he said
that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice
To our own lips.
That the witches’ second series of predictions also proved true is even more irrelevant than that the first did. Firstly they, again, did not force or beg any action of Macbeth any more than any other character could be said to do. They imply a knowledge of the future, but that is not the same as fate, afterall, to know a man will do something is not to make him do it. Even if one was to argue that to know a man will do something is for the point to be fixed and inevitable, it would be of little relevance, Shakespeare did not write Macbeth for students of metaphysics. Second, and to answer the metaphysicists, their predictions were of situations, not actions. Their prediction of the movement of the wood, for example, or that Macbeth would be killed by a man who was not of natural birth has nothing to do with fate and everything to do with producing a sense of horror and inevitability. Not inevitability in the sense that the events are predestined but rather, that Macbeth and his ambition have set out on a course that through his movements terrible and horrible consequences seem imminent. And that is the subtle but defining difference between fate and tragedy, that in one events follow a strict path and in the other events, created organically, by a character of great merit, lead to a situation whereby, because of the audience’s knowledge of that character, there appears no way out.This can be seen to be the case in Macbeth, where he is at first contrasted with Banquo as harbouring a great fear of his ambition, which progresses onto a doubting and a recognition that the deed is evil. But his ambition is too strong and Lady Macbeth catches him in the heat of its hold on him and weakens Macbeth to thoughts and desires that, at their most basic level, are his own. It is after this movement that Macbeth’s flaw becomes so much more recognisable and the likely hood that his world will crumble around him ever more likely, ever more inevitable. And should the sum of the above fail to convince, there is the fact that Macbeth actively sought out the witches to be considered. How strange it would be to suggest that one would have to seek out one’s own fate!
To conclude, it would be a grave error to assume that because a good case can be made to suggest that the tragic nature of other works would have been compromised by fate the same must follow for Macbeth. However, having examined the text the witches have been shown to be influential but not instrumental in the actions of Macbeth. His reaction to the witches was actively contrasted with that of Banquo throughout act one. This was suggestive of a familiarity with the idea of becoming King through foul play. The idea of a Macbeth torn between his ambition and his better nature is furthered by his discussion with his wife. Indeed it is his spouse that is most important in bending him back into familiarity with his ambition and encouraging him to ignore the protest of his conscience.
And yet, even his wife’s influence extends only so far. Only so much of Macbeth’s actions can be said to be caused by the influence of the outside world, let alone predetermined by it! Despite sharing his wife’s ambition his approach to it and at least partial understanding of the wrong doing it implies is much greater than Lady Macbeth’s. It is the fact that his is a conscience choice that elevates him above his wife, creates a fantastic platform from which to further develop a character of admirably tragic dimensions. Most importantly, these distinctions prove that much of Macbeth’s action was down to his own choice and he was not controlled by any foreign agent.