VI.

Tantalising mockery in Richard's fate.From this point fate never ceases to tantalise and mock Richard. He engages in his measures of defence, and with their villainy his spirits begin to recover:iv.iii. 38.The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom,And Anne my wife hath bid the world good night;young Elizabeth is to be his next victim, andTo her I go, a jolly thriving wooer.comp. 49.iv.iii. 45.Suddenly the Nemesis appears again with the news that Ely, the shrewd bishop he dreads most of all men, is with Richmond, and that Buckingham has raised an army. Again, his defence is completing, and the wooing of Elizabeth—his masterpiece, since it is the second of its kind—has been brought to an issue that deserves his surprised exultation:iv.iv. 431.Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman!Suddenly the Nemesis again interrupts him, and this time is nearer: a puissant navy has actually appeared on the west. And now his equanimity begins at last to be disturbed.His equanimity affected.He storms at Catesby for not starting, forgetting that he has given him no message to take.iv.iv. 444-540.More than this, a little further onRichard changes his mind! Through the rest of the long scene destiny is openly playing with him, giving him just enough hope to keep the sense of despair warm. Messenger follows messenger in hot haste: Richmond is on the seas—Courtenay has risen in Devonshire—the Guildfords are up in Kent.—But Buckingham's army is dispersed—ButYorkshire has risen.—But, a gleam of hope, the Breton navy is dispersed—a triumph, Buckingham is taken.—Then, finally, Richmond has landed! The suspense is telling upon Richard. In this scene he strikes a messenger before he has time to learn that he brings good tidings.v.iii. 2, 5, 8, &c.When we next see him he wears a forced gaiety and scolds his followers into cheerfulness; but with the gaiety go sudden fits of depression:Here will I lie to-night;But where to-morrow?v.iii, from 47.A little later he becomes nervous, and we have the minute attention to details of the man who feels that his all depends upon one cast; he will not sup, but calls for ink and paper to plan the morrow's fight, he examines carefully as to his beaver and his armour, selects White Surrey to ride, and at last calls for wine andconfessesa change in himself:I have not that alacrity of spirit,Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have.Climax of Richard's fate: significance of the apparitions.Then comes night, and with it the full tide of Nemesis. By the device of the apparitions the long accumulation of crimes in Richard's rise are made to have each its due representation in his fall. It matters not that they are only apparitions.v.iii, from 118.Nemesis itself is the ghost of sin: its sting lies not in the physical force of the blow, but in the closeconnectionbetween a sin and its retribution. So Richard's victims rise from the dead only to secure that the weight of each several crime shall lie heavy on his soul in the morrow's doom. This point moreover must not be missed—that the climax of his fate comes to Richard in hissleep.Significance of Richard's sleep.The supreme conception of resistance to Deity is reached when God is opposed by God's greatest gift, the freedom of the will. God, so it is reasoned, is omnipotent, but God has made man omnipotent in setting no bounds to his will; and God's omnipotence to punish may be met by man's omnipotence to endure. Such is the ancient conception of Prometheus,and such are the reasonings Milton has imagined for his Satan: to whom, though heaven be lost,All is not lost, the unconquerable will ...And courage never to submit or yield.But when that strange bundle of greatness and littleness which makes up man attempts to oppose with such weapons the Almighty, how is he to provide for those states in which the will is no longer the governing force in his nature; for the sickness, in which the mind may have to share the feebleness of the body, or for the daily suspension of will in sleep? Richard can to the last preserve his will from faltering. But, like all the rest of mankind, he must some time sleep: that which is the refuge of the honest man, when he may relax the tension of daily care, sleep, is to Richard his point of weakness, when the safeguard of invincible will can protect him no longer. It is, then, this weak moment which a mocking fate chooses for hurling upon Richard the whole avalanche of his doom; as he starts into the frenzy of his half-waking soliloquy we see him, as it were, tearing off layer after layer of artificial reasonings with which the will-struggles of a lifetime have covered his soul against the touch of natural remorse. With full waking his will is as strong as ever: but meanwhile his physical nature has been shattered to its depths, and it is only the wreck of Richard that goes to meet his death on Bosworth Field.Remaining stages of the fall.There is no need to dwell on the further stages of the fall: to the last the tantalising mockery continues.v.iii. 303.Richard's spirits rise with the ordering of the battle, and there comes the mysterious scroll to tell him he is bought and sold.v.iii. 342.His spirits rise again as the fight commences, and news comes of Stanley's long feared desertion.v.iv. 11.Five times in the battle he has slain his foe, and five times it proves a false Richmond. Thus slowly the cup is drained to its last dregs and Richard dies.i.i, from 1.The play opened with the picture of peace, the peace which led Richard's turbid soul, no longer finding scope inphysical warfare, to turn to the moral war of villainy; from that point through all the crowded incidents has raged the tumultuous battle between Will and Nemesis; with Richard's death it ceases, and the play may return to its keynote:v.v. 40.Now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again.VI.How Nemesis and Destiny are interwoven in Macbeth.A further Study in Plot.Macbeth as a study of subtlety in Plot.Thepresent study, like the last, is a study in Plot. The last illustrated Shakespeare's grandeur of conception, how a single principle is held firm amidst the intricacies of history, and reiterated in every detail. The present purpose is to give an example of Shakespeare'ssubtlety, and to exhibit the incidents of a play bound together not by one,Its threefold action.but by three, distinct threads of connection—or, if a technical term may be permitted, three Forms of Dramatic Action—all working harmoniously together into a design equally involved and symmetrical. One of these forms is Nemesis; the other two are borrowed from the ancient Drama: it thus becomes necessary to digress for a moment, in order to notice certain differences between the ancient and modern Drama, and between the ancient and modern thought of which the Drama is the expression.In the passage from ancient to modern, Destiny changes into Providence.In the ancient Classical Drama the main moral idea underlying its action is the idea of Destiny. The ancient world recognised Deity, but their deities were not supreme in the universe; Zeus had gained his position by a revolution, and in his turn was to be overthrown by revolution; there was thus, in ancient conception, behind Deity a yet higher force to which Deity itself was subject. The supreme force of the universe has by a school of modern thought been defined as a stream of tendency in things not ourselves makingfor righteousness: if we attempt to adapt this formula to the ideas of antiquity the difficulty will be in finding anything to substitute for the word 'righteousness.' Sometimes the sum of forces in the universe did seem, in the conception of the ancients, to make for righteousness, and Justice became the highest law. At other times the world seemed to them governed by a supernatural Jealousy, and human prosperity was struck down for no reason except that it was prosperity. In such philosophy as that of Lucretius, again, the tendency of all things was towards Destruction; while in the handling of legends such as that of Hippolytus there is a suggestion of a dark interest to ancient thought in conceiving Evil itself as an irresistible force. It appears, then, that the ancient mind had caught the idea offorcein the universe, without adding to it the further idea of a motive by which that force was guided:blindfate was the governing power over all other powers. With this simple conception of force as ruling the world, modern thought has united as a motive righteousness or law: the transition from ancient to modern thought may be fairly described by saying that Destiny has become changed into Providence as the supreme force of the universe.The change reflected in ancient and modern Nemesis.The change may be well illustrated by comparing the ancient and modern conception of Nemesis. To ancient thought Nemesis was simply one phase of Destiny; the story of Polycrates has been quoted in a former study to illustrate how Nemesis appeared to the Greek mind as capricious a deity as Fortune, a force that might at any time, heedless of desert, check whatever happiness was high enough to attract its attention. But in modern ideas Nemesis and justice are strictly associated: Nemesis may be defined as the artistic side of justice.So far as Nemesis then is concerned, it has, in modern thought, passed altogether out of the domain of Destiny and been absorbed into the domain of law: it is thus fitted to be one of the regular forms into which human history may berepresented as falling, in harmony with our modern moral conceptions. But even as regards Destiny itself, while the notion as a whole is out of harmony with the modern notion of law and Providence as ruling forces of the world, yet certain minor phases of Destiny as conceived by antiquity have survived into modern times and been found not irreconcilable with moral law.Nemesis and Destiny interwoven in the plot of Macbeth.Two of these minor phases of Destiny are, it will be shown, illustrated inMacbeth: and we may thus take as a general description of its plot, the interweaving of Destiny with Nemesis.The whole plot a Nemesis Action,That the career of Macbeth is an example of Nemesis needs only to be stated. As in the case ofRichard III, we have the rise and fall of a leading personage; the rise is a crime of which the fall is the retribution. Nemesis has just been defined as the artistic aspect of justice; we have in previous studies seen different artistic elements in different types of Nemesis. Sometimes, as with Richard III, the retribution becomes artistic through its sureness; its long delay renders the effect of the blow more striking when it does come.of the type of equality.More commonly the artistic element in Nemesis consists in the perfect equality between the sin and its retribution; and of the latter type the Nemesis in the play ofMacbethis perhaps the most conspicuous illustration. The rise and fall of Macbeth, to borrow the illustration of Gervinus, constitute a perfect arch, with a turning-point in the centre. Macbeth's series of successes is unbroken till it ends in the murder of Banquo; his series of failures is unbroken from its commencement in the escape of Fleance. Success thus constituting the first half and failure the second half of the play, the transition from the one to the other is the expedition against Banquo and Fleance, in which success and failure are mingled:iii.iii.and this expedition, the keystone to the arch, is found to occupy the exact middle of the middle Act.But this is not all: not only the play as a whole is anexample of nemesis, but if its two halves be taken separately they will be found to constitute each a nemesis complete in itself.The rise of Macbeth a separate Nemesis action.To begin with the first half, that which is occupied with the rise of Macbeth. If the plan of the play extended no further than to make the hero's fall the retribution upon his rise, it might be expected that the turning-point of the action would be reached upon Macbeth's elevation to the throne. As a fact, however, Macbeth's rise does not stop here; he still goes on to win one more success in his attempt upon the life of Banquo. What the purpose of this prolonged flow of fortune is will be seen when it is considered that this final success of the hero is in reality the source of his ruin. In Macbeth's progress to the attainment of the crown, while of course it was impossible that crimes so violent as his should not incur suspicion, yet circumstances had strangely combined to soothe these suspicions to sleep. But—so Shakespeare manipulates the story—when Macbeth, seated on the throne, goes on to the attempt against Banquo, this additional crime not only brings its own punishment, but has the further effect of unmasking the crimes that have gone before. This important point in the plot is brought out to us in a scene, specially introduced for the purpose, in which Lennox and another lord represent the opinion of the court.iii.vi. i.Lennox.My former speeches have but hit your thoughts,Which can interpret further: only, I say,Things have been strangely borne. The gracious DuncanWas pitied of Macbeth: marry, he was dead:And the right-valiant Banquo walk'd too late;Whom, you may say, if't please you, Fleance kill'd,For Fleance fled: men must not walk too late.Who cannot want the thought how monstrousIt was for Malcolm and for DonalbainTo kill their gracious father? damned fact!How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straightIn pious rage the two delinquents tear,That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep?Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too;For 'twould have anger'd any heart aliveTo hear the men deny't. So that, I say,He has borne all things well: and I do thinkThat had he Duncan's sons under his key—As, an't please heaven, he shall not—they should findWhat 'twere to kill a father; so should Fleance.Under the bitter irony of this speech we can see clearly enough that Macbeth has been exposed by hisseriesof suspicious acts; he has 'done all things well;' and in particular by peculiar resemblances between this last incident of Banquo and Fleance and the previous incident of Duncan and his son. It appears then that Macbeth's last successful crime proves the means by which retribution overtakes all his other crimes; the latter half of the play is needed to develop the steps of the retribution, but, in substance, Macbeth's fall is latent in the final step of his rise. Thus the first half of the play, that which traces the rise of Macbeth, is a complete Nemesis Action—a career of sins in which the last sin secures the punishment of all.The fall of Macbeth a separate Nemesis Action.The same reasoning applies to the latter half of the play: the fall of Macbeth not only serves as the retribution for his rise, but further contains in itself a crime and its nemesis complete. What Banquo is to the first half of the play Macduff is to the latter half; the two balance one another as, in the play ofJulius Cæsar, Cæsar himself is balanced by Antony; and Macduff comes into prominence upon Banquo's death as Antony upon the fall of Cæsar. Now Macduff, when he finally slays Macbeth, is avenging not only Scotland, but also his own wrongs; and the tyrant's crime against Macduff, with its retribution, just gives unity to the second half of the play, in the way in which the first half was made complete by the association between Macbeth and Banquo,iii.i. 57-72.from their joint encounter with the Witches on to the murder of Banquo as a consequence of the Witches' prediction. Accordingly we find that no sooner has Macbeth, by the appearance of theGhost at the banquet, realised the turn of fate, than his first thoughts are of Macduff:iii.iv. 128.Macbeth.How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his personAt our great bidding?Lady M.Did you send to him, sir?Macbeth.I hear it by the way; but I will send.When the Apparitions bid Macbeth 'beware Macduff,' he answers,iv.i. 74.Thou hast harp'd my fear aright!iv.i, from 139.On the vanishing of the Apparition Scene, the first thing that happens is the arrival of news that Macduff has fled to England, and is out of his enemy's power; then Macbeth's bloody thoughts devise a still more cruel purpose of vengeance to be taken on the fugitive's family.Time, thou anticipatest my dread exploits:The flighty purpose never is o'ertookUnless the deed go with it....The castle of Macduff I will surprise;Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the swordHis wife, his babes, and all unfortunate soulsThat trace him in his line.iv.ii, iii.In succeeding scenes we have this diabolical massacre carried out, and see the effect which the news of it has in rousing Macduff to his revenge;v.vii. 15.until in the final scene of all he feels that if Macbeth is slain and by no stroke of his, his wife and children's ghosts will for ever haunt him. Thus Macduff's function in the play is to be the agent not only of the grand nemesis which constitutes the whole plot, but also of a nemesis upon a private wrong which occupies the latter half of the play. And, putting our results together, we find that a Nemesis Action is the description alike of the whole plot and of the rise and fall which are its two halves.The Oracular as one phase of Destiny: its partial revelation.With Nemesis is associated in the play ofMacbethDestiny in two distinct phases. The first of these isthe Oracular. In ancient thought, as Destiny was the supreme governor of the universe, so oracles were the revelation of Destiny; and thusthe term 'the Oracles of God' is appropriately applied to the Bible as the Christian revelation. With the advent of Christianity the oracles became dumb. But the triumph of Christianity was for centuries incomplete; heathen deities were not extirpated, but subordinated to the supernatural personages of the new religion;A minor form of the Oracular in modern oracular beings.and the old oracles declined into oracular beings such as witches and wizards, and oracular superstitions, such as magic mirrors, dreams, apparitions—all means of dimly revealing hidden destiny. Shakespeare is never wiser than the age he is pourtraying; and accordingly he has freely introduced witches and apparitions into the machinery ofMacbeth, though in the principles that govern the action of this, as of all his other plays, he is true to the modern notions of Providence and moral law.The Oracular Action: Destiny working from mystery to clearness;An oracle and its fulfilment make up a series of events eminently fitted to constitute a dramatic interest; and no form of ancient Drama and Story is more common than this of the 'Oracular Action.' Its interest may be formulated as Destiny working from mystery to clearness. At the commencement of an oracular story the fated future is revealed indeed, but in a dress of mystery, as when the Athenians are bidden to defend themselves with only wooden walls; but as the story of Themistocles develops itself, the drift of events is throwing more and more light on to the hidden meaning of the oracle, until by the naval victory over the Persians the oracle is at once clear and fulfilled.The Oracular Action is so important an element in plot, that it may be worth while to prolong the consideration of it by noting the three principal varieties into which it falls, all of which are illustrated in the play ofMacbeth. In each case the interest consists in tracing the working of Destiny out of mystery into clearness: the distinction between the varieties depends upon the agency by which Destiny works, and the relation of this agency to the original oracle.(1)by the agency of blind obedience;In the first variety Destiny is fulfilled by the agency of blind obedience.The Spartans, unfortunate in their war with the Messenians, enquire of an oracle, and receive the strange response that they must apply for a general to the Athenians, their hereditary enemies. But they resolve to obey the voice of Destiny, though to all appearance they obey at their peril; and the Athenians mock them by selecting the most unfit subject they can find—a man whose bodily infirmities had excluded him from the military exercises altogether. Yet in the end the faith of the Spartans is rewarded. It had been no lack of generalship that had caused their former defeats, but discord and faction in their ranks; now Tyrtæus turned out to be a lyric poet, whose songs roused the spirit of the Spartans and united them as one man, and when united, their native military talent led them to victory. Thus in its fulfilment the hidden meaning of the oracle breaks out into clearness: and blind obedience to the oracle is the agency by which it has been fulfilled.(2)by the agency of free will;In the second variety the oracle is fulfilled by the agency of indifference and free will: it is neither obeyed nor disobeyed, but ignored. One of the best illustrations is to be found in the plot of Sir Walter Scott's novel,The Betrothed. Its heroine, more rational than her age, resists the family tradition that would condemn her to sleep in the haunted chamber; overborne, however, by age and authority, she consents, and the lady of the bloody finger appears to pronounce her doom:Widow'd wife, and wedded maid;Betrothed, Betrayer, and Betrayed.This seems a mysterious destiny for a simple and virtuous girl. The faithful attendant Rose declares in a burst of devotion that betrayed her mistress may be, but betrayer never; the heroine herself braces her will to dismiss the foreboding from her thoughts, and resolves that she will not be influenced by it on the one side or on the other. Yet it all comes about. Gratitude compels her to give her hand to the elderlyConstable, who on the very day of betrothal is summoned away to the Crusade, from which, as it appears, he is never to return, leaving his spouse at once a widowed wife and a wedded maid. In the troubles of that long absence, by a perfectly natural series of events, gratitude again leads the heroine to admit to her castle her real deliverer and lover in order to save his life, and in protecting him amidst strange circumstances of suspicion to bid defiance to all comers. Finally the castle is besieged by the royal armies, and the heroine has to hear herself proclaimed a traitor by the herald of England; from this perplexity a deliverance is found only when her best friend saves her by betraying the castle to the king. So every detail in the unnatural doom has been in the most natural manner fulfilled: and the woman by whose action it has been fulfilled has been all the while maintaining the freedom of her will and persistently ignoring the oracle.(3)by the agency of opposing will.But the supreme interest of the Oracular Action is reached when the oracle is fulfilled by an agency that has all the while set itself to oppose and frustrate it. A simple illustration of this is seen in the Eastern potentate who, in opposition to a prophecy that his son should be killed by a lion, forbad the son to hunt, but heaped upon him every other indulgence. In particular he built him a pleasure-house, hung with pictures of hunting and of wild beasts, on which all that art could do was lavished to compensate for the loss of the forbidden sport. One day the son, chafing at his absence from the manly exercise in which his comrades were at that moment engaged, wandered through his pleasure-house, until, stopping at a magnificent picture of a lion at bay, he began to apostrophise it as the source of his disgrace, and waxing still more angry, drove his fist through the picture. A nail, hidden behind the canvas entered his hand; the wound festered, and he died. So the measures taken to frustrate the destiny proved the means of fulfilling it. But in this third variety of the Oracular Action the classical illustration is thestory of Œdipus: told fully, it presents three examples woven together. Laius of Thebes learns from an oracle that the son about to be born to him is destined to be his murderer; accordingly he refuses to rear the child, and it is cast out to perish. A herdsman, Polybus, takes pity on the infant, carries it away to Corinth, and brings it up in secret. In due time this Œdipus becomes weary of the humble life of his supposed father; quitting Corinth, he seeks advice of the oracle as to his future career, and receives the startling response that he is destined to slay his own father. Resolved to frustrate so terrible a fate, he will not return to Corinth, but, as it happens,takes the road to Thebes, where he falls in accidentally with Laius, and, in ignorance of his person, quarrels with him and slays him. Now if Laius had not resisted the oracle by casting out the infant, it would have grown up like other sons, and every probability would have been against his committing so terrible a crime as parricide. Again, if Polybus had not by his removal to Corinth sought to keep the child in ignorance of his fate, he would have known the person of Laius and spared him. Once more, if Œdipus had not, in opposition to the oracle, avoided his supposed home, Corinth, he would never have gone to Thebes and fallen in with his real father. Three different persons acting separately seek to frustrate a declared destiny, and their action unites in fulfilling it.The plot ofMacbeth, both as a whole and in its separate parts, is constructed upon this form of the Oracular Action, in combination with the form of Nemesis. The play deals with the rise and fall of Macbeth: the rise, and the fall, and again the two taken together, present each of them an example of an Oracular Action.The rise of Macbeth an Oracular Action,Firstly, the former half of the play, the rise of Macbeth, taken by itself, consists in an oracle and its fulfilment—the Witches' promise of the crown and the gradual steps by which the crown is attained. Amongst the three varieties of the Oracular Action we havejust distinguished, the present example wavers between the first and the second.varying between the second and first type.After his first excitement has passed away, Macbeth resolves that he will have nothing to do with the temptation that lurked in the Witches' words; in his disjointed meditation we hear him saying:i.iii. 143.If chance will have me king, why chance may crown meWithout my stir;and again:i.iii. 146.Come what come may,Time and the hour runs through the roughest day;in which last speech the very rhyming may, according to Shakespeare's subtle usage, be pointed to as marking a mind made up. So far then we appear to be following an Oracular Action of the second type, that of indifference and ignoring. But in the very next scene the proclamation of a Prince of Cumberland—that is, of an heir-apparent like our Prince of Wales—takes away Macbeth's 'chance':i.iv. 48.Macb.[Aside]. The prince of Cumberland! that is a stepOn which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,For in my way it lies.He instantly commits himself to the evil suggestion, and thus changes the type of action to the first variety, that in which the oracle is fulfilled by the agency of obedience.The fall an Oracular Action of the first type.Similarly Macbeth's fall, taken by itself, constitutes an Oracular Action, consisting as it does of the ironical promises by the Apparitions which the Witches raise for Macbeth on his visit to them, and the course of events by which these promises are fulfilled. Its type is a highly interesting example of the first variety, that of blind obedience.iv.i. 71-100.The responses of the Apparitions lay down impossible conditions, and as long as these conditions are unfulfilled Macbeth is to be secure; he will fall only when one not born of woman shall be his adversary, only when Birnam Wood shall come to Dunsinane. Macbeth trusts blindly to these promises; further he obeys them, so far as a man can be said to obeyan oracle which enjoins no command: he obeys in the sense of relying on them, and making that reliance his ground of action. But this reliance of Macbeth on the ironical promises is an agency in fulfilling them in their real meaning.iv.i. 144-156.In his reckless confidence he strikes out right and left, and amongst others injures one to whom the description 'not born of woman' applies. In his reliance on the Apparitions he proceeds, when threatened by the English, toshut himself up in Dunsinane Castle; but for this fact the English army would not have approached Dunsinane Castle by the route of Birnam Wood, and the incident of the boughs would never have taken place. Thus Macbeth's fate was made to depend upon impossibilities: by his action in reliance on these impossibilities he is all the while giving them occasion to become possible. In this way an ironical oracle comes to be fulfilled by the agency of blind obedience.The whole plot an Oracular Action of the third type.Thirdly, the rise and fall of Macbeth are so linked together as to constitute the whole plot another example of the Oracular Action.i.iii. 48-50, 62-66.The original oracle given by the Witches on the blasted heath was a double oracle: besides the promise of the thaneships and the crown there was another revelation of destiny, that Banquo was to be lesser than Macbeth and yet greater, that he was to get kings though to be none. In this latter half of the oracle is found the link which binds together the rise and fall of Macbeth. When the first half of the Witches' promise has been fulfilled in his elevation to the throne, Macbeth sets himself to prevent the fulfilment of the second half by his attempt upon Banquo and Fleance. Now we have already seen how this attempt has the effect of drawing attention, not only to itself, but also to Macbeth's other crimes, and proves indeed the foundation of his ruin. Had Macbeth been content with the attainment of the crown, all might yet have been well: the addition of just one more precaution renders all the rest vain. It appears, then, that thatwhich binds together the rise and the fall, that which makes the fall the retribution upon the rise, is the expedition against the Banquo family; and the object of this crime is to frustrate the second part of the Witches' oracle. So the original oracle becomes the motive force to the whole play, setting in motion alike the rise and fall of the action. The figure of the whole plot we have taken as a regular arch; its movement might be compared to that terrible incident of mining life known as 'overwinding,' in which the steam engine pulls the heavy cage from the bottom to the top of the shaft, but, instead of stopping then, winds on till the cage is carried over the pulley and dashed down again to the bottom. So the force of the Witches' prediction is not exhausted when it has tempted Macbeth on to the throne, but carries him on to resist its further clauses, and in resisting to bring about the fall by which they are fulfilled. Not only then are the rise and the fall of Macbeth taken separately oracular, but the whole plot, compounded of the two taken together, constitutes another Oracular Action; and the last is of that type in which Destiny is fulfilled by the agency of a will that has been opposing it.Irony a phase of malignant Destiny.A second phase of Destiny enters into the plot ofMacbeth: this is Irony. Etymologically the word means no more thansaying. Pressing the idea of saying as distinguished from meaning we get at the ordinary signification, ambiguous speech; from which the word widens in its usage to include double-dealing in general, such as the 'irony of Socrates,' his habit of assuming the part of a simple enquirer in order to entangle the pretentious sophists in their own wisdom. The particular extension of meaning with which we are immediately concerned is that by which irony comes to be applied to a double-dealing in Destiny itself; the link between this and the original sense being no doubt the ambiguous wording of oracular responses which has become proverbial. In ancient conception Destiny wavered between justice andmalignity; a leading phase of malignant destiny was this Irony or double-dealing; Irony was the laughter or mockery of Fate. It is illustrated in the angry measures of Œdipus for penetrating the mystery that surrounds the murder of Laius in order to punish the crime, impunity for which has brought the plague upon his city: when at last it is made clear that Œdipus himself has been unknowingly the culprit, there arises an irresistible sensation that Destiny has been all the while playing with the king, and using his zeal as a means for working his destruction. In modern thought the supreme force of the universe cannot possibly be represented as malignant.A modified Irony: Justice in a mocking humour.But mockery, though it may not be enthroned in opposition to justice, may yet, without violating modern ideas, be made to appear in themode of operationby which justice is brought about; here mockery is no longer malignant, but simply an index of overpowering force, just as we smile at the helpless stubbornness of a little child, whereas a man's opposition makes us angry. For such a reconciliation of mockery with righteousness we have authority in the imagery of Scripture.Why do the heathen rage?And the people imagine a vain thing?The kings of the earth set themselvesAnd the rulers take counsel togetherAgainst the LordAnd against His Anointed:Saying, Let us break their bonds,And cast away their cords from us.He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh:The Lord shall have them in derision.Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath;And vex them in his sore displeasure.There could not be a more perfect type of Irony, in that form of it which harmonises with justice, than this picture in three touches, of the busy security of the wicked, of justice pausing to mock their idle efforts, and then with aburst of wrath and displeasure annihilating their projects at a stroke.In modern thought, then, Irony is Justice in a mocking humour. The mockery that suddenly becomes apparent in the mysterious operations of Providence, and is a measure of their overpowering force, is clearly capable of giving a highly dramatic interest to a train of events, and so is fitted to be a form of dramatic action.Irony in the plot of Macbeth: obstacles converted into stepping-stones.The operation of Destiny as exhibited in the plot ofMacbethis throughout tinctured with irony: the element of mockery appearing always in this, that apparent checks to Destiny turn out the very means Destiny chooses by which to fulfil itself. Irony of this kind is regularly attached to what I have called the third variety of the Oracular Action, that in which the oracle is fulfilled by the agency of attempts to oppose it; but in the play under consideration the destiny, whether manifesting itself in that type of the Oracular Action or not, is never dissociated from the attitude of mockery to resistance which converts obstacles into stepping-stones. It remains to show how the rise of Macbeth, the fall of Macbeth, and again the rise and the fall taken together, are all of them Irony Actions.The rise of Macbeth an Irony Action.The basis of Macbeth's rise is the Witches' promise of the crown. Scarcely has it been given when an obstacle starts up to its fulfilment in the proclamation of Malcolm as heir-apparent. I have already pointed out that it is this very proclamation which puts an end to Macbeth's wavering, and leads him to undertake the treasonable enterprise which only in the previous scene he had resolved he would have nothing to do with. Later in the history a second obstacle appears:ii.iii. 141.the king is slain, but his two sons, this heir-apparent and his brother, escape from Macbeth's clutches and place two lives between him and the fulfilment of his destiny. But, as events turn out, it is this very flight of the princes that, by diverting suspicion to them for a moment, causes Macbeth tobe named as Duncan's successor. A conversation in the play itself is devoted to making this point clear.ii.iv. 22.Ross.Is't known who did this more than bloody deed?Macduff.Those that Macbeth hath slain.Ross.Alas, the day!What good could they pretend?Macduff.They were suborn'd:Malcolm and Donalbain, the king's two sons,Are stol'n away and fled; which puts upon themSuspicion of the deed.Ross.'Gainst nature still!Thriftless ambition, that will ravin upThine own life's means! Then 'tis most likeThe sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.Macduff.He is already named, and gone to SconeTo be invested.The fall an Irony Action.Twice, then, in the course of the rise Destiny allows obstacles to appear only for the sake of using them as an unexpected means of fulfilment. The same mockery marks the fall of the action. The security against a fall promised by the Apparitions to Macbeth had just one drawback—'beware Macduff';iv.i. 71.iv.ii, &c.and we have already had occasion to notice Macbeth's attempt to secure himself against this drawback in the completest manner by extirpating the dangerous thane and his family to the last scion of his stock, and also how this cruel purpose succeeded against all but Macduff himself. Now it is to be noted that this attempt against the fulfilment of the destined retribution proves the very source of the fulfilment, without which it would never have come about. For at one point of the story Macduff, the only man who, according to the decrees of Fate, can harm Macbeth, resolves to abandon his vengeance against him. In his over-cautious policy Macduff was unwilling to move without the concurrence of Malcolm the rightful heir.iv.iii.In one of the most singular scenes in all Shakespeare Macduff is represented as urging Malcolm to assert his rights, while Malcolm (in reality driven by the general panicto suspect even Macduff) discourages his attempts, and affects to be a monster of iniquity, surpassing the tyrant of Scotland himself.iv.iii, from 100.At last he succeeds in convincing Macduff of his villainies, and in a burst of despair the fate-appointed avenger renounces vengeance.Macduff.Fit to govern?No, not to live.... Fare thee well!These evils thou repeat'st upon thyselfHave banish'd me from Scotland. O my breastThy hope ends here!Malcolm, it is true, then drops the pretence of villainy, but he does not succeed in reassuring his companion.iv.iii. 138.Macduff.Such welcome and unwelcome things at once'Tis hard to reconcile.At this moment enters Ross with the news of Macbeth's expedition against Fife, and tells how all Macduff's household, 'wife, children, servants, all,' have been cut off 'at one swoop': before the agony of a bereavement like this hesitation flies away for ever.iv.iii. 231.Gentle heavens,Cut short all intermission; front to frontBring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;Within my sword's length set him: if he 'scape,Heaven forgive him too!The action taken by Macbeth with a view to prevent Macduff's being the instrument of retribution, is brought by a mocking Fate to impel Macduff to his task at the precise moment he had resolved to abandon it.

Tantalising mockery in Richard's fate.

From this point fate never ceases to tantalise and mock Richard. He engages in his measures of defence, and with their villainy his spirits begin to recover:

iv.iii. 38.

The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom,And Anne my wife hath bid the world good night;

The sons of Edward sleep in Abraham's bosom,

And Anne my wife hath bid the world good night;

young Elizabeth is to be his next victim, and

To her I go, a jolly thriving wooer.

comp. 49.iv.iii. 45.

Suddenly the Nemesis appears again with the news that Ely, the shrewd bishop he dreads most of all men, is with Richmond, and that Buckingham has raised an army. Again, his defence is completing, and the wooing of Elizabeth—his masterpiece, since it is the second of its kind—has been brought to an issue that deserves his surprised exultation:

iv.iv. 431.

Relenting fool, and shallow, changing woman!

Suddenly the Nemesis again interrupts him, and this time is nearer: a puissant navy has actually appeared on the west. And now his equanimity begins at last to be disturbed.His equanimity affected.He storms at Catesby for not starting, forgetting that he has given him no message to take.iv.iv. 444-540.More than this, a little further onRichard changes his mind! Through the rest of the long scene destiny is openly playing with him, giving him just enough hope to keep the sense of despair warm. Messenger follows messenger in hot haste: Richmond is on the seas—Courtenay has risen in Devonshire—the Guildfords are up in Kent.—But Buckingham's army is dispersed—ButYorkshire has risen.—But, a gleam of hope, the Breton navy is dispersed—a triumph, Buckingham is taken.—Then, finally, Richmond has landed! The suspense is telling upon Richard. In this scene he strikes a messenger before he has time to learn that he brings good tidings.v.iii. 2, 5, 8, &c.When we next see him he wears a forced gaiety and scolds his followers into cheerfulness; but with the gaiety go sudden fits of depression:

Here will I lie to-night;But where to-morrow?

Here will I lie to-night;

But where to-morrow?

v.iii, from 47.

A little later he becomes nervous, and we have the minute attention to details of the man who feels that his all depends upon one cast; he will not sup, but calls for ink and paper to plan the morrow's fight, he examines carefully as to his beaver and his armour, selects White Surrey to ride, and at last calls for wine andconfessesa change in himself:

I have not that alacrity of spirit,Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have.

I have not that alacrity of spirit,

Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have.

Climax of Richard's fate: significance of the apparitions.

Then comes night, and with it the full tide of Nemesis. By the device of the apparitions the long accumulation of crimes in Richard's rise are made to have each its due representation in his fall. It matters not that they are only apparitions.v.iii, from 118.Nemesis itself is the ghost of sin: its sting lies not in the physical force of the blow, but in the closeconnectionbetween a sin and its retribution. So Richard's victims rise from the dead only to secure that the weight of each several crime shall lie heavy on his soul in the morrow's doom. This point moreover must not be missed—that the climax of his fate comes to Richard in hissleep.Significance of Richard's sleep.The supreme conception of resistance to Deity is reached when God is opposed by God's greatest gift, the freedom of the will. God, so it is reasoned, is omnipotent, but God has made man omnipotent in setting no bounds to his will; and God's omnipotence to punish may be met by man's omnipotence to endure. Such is the ancient conception of Prometheus,and such are the reasonings Milton has imagined for his Satan: to whom, though heaven be lost,

All is not lost, the unconquerable will ...And courage never to submit or yield.

All is not lost, the unconquerable will ...

And courage never to submit or yield.

But when that strange bundle of greatness and littleness which makes up man attempts to oppose with such weapons the Almighty, how is he to provide for those states in which the will is no longer the governing force in his nature; for the sickness, in which the mind may have to share the feebleness of the body, or for the daily suspension of will in sleep? Richard can to the last preserve his will from faltering. But, like all the rest of mankind, he must some time sleep: that which is the refuge of the honest man, when he may relax the tension of daily care, sleep, is to Richard his point of weakness, when the safeguard of invincible will can protect him no longer. It is, then, this weak moment which a mocking fate chooses for hurling upon Richard the whole avalanche of his doom; as he starts into the frenzy of his half-waking soliloquy we see him, as it were, tearing off layer after layer of artificial reasonings with which the will-struggles of a lifetime have covered his soul against the touch of natural remorse. With full waking his will is as strong as ever: but meanwhile his physical nature has been shattered to its depths, and it is only the wreck of Richard that goes to meet his death on Bosworth Field.

Remaining stages of the fall.

There is no need to dwell on the further stages of the fall: to the last the tantalising mockery continues.v.iii. 303.Richard's spirits rise with the ordering of the battle, and there comes the mysterious scroll to tell him he is bought and sold.v.iii. 342.His spirits rise again as the fight commences, and news comes of Stanley's long feared desertion.v.iv. 11.Five times in the battle he has slain his foe, and five times it proves a false Richmond. Thus slowly the cup is drained to its last dregs and Richard dies.i.i, from 1.The play opened with the picture of peace, the peace which led Richard's turbid soul, no longer finding scope inphysical warfare, to turn to the moral war of villainy; from that point through all the crowded incidents has raged the tumultuous battle between Will and Nemesis; with Richard's death it ceases, and the play may return to its keynote:

v.v. 40.

Now civil wounds are stopp'd, peace lives again.

How Nemesis and Destiny are interwoven in Macbeth.

A further Study in Plot.

Macbeth as a study of subtlety in Plot.

Thepresent study, like the last, is a study in Plot. The last illustrated Shakespeare's grandeur of conception, how a single principle is held firm amidst the intricacies of history, and reiterated in every detail. The present purpose is to give an example of Shakespeare'ssubtlety, and to exhibit the incidents of a play bound together not by one,Its threefold action.but by three, distinct threads of connection—or, if a technical term may be permitted, three Forms of Dramatic Action—all working harmoniously together into a design equally involved and symmetrical. One of these forms is Nemesis; the other two are borrowed from the ancient Drama: it thus becomes necessary to digress for a moment, in order to notice certain differences between the ancient and modern Drama, and between the ancient and modern thought of which the Drama is the expression.

In the passage from ancient to modern, Destiny changes into Providence.

In the ancient Classical Drama the main moral idea underlying its action is the idea of Destiny. The ancient world recognised Deity, but their deities were not supreme in the universe; Zeus had gained his position by a revolution, and in his turn was to be overthrown by revolution; there was thus, in ancient conception, behind Deity a yet higher force to which Deity itself was subject. The supreme force of the universe has by a school of modern thought been defined as a stream of tendency in things not ourselves makingfor righteousness: if we attempt to adapt this formula to the ideas of antiquity the difficulty will be in finding anything to substitute for the word 'righteousness.' Sometimes the sum of forces in the universe did seem, in the conception of the ancients, to make for righteousness, and Justice became the highest law. At other times the world seemed to them governed by a supernatural Jealousy, and human prosperity was struck down for no reason except that it was prosperity. In such philosophy as that of Lucretius, again, the tendency of all things was towards Destruction; while in the handling of legends such as that of Hippolytus there is a suggestion of a dark interest to ancient thought in conceiving Evil itself as an irresistible force. It appears, then, that the ancient mind had caught the idea offorcein the universe, without adding to it the further idea of a motive by which that force was guided:blindfate was the governing power over all other powers. With this simple conception of force as ruling the world, modern thought has united as a motive righteousness or law: the transition from ancient to modern thought may be fairly described by saying that Destiny has become changed into Providence as the supreme force of the universe.The change reflected in ancient and modern Nemesis.The change may be well illustrated by comparing the ancient and modern conception of Nemesis. To ancient thought Nemesis was simply one phase of Destiny; the story of Polycrates has been quoted in a former study to illustrate how Nemesis appeared to the Greek mind as capricious a deity as Fortune, a force that might at any time, heedless of desert, check whatever happiness was high enough to attract its attention. But in modern ideas Nemesis and justice are strictly associated: Nemesis may be defined as the artistic side of justice.

So far as Nemesis then is concerned, it has, in modern thought, passed altogether out of the domain of Destiny and been absorbed into the domain of law: it is thus fitted to be one of the regular forms into which human history may berepresented as falling, in harmony with our modern moral conceptions. But even as regards Destiny itself, while the notion as a whole is out of harmony with the modern notion of law and Providence as ruling forces of the world, yet certain minor phases of Destiny as conceived by antiquity have survived into modern times and been found not irreconcilable with moral law.Nemesis and Destiny interwoven in the plot of Macbeth.Two of these minor phases of Destiny are, it will be shown, illustrated inMacbeth: and we may thus take as a general description of its plot, the interweaving of Destiny with Nemesis.

The whole plot a Nemesis Action,

That the career of Macbeth is an example of Nemesis needs only to be stated. As in the case ofRichard III, we have the rise and fall of a leading personage; the rise is a crime of which the fall is the retribution. Nemesis has just been defined as the artistic aspect of justice; we have in previous studies seen different artistic elements in different types of Nemesis. Sometimes, as with Richard III, the retribution becomes artistic through its sureness; its long delay renders the effect of the blow more striking when it does come.of the type of equality.More commonly the artistic element in Nemesis consists in the perfect equality between the sin and its retribution; and of the latter type the Nemesis in the play ofMacbethis perhaps the most conspicuous illustration. The rise and fall of Macbeth, to borrow the illustration of Gervinus, constitute a perfect arch, with a turning-point in the centre. Macbeth's series of successes is unbroken till it ends in the murder of Banquo; his series of failures is unbroken from its commencement in the escape of Fleance. Success thus constituting the first half and failure the second half of the play, the transition from the one to the other is the expedition against Banquo and Fleance, in which success and failure are mingled:iii.iii.and this expedition, the keystone to the arch, is found to occupy the exact middle of the middle Act.

But this is not all: not only the play as a whole is anexample of nemesis, but if its two halves be taken separately they will be found to constitute each a nemesis complete in itself.The rise of Macbeth a separate Nemesis action.To begin with the first half, that which is occupied with the rise of Macbeth. If the plan of the play extended no further than to make the hero's fall the retribution upon his rise, it might be expected that the turning-point of the action would be reached upon Macbeth's elevation to the throne. As a fact, however, Macbeth's rise does not stop here; he still goes on to win one more success in his attempt upon the life of Banquo. What the purpose of this prolonged flow of fortune is will be seen when it is considered that this final success of the hero is in reality the source of his ruin. In Macbeth's progress to the attainment of the crown, while of course it was impossible that crimes so violent as his should not incur suspicion, yet circumstances had strangely combined to soothe these suspicions to sleep. But—so Shakespeare manipulates the story—when Macbeth, seated on the throne, goes on to the attempt against Banquo, this additional crime not only brings its own punishment, but has the further effect of unmasking the crimes that have gone before. This important point in the plot is brought out to us in a scene, specially introduced for the purpose, in which Lennox and another lord represent the opinion of the court.

iii.vi. i.

Lennox.My former speeches have but hit your thoughts,Which can interpret further: only, I say,Things have been strangely borne. The gracious DuncanWas pitied of Macbeth: marry, he was dead:And the right-valiant Banquo walk'd too late;Whom, you may say, if't please you, Fleance kill'd,For Fleance fled: men must not walk too late.Who cannot want the thought how monstrousIt was for Malcolm and for DonalbainTo kill their gracious father? damned fact!How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straightIn pious rage the two delinquents tear,That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep?Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too;For 'twould have anger'd any heart aliveTo hear the men deny't. So that, I say,He has borne all things well: and I do thinkThat had he Duncan's sons under his key—As, an't please heaven, he shall not—they should findWhat 'twere to kill a father; so should Fleance.

Lennox.My former speeches have but hit your thoughts,

Which can interpret further: only, I say,

Things have been strangely borne. The gracious Duncan

Was pitied of Macbeth: marry, he was dead:

And the right-valiant Banquo walk'd too late;

Whom, you may say, if't please you, Fleance kill'd,

For Fleance fled: men must not walk too late.

Who cannot want the thought how monstrous

It was for Malcolm and for Donalbain

To kill their gracious father? damned fact!

How it did grieve Macbeth! did he not straight

In pious rage the two delinquents tear,

That were the slaves of drink and thralls of sleep?

Was not that nobly done? Ay, and wisely too;

For 'twould have anger'd any heart alive

To hear the men deny't. So that, I say,

He has borne all things well: and I do think

That had he Duncan's sons under his key—

As, an't please heaven, he shall not—they should find

What 'twere to kill a father; so should Fleance.

Under the bitter irony of this speech we can see clearly enough that Macbeth has been exposed by hisseriesof suspicious acts; he has 'done all things well;' and in particular by peculiar resemblances between this last incident of Banquo and Fleance and the previous incident of Duncan and his son. It appears then that Macbeth's last successful crime proves the means by which retribution overtakes all his other crimes; the latter half of the play is needed to develop the steps of the retribution, but, in substance, Macbeth's fall is latent in the final step of his rise. Thus the first half of the play, that which traces the rise of Macbeth, is a complete Nemesis Action—a career of sins in which the last sin secures the punishment of all.

The fall of Macbeth a separate Nemesis Action.

The same reasoning applies to the latter half of the play: the fall of Macbeth not only serves as the retribution for his rise, but further contains in itself a crime and its nemesis complete. What Banquo is to the first half of the play Macduff is to the latter half; the two balance one another as, in the play ofJulius Cæsar, Cæsar himself is balanced by Antony; and Macduff comes into prominence upon Banquo's death as Antony upon the fall of Cæsar. Now Macduff, when he finally slays Macbeth, is avenging not only Scotland, but also his own wrongs; and the tyrant's crime against Macduff, with its retribution, just gives unity to the second half of the play, in the way in which the first half was made complete by the association between Macbeth and Banquo,iii.i. 57-72.from their joint encounter with the Witches on to the murder of Banquo as a consequence of the Witches' prediction. Accordingly we find that no sooner has Macbeth, by the appearance of theGhost at the banquet, realised the turn of fate, than his first thoughts are of Macduff:

iii.iv. 128.

Macbeth.How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his personAt our great bidding?Lady M.Did you send to him, sir?Macbeth.I hear it by the way; but I will send.

Macbeth.How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person

At our great bidding?

Lady M.Did you send to him, sir?

Macbeth.I hear it by the way; but I will send.

When the Apparitions bid Macbeth 'beware Macduff,' he answers,

iv.i. 74.

Thou hast harp'd my fear aright!

iv.i, from 139.

On the vanishing of the Apparition Scene, the first thing that happens is the arrival of news that Macduff has fled to England, and is out of his enemy's power; then Macbeth's bloody thoughts devise a still more cruel purpose of vengeance to be taken on the fugitive's family.

Time, thou anticipatest my dread exploits:The flighty purpose never is o'ertookUnless the deed go with it....The castle of Macduff I will surprise;Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the swordHis wife, his babes, and all unfortunate soulsThat trace him in his line.

Time, thou anticipatest my dread exploits:

The flighty purpose never is o'ertook

Unless the deed go with it....

The castle of Macduff I will surprise;

Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the sword

His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls

That trace him in his line.

iv.ii, iii.

In succeeding scenes we have this diabolical massacre carried out, and see the effect which the news of it has in rousing Macduff to his revenge;v.vii. 15.until in the final scene of all he feels that if Macbeth is slain and by no stroke of his, his wife and children's ghosts will for ever haunt him. Thus Macduff's function in the play is to be the agent not only of the grand nemesis which constitutes the whole plot, but also of a nemesis upon a private wrong which occupies the latter half of the play. And, putting our results together, we find that a Nemesis Action is the description alike of the whole plot and of the rise and fall which are its two halves.

The Oracular as one phase of Destiny: its partial revelation.

With Nemesis is associated in the play ofMacbethDestiny in two distinct phases. The first of these isthe Oracular. In ancient thought, as Destiny was the supreme governor of the universe, so oracles were the revelation of Destiny; and thusthe term 'the Oracles of God' is appropriately applied to the Bible as the Christian revelation. With the advent of Christianity the oracles became dumb. But the triumph of Christianity was for centuries incomplete; heathen deities were not extirpated, but subordinated to the supernatural personages of the new religion;A minor form of the Oracular in modern oracular beings.and the old oracles declined into oracular beings such as witches and wizards, and oracular superstitions, such as magic mirrors, dreams, apparitions—all means of dimly revealing hidden destiny. Shakespeare is never wiser than the age he is pourtraying; and accordingly he has freely introduced witches and apparitions into the machinery ofMacbeth, though in the principles that govern the action of this, as of all his other plays, he is true to the modern notions of Providence and moral law.The Oracular Action: Destiny working from mystery to clearness;An oracle and its fulfilment make up a series of events eminently fitted to constitute a dramatic interest; and no form of ancient Drama and Story is more common than this of the 'Oracular Action.' Its interest may be formulated as Destiny working from mystery to clearness. At the commencement of an oracular story the fated future is revealed indeed, but in a dress of mystery, as when the Athenians are bidden to defend themselves with only wooden walls; but as the story of Themistocles develops itself, the drift of events is throwing more and more light on to the hidden meaning of the oracle, until by the naval victory over the Persians the oracle is at once clear and fulfilled.

The Oracular Action is so important an element in plot, that it may be worth while to prolong the consideration of it by noting the three principal varieties into which it falls, all of which are illustrated in the play ofMacbeth. In each case the interest consists in tracing the working of Destiny out of mystery into clearness: the distinction between the varieties depends upon the agency by which Destiny works, and the relation of this agency to the original oracle.(1)by the agency of blind obedience;In the first variety Destiny is fulfilled by the agency of blind obedience.The Spartans, unfortunate in their war with the Messenians, enquire of an oracle, and receive the strange response that they must apply for a general to the Athenians, their hereditary enemies. But they resolve to obey the voice of Destiny, though to all appearance they obey at their peril; and the Athenians mock them by selecting the most unfit subject they can find—a man whose bodily infirmities had excluded him from the military exercises altogether. Yet in the end the faith of the Spartans is rewarded. It had been no lack of generalship that had caused their former defeats, but discord and faction in their ranks; now Tyrtæus turned out to be a lyric poet, whose songs roused the spirit of the Spartans and united them as one man, and when united, their native military talent led them to victory. Thus in its fulfilment the hidden meaning of the oracle breaks out into clearness: and blind obedience to the oracle is the agency by which it has been fulfilled.

(2)by the agency of free will;

In the second variety the oracle is fulfilled by the agency of indifference and free will: it is neither obeyed nor disobeyed, but ignored. One of the best illustrations is to be found in the plot of Sir Walter Scott's novel,The Betrothed. Its heroine, more rational than her age, resists the family tradition that would condemn her to sleep in the haunted chamber; overborne, however, by age and authority, she consents, and the lady of the bloody finger appears to pronounce her doom:

Widow'd wife, and wedded maid;Betrothed, Betrayer, and Betrayed.

Widow'd wife, and wedded maid;

Betrothed, Betrayer, and Betrayed.

This seems a mysterious destiny for a simple and virtuous girl. The faithful attendant Rose declares in a burst of devotion that betrayed her mistress may be, but betrayer never; the heroine herself braces her will to dismiss the foreboding from her thoughts, and resolves that she will not be influenced by it on the one side or on the other. Yet it all comes about. Gratitude compels her to give her hand to the elderlyConstable, who on the very day of betrothal is summoned away to the Crusade, from which, as it appears, he is never to return, leaving his spouse at once a widowed wife and a wedded maid. In the troubles of that long absence, by a perfectly natural series of events, gratitude again leads the heroine to admit to her castle her real deliverer and lover in order to save his life, and in protecting him amidst strange circumstances of suspicion to bid defiance to all comers. Finally the castle is besieged by the royal armies, and the heroine has to hear herself proclaimed a traitor by the herald of England; from this perplexity a deliverance is found only when her best friend saves her by betraying the castle to the king. So every detail in the unnatural doom has been in the most natural manner fulfilled: and the woman by whose action it has been fulfilled has been all the while maintaining the freedom of her will and persistently ignoring the oracle.

(3)by the agency of opposing will.

But the supreme interest of the Oracular Action is reached when the oracle is fulfilled by an agency that has all the while set itself to oppose and frustrate it. A simple illustration of this is seen in the Eastern potentate who, in opposition to a prophecy that his son should be killed by a lion, forbad the son to hunt, but heaped upon him every other indulgence. In particular he built him a pleasure-house, hung with pictures of hunting and of wild beasts, on which all that art could do was lavished to compensate for the loss of the forbidden sport. One day the son, chafing at his absence from the manly exercise in which his comrades were at that moment engaged, wandered through his pleasure-house, until, stopping at a magnificent picture of a lion at bay, he began to apostrophise it as the source of his disgrace, and waxing still more angry, drove his fist through the picture. A nail, hidden behind the canvas entered his hand; the wound festered, and he died. So the measures taken to frustrate the destiny proved the means of fulfilling it. But in this third variety of the Oracular Action the classical illustration is thestory of Œdipus: told fully, it presents three examples woven together. Laius of Thebes learns from an oracle that the son about to be born to him is destined to be his murderer; accordingly he refuses to rear the child, and it is cast out to perish. A herdsman, Polybus, takes pity on the infant, carries it away to Corinth, and brings it up in secret. In due time this Œdipus becomes weary of the humble life of his supposed father; quitting Corinth, he seeks advice of the oracle as to his future career, and receives the startling response that he is destined to slay his own father. Resolved to frustrate so terrible a fate, he will not return to Corinth, but, as it happens,takes the road to Thebes, where he falls in accidentally with Laius, and, in ignorance of his person, quarrels with him and slays him. Now if Laius had not resisted the oracle by casting out the infant, it would have grown up like other sons, and every probability would have been against his committing so terrible a crime as parricide. Again, if Polybus had not by his removal to Corinth sought to keep the child in ignorance of his fate, he would have known the person of Laius and spared him. Once more, if Œdipus had not, in opposition to the oracle, avoided his supposed home, Corinth, he would never have gone to Thebes and fallen in with his real father. Three different persons acting separately seek to frustrate a declared destiny, and their action unites in fulfilling it.

The plot ofMacbeth, both as a whole and in its separate parts, is constructed upon this form of the Oracular Action, in combination with the form of Nemesis. The play deals with the rise and fall of Macbeth: the rise, and the fall, and again the two taken together, present each of them an example of an Oracular Action.The rise of Macbeth an Oracular Action,Firstly, the former half of the play, the rise of Macbeth, taken by itself, consists in an oracle and its fulfilment—the Witches' promise of the crown and the gradual steps by which the crown is attained. Amongst the three varieties of the Oracular Action we havejust distinguished, the present example wavers between the first and the second.varying between the second and first type.After his first excitement has passed away, Macbeth resolves that he will have nothing to do with the temptation that lurked in the Witches' words; in his disjointed meditation we hear him saying:

i.iii. 143.

If chance will have me king, why chance may crown meWithout my stir;

If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me

Without my stir;

and again:

i.iii. 146.

Come what come may,Time and the hour runs through the roughest day;

Come what come may,

Time and the hour runs through the roughest day;

in which last speech the very rhyming may, according to Shakespeare's subtle usage, be pointed to as marking a mind made up. So far then we appear to be following an Oracular Action of the second type, that of indifference and ignoring. But in the very next scene the proclamation of a Prince of Cumberland—that is, of an heir-apparent like our Prince of Wales—takes away Macbeth's 'chance':

i.iv. 48.

Macb.[Aside]. The prince of Cumberland! that is a stepOn which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,For in my way it lies.

Macb.[Aside]. The prince of Cumberland! that is a step

On which I must fall down, or else o'erleap,

For in my way it lies.

He instantly commits himself to the evil suggestion, and thus changes the type of action to the first variety, that in which the oracle is fulfilled by the agency of obedience.

The fall an Oracular Action of the first type.

Similarly Macbeth's fall, taken by itself, constitutes an Oracular Action, consisting as it does of the ironical promises by the Apparitions which the Witches raise for Macbeth on his visit to them, and the course of events by which these promises are fulfilled. Its type is a highly interesting example of the first variety, that of blind obedience.iv.i. 71-100.The responses of the Apparitions lay down impossible conditions, and as long as these conditions are unfulfilled Macbeth is to be secure; he will fall only when one not born of woman shall be his adversary, only when Birnam Wood shall come to Dunsinane. Macbeth trusts blindly to these promises; further he obeys them, so far as a man can be said to obeyan oracle which enjoins no command: he obeys in the sense of relying on them, and making that reliance his ground of action. But this reliance of Macbeth on the ironical promises is an agency in fulfilling them in their real meaning.iv.i. 144-156.In his reckless confidence he strikes out right and left, and amongst others injures one to whom the description 'not born of woman' applies. In his reliance on the Apparitions he proceeds, when threatened by the English, toshut himself up in Dunsinane Castle; but for this fact the English army would not have approached Dunsinane Castle by the route of Birnam Wood, and the incident of the boughs would never have taken place. Thus Macbeth's fate was made to depend upon impossibilities: by his action in reliance on these impossibilities he is all the while giving them occasion to become possible. In this way an ironical oracle comes to be fulfilled by the agency of blind obedience.

The whole plot an Oracular Action of the third type.

Thirdly, the rise and fall of Macbeth are so linked together as to constitute the whole plot another example of the Oracular Action.i.iii. 48-50, 62-66.The original oracle given by the Witches on the blasted heath was a double oracle: besides the promise of the thaneships and the crown there was another revelation of destiny, that Banquo was to be lesser than Macbeth and yet greater, that he was to get kings though to be none. In this latter half of the oracle is found the link which binds together the rise and fall of Macbeth. When the first half of the Witches' promise has been fulfilled in his elevation to the throne, Macbeth sets himself to prevent the fulfilment of the second half by his attempt upon Banquo and Fleance. Now we have already seen how this attempt has the effect of drawing attention, not only to itself, but also to Macbeth's other crimes, and proves indeed the foundation of his ruin. Had Macbeth been content with the attainment of the crown, all might yet have been well: the addition of just one more precaution renders all the rest vain. It appears, then, that thatwhich binds together the rise and the fall, that which makes the fall the retribution upon the rise, is the expedition against the Banquo family; and the object of this crime is to frustrate the second part of the Witches' oracle. So the original oracle becomes the motive force to the whole play, setting in motion alike the rise and fall of the action. The figure of the whole plot we have taken as a regular arch; its movement might be compared to that terrible incident of mining life known as 'overwinding,' in which the steam engine pulls the heavy cage from the bottom to the top of the shaft, but, instead of stopping then, winds on till the cage is carried over the pulley and dashed down again to the bottom. So the force of the Witches' prediction is not exhausted when it has tempted Macbeth on to the throne, but carries him on to resist its further clauses, and in resisting to bring about the fall by which they are fulfilled. Not only then are the rise and the fall of Macbeth taken separately oracular, but the whole plot, compounded of the two taken together, constitutes another Oracular Action; and the last is of that type in which Destiny is fulfilled by the agency of a will that has been opposing it.

Irony a phase of malignant Destiny.

A second phase of Destiny enters into the plot ofMacbeth: this is Irony. Etymologically the word means no more thansaying. Pressing the idea of saying as distinguished from meaning we get at the ordinary signification, ambiguous speech; from which the word widens in its usage to include double-dealing in general, such as the 'irony of Socrates,' his habit of assuming the part of a simple enquirer in order to entangle the pretentious sophists in their own wisdom. The particular extension of meaning with which we are immediately concerned is that by which irony comes to be applied to a double-dealing in Destiny itself; the link between this and the original sense being no doubt the ambiguous wording of oracular responses which has become proverbial. In ancient conception Destiny wavered between justice andmalignity; a leading phase of malignant destiny was this Irony or double-dealing; Irony was the laughter or mockery of Fate. It is illustrated in the angry measures of Œdipus for penetrating the mystery that surrounds the murder of Laius in order to punish the crime, impunity for which has brought the plague upon his city: when at last it is made clear that Œdipus himself has been unknowingly the culprit, there arises an irresistible sensation that Destiny has been all the while playing with the king, and using his zeal as a means for working his destruction. In modern thought the supreme force of the universe cannot possibly be represented as malignant.A modified Irony: Justice in a mocking humour.But mockery, though it may not be enthroned in opposition to justice, may yet, without violating modern ideas, be made to appear in themode of operationby which justice is brought about; here mockery is no longer malignant, but simply an index of overpowering force, just as we smile at the helpless stubbornness of a little child, whereas a man's opposition makes us angry. For such a reconciliation of mockery with righteousness we have authority in the imagery of Scripture.

Why do the heathen rage?And the people imagine a vain thing?The kings of the earth set themselvesAnd the rulers take counsel togetherAgainst the LordAnd against His Anointed:Saying, Let us break their bonds,And cast away their cords from us.He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh:The Lord shall have them in derision.Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath;And vex them in his sore displeasure.

Why do the heathen rage?

And the people imagine a vain thing?

The kings of the earth set themselves

And the rulers take counsel together

Against the Lord

And against His Anointed:

Saying, Let us break their bonds,

And cast away their cords from us.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh:The Lord shall have them in derision.

He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh:

The Lord shall have them in derision.

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath;And vex them in his sore displeasure.

Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath;

And vex them in his sore displeasure.

There could not be a more perfect type of Irony, in that form of it which harmonises with justice, than this picture in three touches, of the busy security of the wicked, of justice pausing to mock their idle efforts, and then with aburst of wrath and displeasure annihilating their projects at a stroke.

In modern thought, then, Irony is Justice in a mocking humour. The mockery that suddenly becomes apparent in the mysterious operations of Providence, and is a measure of their overpowering force, is clearly capable of giving a highly dramatic interest to a train of events, and so is fitted to be a form of dramatic action.Irony in the plot of Macbeth: obstacles converted into stepping-stones.The operation of Destiny as exhibited in the plot ofMacbethis throughout tinctured with irony: the element of mockery appearing always in this, that apparent checks to Destiny turn out the very means Destiny chooses by which to fulfil itself. Irony of this kind is regularly attached to what I have called the third variety of the Oracular Action, that in which the oracle is fulfilled by the agency of attempts to oppose it; but in the play under consideration the destiny, whether manifesting itself in that type of the Oracular Action or not, is never dissociated from the attitude of mockery to resistance which converts obstacles into stepping-stones. It remains to show how the rise of Macbeth, the fall of Macbeth, and again the rise and the fall taken together, are all of them Irony Actions.

The rise of Macbeth an Irony Action.

The basis of Macbeth's rise is the Witches' promise of the crown. Scarcely has it been given when an obstacle starts up to its fulfilment in the proclamation of Malcolm as heir-apparent. I have already pointed out that it is this very proclamation which puts an end to Macbeth's wavering, and leads him to undertake the treasonable enterprise which only in the previous scene he had resolved he would have nothing to do with. Later in the history a second obstacle appears:ii.iii. 141.the king is slain, but his two sons, this heir-apparent and his brother, escape from Macbeth's clutches and place two lives between him and the fulfilment of his destiny. But, as events turn out, it is this very flight of the princes that, by diverting suspicion to them for a moment, causes Macbeth tobe named as Duncan's successor. A conversation in the play itself is devoted to making this point clear.

ii.iv. 22.

Ross.Is't known who did this more than bloody deed?Macduff.Those that Macbeth hath slain.Ross.Alas, the day!What good could they pretend?Macduff.They were suborn'd:Malcolm and Donalbain, the king's two sons,Are stol'n away and fled; which puts upon themSuspicion of the deed.Ross.'Gainst nature still!Thriftless ambition, that will ravin upThine own life's means! Then 'tis most likeThe sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.Macduff.He is already named, and gone to SconeTo be invested.

Ross.Is't known who did this more than bloody deed?

Macduff.Those that Macbeth hath slain.

Ross.Alas, the day!

What good could they pretend?

Macduff.They were suborn'd:

Malcolm and Donalbain, the king's two sons,

Are stol'n away and fled; which puts upon them

Suspicion of the deed.

Ross.'Gainst nature still!

Thriftless ambition, that will ravin up

Thine own life's means! Then 'tis most like

The sovereignty will fall upon Macbeth.

Macduff.He is already named, and gone to Scone

To be invested.

The fall an Irony Action.

Twice, then, in the course of the rise Destiny allows obstacles to appear only for the sake of using them as an unexpected means of fulfilment. The same mockery marks the fall of the action. The security against a fall promised by the Apparitions to Macbeth had just one drawback—'beware Macduff';iv.i. 71.iv.ii, &c.and we have already had occasion to notice Macbeth's attempt to secure himself against this drawback in the completest manner by extirpating the dangerous thane and his family to the last scion of his stock, and also how this cruel purpose succeeded against all but Macduff himself. Now it is to be noted that this attempt against the fulfilment of the destined retribution proves the very source of the fulfilment, without which it would never have come about. For at one point of the story Macduff, the only man who, according to the decrees of Fate, can harm Macbeth, resolves to abandon his vengeance against him. In his over-cautious policy Macduff was unwilling to move without the concurrence of Malcolm the rightful heir.iv.iii.In one of the most singular scenes in all Shakespeare Macduff is represented as urging Malcolm to assert his rights, while Malcolm (in reality driven by the general panicto suspect even Macduff) discourages his attempts, and affects to be a monster of iniquity, surpassing the tyrant of Scotland himself.iv.iii, from 100.At last he succeeds in convincing Macduff of his villainies, and in a burst of despair the fate-appointed avenger renounces vengeance.

Macduff.Fit to govern?No, not to live.... Fare thee well!These evils thou repeat'st upon thyselfHave banish'd me from Scotland. O my breastThy hope ends here!

Macduff.Fit to govern?

No, not to live.... Fare thee well!

These evils thou repeat'st upon thyself

Have banish'd me from Scotland. O my breast

Thy hope ends here!

Malcolm, it is true, then drops the pretence of villainy, but he does not succeed in reassuring his companion.

iv.iii. 138.

Macduff.Such welcome and unwelcome things at once'Tis hard to reconcile.

Macduff.Such welcome and unwelcome things at once

'Tis hard to reconcile.

At this moment enters Ross with the news of Macbeth's expedition against Fife, and tells how all Macduff's household, 'wife, children, servants, all,' have been cut off 'at one swoop': before the agony of a bereavement like this hesitation flies away for ever.

iv.iii. 231.

Gentle heavens,Cut short all intermission; front to frontBring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;Within my sword's length set him: if he 'scape,Heaven forgive him too!

Gentle heavens,

Cut short all intermission; front to front

Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself;

Within my sword's length set him: if he 'scape,

Heaven forgive him too!

The action taken by Macbeth with a view to prevent Macduff's being the instrument of retribution, is brought by a mocking Fate to impel Macduff to his task at the precise moment he had resolved to abandon it.

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