Introduction

Allan Bloom defines spiritedness, which he adopts as the best translation of the Greek word, thymos, as the urge to defend what is one's own.^[1] For Fukuyama, "thymos is the seat of both anger and pride": people "crave positive judgements about their worth and dignity," and feel "anger...when they think they are being undervalued."^[2] Conversely, moderation is defined by Bloom as the capacity to "control...spiritedness as well as desire."^[3] Shakespeare explores the nature and, insofar as it is possible to do so, the origins of these contrasting and often conflicting qualities, and the ways in which they might be woven together in a manner that is conducive both to political stability and individual fulfilment. The differences between male and female nature are central to his enquiry, since he sees men as more likely to be spirited than women and, conversely, women as more likely to be moderate than men, although the play explores many variations within these broad biases, and suggests that everyone possesses both qualities, albeit at times in very uneven proportions. This essay aims to explore Shakespeare's thought in his own 'essentialist' terms, rather than assuming, as most modern critics do, that codes of manliness and feminine moderation are primarily generated by cultural convention.^[4] The subheadings are mainly drawn from Macbeth's "catalogue" of dogs and men in act 3, scene 1, which is analysed fully in the conclusion (3.1.91-102).^[5]

The "Slow" and the "Subtle"

It is hard to imagine what greater act of service to the kingdom Macbeth could have performed than to quell a major insurrection and then, immediately afterwards, to defeat an invading army (1.2.7-62). Both Banquo and Macbeth "humbly" make the conventionally dutiful claim that their "service...pays itself," since it is a king's role simply "to receive duties," but Duncan understands that they are driven partly, if not, in Macbeth's case at least, primarily, by a desire to distinguish themselves, and will in reality wish to be honoured in a manner which is commensurate with their bravery (1.4.22-33, 1.4.44-47). Duncan's ongoing desire to satisfy the ambition of his "peerless kinsman" is betrayed by his admission that he himself feels as if he is being "fed" by the "banquet" of "commendations" which the thane is receiving (1.4.54-58). In his first flush of gratitude, he is perhaps even tempted to make Macbeth Prince of Cumberland and heir to the throne, for his messengers initially promise the new Thane of Cawdor a still "greater honour" (1.3.104). This would perhaps have been the only proportionate reward for saving the kingdom almost single-handedly. In the event, however, Duncan unwisely chooses this moment to grant these "honor[s]" to his eldest son, Malcolm,^[6] thus, as he himself acknowledges, leaving himself with nothing more to offer Macbeth than a vague declaration that "signs of nobleness, like stars, shall shine on all deservers" (1.4.37-42):

O worthiest cousin!

The sin of my ingratitude even now

Was heavy on me. Thou art so far before,

That swiftest wing of recompense is slow

To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserv'd,

That the proportion both of thanks and payment

Might have been mine! Only I have left to say,

More is thy due than more than all can pay. (1.4.14-22)^[7]

Duncan admits that the generous hospitality which Macbeth subsequently extends to him "trouble[s]" him, precisely because it deepens his obligation still further. He seeks to dissipate this tension by joking that he is actually doing the Macbeths a favour in suffering this imbalance, so that they should actually "thank" him for their own "trouble" in hosting him (1.6.11-14). Lady Macbeth's response to Duncan's banter again foregrounds the issue of equity: she disingenuously claims that her service is in fact an inadequate repayment for the "honors deep and broad" that they have received, and goes on to suggest that any "compt" or "audit" which the Macbeths should make would be bound to conclude that they owe the king everything (1.6.14-20, 1.6.25-28). Duncan is no more convinced by this extravagant disclaimer than the audience: he again feels the need to respond with a vague promise that he shall "continue...graces towards" Macbeth (1.6.30).

Thus, after Duncan's appointment of Malcolm as his heir, Macbeth knows that an equitable reward for his courage could only be earnt by illegitimate means.^[8] The "suggestion" that he might usurp the throne "shakes" him, so that "function is smother'd in surmise," but he is used to the idea that distinction must be earnt by displays of audacious courage (1.3.139-41). His ambition is a double-edged sword-- "Fair is foul, and foul is fair"--precisely because it is accompanied by a robust sense of justice (1.1.11; see also 1.3.38). The rule which Duncan accepts so unquestioningly that courage should be rewarded with proportionate honours is certainly reinforced by a conventional aristocratic code, but Shakespeare implies that it is ultimately rooted in nature: male spiritedness naturally pursues worldly distinction.^[9]

At the end of the play Duncan's imprudence is balanced by the shrewdness of Malcolm, who promptly invents a whole new rank in order to have the means to "make [himself] even" with those who have supported his campaign to oust Macbeth: "My thanes and kinsmen, henceforth be earls, the first that ever Scotland in such an honor nam'd" (5.9.26-30). One could not imagine Malcolm giving free rein to paternal attachment in choosing his heir in the way that Duncan does. His innate shrewdness is also illustrated by his immediate appreciation of the disingenuousness of Siward's announcement that he will not mourn for a son, since he died a manly death: Malcom insists that young Siward is "worth more sorrow, and that I'll spend for him" (5.9.16-17). Unlike his father, he knows that he must reward his spirited warriors for their sacrifices immediately and commensurately. While disagreeing with Plato on many points, Shakespeare apparently agrees with his approach to the soldier class in his imagined republic: "one must find -- or make -- a place in the regime whereby these men's natural talents can be harnessed to the public interest, and that will satisfy their own longings for special recognition," as one commentator on The Republic puts it, for "this especially dangerous class of men" have the capacity to enslave those whom they previously guarded, and thus represent "the greatest practical threat to the just governing of any regime."^[10]

Malcolm needs the power of Macduff's fiery courage to defeat Macbeth, because he himself is naturally restrained by his shrewd prudence: one could never imagine him exclaiming furiously, as Macduff does before attacking Macbeth, "I have no words, my voice is in my sword, thou bloodier villain than terms can give thee out" (5.8.6-8). It should be remembered that he was originally captured by the very rebels whom Macbeth and Banquo oppose so successfully, and was eventually released only through the efforts of the "good and hardy" sergeant, who, unlike the prince himself apparently, is covered with "gashes" (1.2.3-5, 1.2.33-42).^[11] We may thus infer that Macbeth speaks more truly than he knows when he suggests that wisdom tends to militate against spirited action: "Who can be wise, amaz'd, temperate, and furious, loyal and neutral, in a moment?" (2.3.108-111).

The corollary of this point is that spiritedness often needs to be tempered by prudence. Unlike his father, Malcolm shows a shrewd ability to gauge "the mind's construction," when he establishes the sincerity of Macduff's patriotic fervour by pretending first to be passively "desolate" and then to be completely corrupt (1.4.11-14, 4.3.1-20, 4.3.44-139).^[12] He coolly urges Macduff to "let grief convert to anger," even as the distraught thane is grappling with the first shock of his bereavement (4.3.213-35).^[13] While Macduff and the spirited Siward are simply intent on exercising "industrious soldiership" in the final battle, dismissing the need for "thoughts speculative," Malcolm is calculating the likelihood of Macbeth's army remaining loyal, and commanding each soldier to "hew him down a bough, and bear't before him" in order to "shadow the numbers of our host" (5.4.4-21). Taken together, this trick and the unscrupulous means by which Malcolm establishes Macduff's loyalty provide a strong hint that wise rulers must often be cunning rather than directly spirited. Macbeth's courageous, but ultimately fatal decision to leave the castle which he knows is "his main hope," in order to "die with harness on our back," provides a cautionary tale which underlines the point that the warrior class need prudent guidance (5.4.8-10, 5.5.2-7, 5.5.45-51). Overall, Malcolm and Macduff illustrate the ideal relationship between the soldier class and those who are naturally suited to rule by virtue of their innate shrewdness.

The play suggests that prudent rulers must show a capacity not only to manipulate the aggression of the warrior class, but to control their own spirited indignation and ignore the conventional conceptions of nobility and shame by which such indignation is usually reinforced. Although Malcolm's first response to his father's murder is not, like Donalbain's, fearful, but spirited-- "why do we hold our tongues, that most may claim this argument for ours"--he eventually manages to channel his anger into haughty contempt, a gambit which allows him to fly to England as "the safest way" without feeling that he is merely capitulating to Macbeth: "Let's not consort with them; to show an unfelt sorrow is an office which the false man does easy" (2.3.119-20, 2.3.135-37, 2.3.141-43). Like Macduff, whom he later recruits after implicitly accepting that he too needed to desert his family and friends, he does not scruple to "shift away" without being "dainty of leave-taking," so that he can live to overthrow Macbeth's regime (4.3.25-31, 2.3.143-45). He knows that he will have to be both patient and unscrupulous in order to put his "strong sorrow upon the foot of motion": "There's warrant in that theft which steals itself, when there's no mercy left" (2.3.124-25, 2.3.145-46). Unlike his brother, who remains primarily fearful, Malcom ultimately proves that he is both spirited and fervently attached to his country, but his innate thoughtfulness ensures that he can control his anger and ultimately pursue the most effective means of deposing Macbeth (for Donalbain's fear, see 2.3.121-23, 2.3.138-41, 5.2.7-8). This is a different sort of moderation from that of the "meek..." and "sainted" Duncan, since it stems from cool calculation rather than innate gentleness (1.7.16-18, 4.3.108-09).^[14]

Demi-Wolves

Lady Macbeth assumes that the fierce courage and spirited ambition which characterise Macbeth are quintessentially male attributes: "When you durst do it, then you were a man; and to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man" (1.7.49-51).^[15] She implies that spiritedness of this sort is the polar opposite of the feminine proclivity for gentle, nurturing care, to which Macbeth is in danger of surrendering, being "too full o' th' milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way" (1.5.16-18).^[16] She herself must "unsex" herself and call on spirits to "come to [her] woman's breasts, and take her milk for gall" in order to help her husband to murder Duncan (1.5.40-50). She suggests that if she, a woman, can transcend her instinct to nurture in this way, then it is doubly shameful for her husband, who by implication is naturally more spirited, to prioritise "th' milk of human kindness" over his ambition:

I have given suck, and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me;

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this. (1.7.54-59)

Macbeth may see his wife as exceptional in her determination to suppress her feminine "tender[ness]"-- "Bring forth men-children only! For thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males" (1.7.72-74)--but in fact her goading is effective precisely because it plays on the pervasive assumption, that it is the man's role to assert himself in order to advance the status and fortunes of the family unit.^[17] As we shall see, Shakespeare sees this assumption as entirely natural.

The conversation between Macbeth and the two murderers provides further evidence that the play presents spiritedness as a predominantly male quality. Shakespeare is very specific that the murderers are motivated by a conviction that they have been "cross'd" by Banquo (3.1.75-83). Using the same strategy as his wife has just employed so effectively, Macbeth urges them to prove that they are "not i' th' worst rank of manhood" by taking violent revenge (3.1.90-102). Male spiritedness is again shown to be dangerous precisely because it naturally entails a rough conception of justice that rivals the codes of piety and duty which reinforce social cohesion: Macbeth demands of the murderers, "Are you so gospell'd, to pray for this good man, and for his issue, whose heavy hand hath bow'd you to the grave, and beggar'd yours for ever?" (3.1.87-90). Like Macbeth himself, who has been denied what he feels to be his just reward for saving the kingdom, the two men feel that they owe it to their "manhood" to commit the murder. They respond to Macbeth's goading with a simple declaration: "We are men, my liege" (3.1.90). The portrayal of the second murderer seems to confirm that the most intensely spirited "spite" is likely to be "incens'd" by a strong sense of injustice (3.1.107-10). The first murderer, who is merely so "weary with disasters, tugg'd with fortune, that [he] would set [his] life on any chance, to mend it, or be rid on 't," could be seen as relenting at the eleventh hour, since his decision to "strike out the light" allows Fleance to escape, but the second feels no such compunction: "We have lost best half of our affair" (3.1.110-13, 3.3.18-21).

The only objection to proceeding with the murder of Duncan which Macbeth's own spirited manliness allows him to acknowledge is one which is itself derived from his pursuit of distinction. On the overt level of the soliloquy in which he determines not to proceed with the murder, he treats the fact that Duncan is not only an admirable king, but a relative and a guest, who is therefore "here in double trust," merely as a practical obstacle: he implies that he would readily commit the "horrid deed," but for his understanding that it would attract public opprobrium and ultimately "teach bloody instructions, which, being taught, return to plague th' inventor" (1.7.1-28).

Pity, like a naked, new-born babe,

Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubin, hors'd

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind. (1.7.21-25)

However, these lines betray a keen appreciation of the power of sympathetic care, which belies the apparent callousness of Macbeth's overt argument. Here, as elsewhere in the play, children strongly evoke this power precisely because of their defencelessness, a paradox which is encapsulated in the image of the cherubin, who are powerful angels, yet are often portrayed as infants.^[18] We may infer from the vividness of Macbeth's imagery that his wife was right to assume that the principal factor which deters him from committing the murder is in reality his "kindness," a term which in Shakespeare's time still retained its association with the Old English word for kinship (1.5.16-18).^[19] It should be remembered that when Macbeth first entertains even the mere "suggestion" that he might murder Duncan, it "unfix[es]" his hair and causes his heart to "knock at [his] ribs against the use of nature" (1.3.134-37). He knows that such an egregious offence against the duty of care which close attachments necessarily entail would inevitably alienate him from a whole network of ties -Macduff is probably just one of many men who "lov[ed]" him at the start of the play (1.7.12-16, 4.3.13).^[20] In sum, Macbeth's ultimate fear is "the terror of moral isolation," but he is too spirited to admit that this is the case.^[21]

Macbeth's dismissal of piety is no more convincing than his apparent callousness: although he boasts that he could easily "jump the life to come," and adduces "angels" and "heaven's cherubin" purely, it might seem, in order to represent the putative reaction of the populace to "the horrid deed," Lady Macbeth, whose understanding of her husband is always sensitive (see below), knows that he is in fact a god-fearing man, who would much rather proceed "holily" (1.7.7, 1.5.20-21; for Macbeth's piety see 2.2.24-29, 3.1.67-68, 3.4.121-25). He can no more easily reject the conventional codes which reinforce his deep attachments than he can repudiate these attachments themselves, but at the same time, he can no more admit that he is frightened by the prospect of divine sanctions than he can acknowledge his natural fear of "moral isolation."

Macbeth's conviction that any sort of fear is shameful is illustrated in his subsequent conversation with his wife, in which he feels impelled to reframe even his private worry regarding the popular reaction to Duncan's murder as a positive desire to retain his new-found "honor[s]" and "golden opinions" (1.7.32-35). While he certainly "dare[s] do all that may become a man," he does not really believe that "who dares do more is none" (1.7.46-47). Thus, all Lady Macbeth has to do in order to persuade him to commit the murder is remind him forcefully of his overriding need to ensure that he does not "live a coward in [his] own esteem" (1.7.35-51). She does not even really show him a way of murdering Duncan which could conceivably allow him to retain the "golden opinions" that he has gained--let alone one which might allay his deepest fears--for, as she herself predicts, many are bound to suspect that the guards whom they are planning to frame are guiltless without ever "dar[ing]" to say so (1.7.77).

The first point to make in summing up on the opening section of the play is that egregious spiritedness is politically dangerous because it can at times override the deepest ties, along with the codes of piety and honour by which these ties are habitually reinforced: the most courageous spirits may well feel that it would be a weakness to baulk at the "illness" which might be required in order to achieve their just reward (1.5.20).^[22] At the same time, however, the above analysis shows that such spiritedness is bound to conflict with the deep-seated need for "human kindness." The transactions of love, as one might term them, which naturally impose duties in return for the security they provide, may well clash with those which offer social distinction in return for displays of courage, for both entail robust, but contrasting conceptions of equity. This is not to deny that these rival conceptions may often prove to be complementary: ironically, Macbeth's own initial acts of heroism show that spirited courage plays a vital role in establishing the stable political conditions under which "th' milk of human kindness" may, as it were, flow freely.^[23] The main purpose of the play is to explore both the "fair" and the "foul" ways in which these two elements of the male psyche are likely to interact under various circumstances (1.1.11).

The illusory dagger which Macbeth sees before proceeding to the murder again reveals both the depth of his panic and the robustness of the spiritedness by which it is suppressed. At first, Macbeth wishes to see the vision as "marshal[ling]" him to the murder; it is only when "gouts of blood" suddenly appear on the knife that he is forced to admit that "it is the bloody business which informs thus to mine eyes" (2.1.42-49). Macbeth's manly spirit impels him to downplay both the "business" itself and his own fevered anticipation, which he portrays equally euphemistically as "heat-oppress'd," yet although he manages to override his "cold" thoughts with "the heat of deeds" in a manner which will soon prove to be characteristic, distracting himself from his fears by figuring himself as a terrifying figure "strid[ing] towards his design...like a ghost," he inadvertently betrays his ongoing sense that he is offending against nature itself: he worries lest the "sure and firm-set earth" might "prate of [his] whereabout" (2.1.39, 2.1.55-61).

It is not until Macbeth has actually committed the murder, and thus finally alienated himself from the network of ties in which he has previously been safely embedded, that he feels the full force of his need for these connections: famously, he fears that he has "murther[ed] sleep," and will never be able to "wash this blood clean from my hand" (2.2.32-40, 2.2.57-60). Here, as elsewhere in the play, disruptions to sleep point to the deep-seated nature of the needs which he has attempted to deny by committing the murder. Like deep attachments themselves, sleep, that "balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast," is a pervasive, sustaining force, which yet remains unobtrusive--that is, until it is disrupted--precisely because it operates on a level beneath, or beyond, the scope of conscious thought (2.2.36-37).

The murder finally exposes the limits of Macbeth's innate spiritedness: without regard now for his wife's scornful response, he exclaims, "I am afraid to think what I have done; look on't again I dare not," while confessing that "every noise appalls [him]" (2.2.48-60). He is probably venting his real despair when he asserts to the court, apparently disingenuously, that he would have been "blessed" if he had died before Duncan, since "there's nothing serious in mortality: all is but toys: renown and grace is dead, the wine of life is drawn" (2.3.91-96).^[24] Death has allowed the king to escape the "torture of the mind" and "restless ecstasy" under which, as Macbeth now realises, he himself is henceforth doomed to labour (3.2.19-23). From now on, even amidst his best efforts to distract himself, he is in no doubt that he has "fil'd [his] mind...put rancors in the vessel of [his] peace...and [his] eternal jewel given to the common enemy of mankind" (3.1.64-68).^[25] Macbeth's underlying despair suggests that in the end the need for attachments--reinforced, as Shakespeare again reminds us in this passage, by pious convention--runs deeper than the ambition even of the most spirited souls.

However, extreme spiritedness is dangerous precisely because it may lead even the most desperate men to continue to contend with their "fate...to th' utterance" (3.1.70-71). As the presentation of the two murderers implies, men in particular may naturally be concerned to prove that they are "not i' th' worst rank of manhood," however dire their circumstances (3.1.91-113). Macbeth uses the very enormity of his losses as a motive to act: he is "in blood stepp'd in so far that, should [he] wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er" (3.4.135-37).

Macbeth's ability to distance himself from his deeper needs first emerges when he prays for his "black and deep desires" to remain hidden: "the eye wink at the hand; yet let that be which the eye fears, when it is done, to see" (1.4.50-53). After murdering Duncan, he is "afraid to think what [he] has done": "to know my deed, 'twere best not know myself" (2.2.47-49, 2.2.70). His description of his mind as "full of scorpions" again suggests that he flinches away from an awareness of what his spiritedness has impelled him to do (3.2.36). He endeavours to persuade himself that "the affliction of these terrible dreams that shake us nightly" is not "the protest of his deepest self," as Bradley puts it, proceeding, as this very admission implies, from a level far beyond the reach of conscious control, but rather reflects his practical frustration that they have "scorch'd the snake, not kill'd it"--since Banquo and Fleance live to fulfil the second part of the witches' prophecy--and his ongoing worries regarding "malice domestic [and] foreign levy" (3.2.13-25).^[26] Macbeth is no doubt relieved to shift his attention to the one element of his parlous situation which his nature and training have prepared him to confront. However, we may infer from his hope that if he kills Macduff, he "may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, and sleep in spite of thunder," that all his bold, and ultimately tyrannical, efforts to enforce his regime are in reality merely concerted attempts to distract himself from his terrifying sense of isolation (4.1.84-86).

Macbeth's vision of Banquo's ghost again reminds the audience that he cannot simply dismantle a whole network of ties and attachments without suffering severe, ongoing psychological repercussions.^[27] He finds this "horrible shadow" far more frightening than the most dangerous physical tests imaginable, which he would doubtless face without "trembling": "What man dare, I dare" (3.4.98-106). However, although this apparition, like that of the dagger, shows the power of Macbeth's guilt to break though all his spirited efforts at repression, the very fact that he externalises his terror in these ways arguably reflects the continuing vigour of these efforts. Moreover, despite being temporarily "unmann'd," Macbeth now responds to the ghost in a sufficiently assertive manner to justify his claim to be "a man," and that "a bold one," since he "dare look on that which might appall the devil," and indeed even steels himself to challenge the apparition to speak (3.4.72, 3.4.57-59, 3.4.69). The programme of audacious and remorseless tyranny upon which he now embarks justifies his claim that his is an "initiate fear that wants hard use: we are yet but young in deed" (3.4.141-43). As with his vision of the dagger, Macbeth eventually acknowledges that the apparition is a projection of his underlying feelings, yet even as he does so he seeks to belittle these feelings, in this case by dismissing the hallucination as an uncharacteristic act of "self-abuse" (3.4.141, compare 2.1.47-49).

Macbeth ultimately shows that he does indeed have the capacity to "spurn fate, scorn death, and bear his hopes 'bove wisdom, grace and fear," just as he is encouraged to do by the witches (3.5.30-31). Impetuous action largely displaces unbearable thoughts as the play as the play proceeds: "Strange things I have in head, that will to hand, which must be acted ere they may be scann'd" (3.4.138-39).^[28] He approaches the witches for a second time in a spirit of nihilistic bravado, declaring that he is willing to consign to oblivion not only social institutions-- "churches," "castles," "palaces"--but "nature's germains" themselves, including perhaps his own deepest needs, in order to know his fate (4.1.50-61). He hectors them now to show him the future, rather than simply "charg[ing]" them as he did at first, and does not hesitate to abuse them fiercely when they show him the vision of Banquo's succession (4.1.104-05, 4.1.115-16; compare 1.3.70-78).^[29] As Bradley puts it, "his courage is frightful. He strides from crime to crime, though his soul never ceases to bar his advance with shapes of terror."^[30] In this way, Shakespeare underlines both the political and psychological dangers of extreme spiritedness.

Nevertheless, the portrayal of Macbeth at the end of the play confirms that however insistently the male spirit lays claim to an absolute self-reliance, it cannot ultimately sustain itself in the absence of close ties. By the end of the play, Macbeth has indeed finally succeeded in forgetting "the taste of fears," having "supp'd full with horrors," but he now understands that he has only done so at the expense of all that is genuinely fulfilling in life, namely, "honor, love, obedience, troops of friends" (5.5.9-15, 5.3.22-28). (This list again implies that conventional social codes-- "honor," "obedience"--generally support the natural ties of "love" and "friend[ship].") His bold aggression now seems nihilistic: donning his armour much earlier than necessary, he announces, "I'll fight, till from my bones my flesh be hack'd" (5.3.32). He is "a-weary of the sun," although in characteristic fashion, rather than limiting himself meekly to ending his own life, he "wish[es] th' estate o' th' world were now undone," and declares, "Blow wind, come wrack, at least we'll die with harness on our back" (5.5.48-51).

It is not until he is about to fight Macduff that Macbeth finally attempts to prioritise "kindness" over spirited aggression: "But get thee back, my soul is too much charg'd with blood of thine already" (5.8.5-6). In this way he effectively acknowledges that he cannot bear any more to stand outside the circle of "honor, love, obedience, troops of friends." Macduff's taunt that he is a "coward," who will "live to be the show and gaze o' th' time" if he surrenders inevitably provokes him to make a show of proud resistance, but there remains a hint that he is "cow'd" by more than the revelation of his opponent's caesarean birth (5.8.15-27). As Macbeth prepares to fight, he places an uncharacteristic emphasis on defence rather than attack, despite choosing a misleadingly aggressive verb to disguise this shameful passivity: "Before my body I throw my warlike shield" (5.8.32-33). Macbeth's longing to re-enter the circle of "human kindness" from which he has ostracised himself is in the end his most persistent and deeply rooted motive, despite the undoubted tenacity of his spirited valour. The penitent and "studied...death" of the previously rebellious Thane of Cawdor is perhaps designed to make the same point (1.4.4-11).

The deepest tie which Macbeth forfeits by pursuing his ambitions turns out to be his relationship with his wife. The intimate mutual understanding which the couple initially share is evident in Lady Macbeth's response to Macbeth's letter: she accurately extrapolates his murderous intentions from the merest hints in his seemingly matter of fact letter, as Macbeth presumably knew she would, and then, aware that he will be held back by piety and "kindness," strives to support his ambition (1.5.1-73; see below). The couple invariably treat other gently, even when under extreme duress (3.2.26-46, 3.4.140-41).^[31] As the play goes on, Macbeth conforms to the protective role to which, as the play implies, his innate spiritedness is entirely suited: from the moment that he decides that his "dearest chuck" must remain "innocent of the knowledge" of Banquo's murder, he shoulders both the psychological and the practical burden of his ruthless efforts to consolidate his regime and secure the succession (3.2.45-46). (Similarly, Macduff is conforming to what Shakespeare might see as this natural role, albeit in a highly ironic way, when he tells Lady Macbeth that the repetition of the news that Duncan has died "in a woman's ear would murther as it fell" -2.3.84-86; see also 4.2.70-72).

Having supported her husband so actively in killing the king, Lady Macbeth is subsequently reduced simply to "marvel[ling]" at his sinister words (3.2.54; see below). The emancipation of Macbeth's spiritedness, in which, ironically, Lady Macbeth herself was originally so instrumental, ultimately drives the couple apart. Although Macbeth can sympathise with his wife's "rooted sorrow" at the end of the play, since he knows what it is like to have a "mind diseas'd [that] weighs upon the heart," he shows a characteristic ability to distract himself both from her mental agony and his own by abruptly immersing himself in preparations for the forthcoming battle (5.3.40-56).

Macbeth's low-key reaction to his wife's death certainly provides a further illustration of his characteristic capacity to subordinate his deepest needs to spirited action: "She should have died hereafter; there would have been a time for such a word" (5.5.8-18). It is contrasted to "the cry of women" in a manner that supports his claim to have "forgot the taste of fears" -while at the same time underlining the differences between the sexes in this regard, which, as we shall see, is one of the key themes of the play. Yet the very fact that this remark introduces his final, desolate soliloquy suggests that his bereavement has actually set the seal on his underlying despair -although the generalisations which follow again seem designed, in characteristic fashion, to allow him to mask the depth of his personal regrets.^[32] He still cannot quite bring himself to admit that he has in fact entered "a world of appalling loneliness, of meaningless activity, unloved himself, and unable to love."^[33]

This soliloquy contains the culminating example of the many theatrical images in the play: taken together, they point to the fact that Macbeth's growing "insensibility to natural feeling" is ultimately caused by his desire to "strut..." on the greatest "stage" of all, which has deprived him of the substantial ties which alone prevented his life from "signifying nothing," while generating in return nothing more than a superficial "sound and fury" (5.4.19-28).^[34] In the end, untrammelled spiritedness, like the love of drink according to the porter, is entirely self-defeating: it makes a man "stand to, and not stand to; in conclusion, equivocates him in a sleep, and giving him the lie, leaves him" (2.3.29-36). Just as drink "provokes the desire, but...takes away the performance," Macbeth's spiritedness ultimately alienates him from the main attachment by which he has been sustained, even though, ironically, his audacious ambition was in part originally "provoke[d]" by an urge to prove his manliness to his wife. Spiritedness is indeed as natural to men as thirst, but in its more extreme forms at least, the play shows it to be incompatible with personal fulfilment, let alone with political stability.

Hounds and "Mungrels"

The portrayal of Banquo implies that male spiritedness is normally amenable to moderation. Macbeth explicitly contrasts his friend's careful restraint-- "'Tis much he dares, and to that dauntless temper of his mind, he hath a wisdom that doth guide his valor to act in safety"--to his own reckless courage: "under him my Genius is rebuk'd, as it is said Mark Antony's was by Caesar" (3.1.50-56). Although Banquo cannot resist asking the witches to predict his future, thus indicating that most very spirited men are innately disposed to be ambitious, he manages to do so in a more dispassionate manner than Macbeth: "speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear your favors nor your hate" (1.3.60-61; contrast 1.3.70-78). He too sleeps uneasily for a while after hearing that he shall "get kings," but he prays to the "Merciful powers [to] restrain in [him] the cursed thoughts that nature gives way to in repose!" and determines to "keep his bosom franchis'd and allegiance clear" (1.3.67, 2.1.6-9, 2.1.28). Later, although we see that he cannot prevent himself from dwelling on the fact that the witches have also "set [him] up in hope," he tells himself to "hush" as soon as his new king appears, and goes on to insist with elaborate deference that "his duties are with a most indissoluble tie for ever knit" to Macbeth, whom he repeatedly addresses as his "lord" (3.1.3-10, 3.1.15-36).

Although Banquo's nature itself is undoubtedly more moderate than Macbeth's, the main element which distinguishes the two men begins to emerge when, after attempting to dismiss the witches as "instruments of darkness" who may "betray 's in deepest consequence," Banquo turns to address his "cousins," Rosse and Angus, leaving his friend to contemplate his ambitions "rapt[ly]" in solitude (1.3.123-27, 1.3.57, 1.3.142). This contrast hints that Banquo is more securely embedded in his community and has more invested in his attachments than Macbeth. The crucial difference between the two men, I would suggest, is that Banquo has a child. It should be remembered that even the ambition against which he struggles is for his children rather than primarily for himself. It is significant, especially in a play where birds are regularly associated with parental devotion, that it is Banquo who finds it so endearing that martins have "made their pendant bed and procreant cradle" in Macbeth's castle (1.6.3-10; compare 4.2.8-11, 4.2.32-35, 4.3.216-19). The reverence which he feels for family attachments is reinforced by his piety: Banquo admires the martins partly because they are "temple-haunting" (1.6.4; see also 2.1.7-9 and 2.3.130-32.)

When Banquo selflessly lends both his sword and his dagger to his son, Fleance, on the way back from Duncan's banquet--no doubt mindful that his friend now has a motive to murder them both--he is directly contrasted with the solitary Macbeth, who at this point in the play is steeling himself to proceed to the king's room, accompanied only by a vision of the dagger which he hopes will help him to fulfil his ambitions (2.1.4-5; contrast 2.1.33-61). Later, when he and Fleance are indeed attacked by the murderers, Banquo's priority is to tell his son repeatedly to "fly" (3.3.17). His desperate efforts to protect Fleance suggest that his self-love is moderated by a sense that his own life is just one link in an ongoing chain of attachments. The comfort which this perspective offers him is underlined by his hope that his son "may...revenge" his murder (3.3.18).

The contrast between Banquo and Macbeth sheds light on a crucial aspect of the latter's motivation which has not yet been discussed: the childless Macbeth lacks both the sense of security which an overarching perspective of this sort might provide and the caution and humble self-denial which it entails. Shakespeare implicitly presents children as providing an "enlarging purpose...which make[s] life meaningful."^[35] Macbeth's fierce desire to secure his succession through the "men-children" whom he hopes his wife will "bring forth" is surely the least self-regarding aspect of his motivation: his wish to avoid being left in possession of a "fruitless crown" and a "barren sceptre" implies that he assumes that it will be left to his progeny to reap the full rewards of his efforts (1.7.72, 3.1.60-61).^[36]

The vision of Banquo's heirs inheriting the crown seemingly ad infinitum which is conjured up by the witches thus deprives Macbeth of the prospect of acquiring what the play implicitly presents as the best antidote to egregious spiritedness (4.1.110-23; see below). As he himself seems to recognise, this vision represents a crucial turning point in his life: "Let this pernicious hour stand aye accursed in the calendar!" (4.1.133-34). He declares that "from this moment the very firstlings of my heart will be the firstlings of my hand," and, determining first to destroy Macduff's "wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in his line," now embarks on a reign of terror which "each new morn" creates "new orphans" (4.1.146-53, 4.3.4-8).^[37] We may contrast the careful way in which he managed Banquo's murder at an earlier point in the play, when he still hoped to retain "certain friends who are both his and mine, whose loves I may not drop," and who would "wail his fall" (3.1.18-25). Deprived of the prospect of children, Macbeth's "actions lose all purpose and are transformed into the blind fury of one doomed to destruction, who is resolved to destroy beforehand all that he can reach."^[38] His choice of the metaphor of "firstlings" is significant: he can now deliver only a grotesque travesty of the moderation which parenthood usually encourages (compare 1.7.54-59). His impetuous actions allow him to distract himself, however superficially, from the meaninglessness of a life which has been abruptly shorn of "enlarging purposes," while at the same time no doubt, enabling him to wreak his spite on those who still benefit from retaining such purposes.

It is significant that the witches initially attempt to prevent Macbeth from seeing this vision, aware that it will "grieve his heart" (4.1.110). The cauldron starts sinking and the music playing preparatory to showing the vision only after Macbeth fiercely resists their injunction to "seek to know no more," threatening them with "an eternal curse" unless they show him the line of succession (4.1.103-06). Whereas they have been happy to summon up apparitions which encourage him to be "lion-mettled, proud," presumably because they relish the destructive potential of his egregious spiritedness, they now perhaps fear--with some justification, as we have seen--that he might be weakened by an enervating despair if he were entirely stripped of "enlarging purposes" (4.1.90-91). The witches' understanding of the role which the prospect of fatherhood plays in stimulating Macbeth's hopes is suggested by the fact that the two most optimistic prophecies are conveyed by apparitions of children, the second of whom "wears upon his baby-brow the round and top of sovereignty" (4.1.75-89). They are perhaps hoping that Macbeth will assume that this latter child represents his own royal successors. It is significant that even the witches seem to understand that pure self-advancement is not a sustainable motive.

Banquo has, it seems, found a personal contentment in devoting himself to Fleance which Macbeth has been denied, but we may infer that it is perhaps this very contentment which induces this bold man, who has previously defended the kingdom from invasion almost as courageously as Macbeth himself, to conform with cautious deference to a regime which he suspects has been established by "foul..." means (1.2.33-41, 1.4.29-32, 3.1.15-18). Like the rebel army which opposes Macbeth at the end of the play, Banquo's spiritedness is ultimately regulated by his attachments: "Revenges burn in them; for their dear causes would to the bleeding and the grim alarm excite the mortified man" (5.2.3-5). It is noticeable that he is involved in defending the kingdom against the external threat from Norway at the start of the play, but not apparently in quelling Macdonwald's insurrection, which would presumably have presented no direct threat to his family, since it would simply have required him to transfer his allegiance to a new overlord, just as does with Macbeth (1.2.7-41).

By contrast with the relatively moderate Banquo, Macduff is able to play a leading role in the uprising which eventually enables him to defeat and kill Macbeth, precisely because he is willing to leave his family vulnerable to attack while he drums up support for his cause in England (4.3.186-88, 3.6.29-31). Perhaps Macduff initially hoped to take his family with him on his journey to England, but it appears that one of Macbeth's numerous spies discovered his rebellious intentions far earlier than he had expected (3.4.127-31). Once he has received and rebuffed a royal summons, prudence compels him "t'hold what distance his wisdom can provide," since he knows that Macbeth will immediately attempt to make him "rue" his recalcitrant "answer" (3.6.39-45). At this point he presumably decides that he is more likely to reach England if he leaves quickly and secretly without being encumbered by his wife and children. When Malcolm asks him why he left his "wife and child, those precious motives, those strong knots of love, without leave-taking," his only reply is to mourn for his "poor country!" whose injuries seem to have been rendered irremediable by Malcolm's unfounded suspicions (4.3.26-31). This reply confirms, both to the audience and ultimately to Malcolm himself, that his actions can be explained simply by his fierce patriotism.

At the same time, however, Macduff's guilty reaction to the news that his family have been murdered shows that he is at least partly inclined to agree with his wife that a man's natural role is primarily to protect his own family: "And I must be from thence" (4.3.224-27, 4.3.212). His quick anticipation of Rosse's dreadful news suggests that he has been plagued by a fear that his actions might have severely endangered his family (4.3.195-207). Henceforth, as the order of the questions which Macduff poses to Rosse suggests, his hatred of Macbeth is primarily intensified by the murder of his "pretty chickens" (4.3.211, 4.3.216-19). The bird imagery which he uses here links him to Banquo and Lady Macduff, who are both devoted parents (1.6.3-10, 4.2.34-35). In the final battle he worries that his "wife and children's ghosts will haunt [him] still," if someone else should kill Macbeth (5.7.15-16).

Macduff's decision to abandon his deepest ties clearly tortures him, but he is able to move quickly from "feel[ing]" emotional torment "as a man" to "disput[ing] it like a man" on the largest stage possible, making "med'cines of our great revenge to cure this deadly grief," while firmly quashing his urge to "play the woman with [his] eyes" (4.3.214-35). Malcolm praises him for the "manly" way in which his "grief convert[s] to anger" and becomes "a whetstone of [his] sword" (4.3.228-29, 4.3.235). His exceptionally spirited nature impels him to prioritise a panoptic view of the political situation over his attachment to his own family, and to sublimate his husbandly and paternal care into a concern to defend and avenge his "poor" compatriots, who "bleed" under "tyranny": "Each new morn new widows howl, new orphans cry" (4.3.31-32, 4.3.2-8). Thus, Shakespeare suggests that the most spirited men may naturally feel impelled to take stern, remedial action in times of political upheaval because of the distinctive way in which their spiritedness interacts with their attachments.

On a symbolic level, the prediction that Macbeth can only be defeated by one who is "not of women born" suggests that Macduff alone is capable of matching his opponent's manly spirit and ruthless capacity to override the softening influence of attachments (4.1.80-81, 5.8.13-16). The similarities between the names of the two characters perhaps underline this parallel. At the same time, however, Macduff resembles Banquo in that his attachment to his community is reinforced by parental ties, which means that he is a much more reliable asset to the state than Macbeth. The main implication of the complex web of parallels and contrasts between the three men is that the presence or absence of children may often play a crucial role in determining whether male spiritedness manifests itself in "foul" or "fair" ways. At the same time, however, the example of Macduff shows that in extremis the most useful guardians of all are precisely the ones who feel driven by their spirited indignation to focus on their attachment to the country as a whole, ironically at the expense of the very domestic ties which originally ensured that their aggression was regulated by their attachments.

Here again, as with Banquo and even with Macbeth himself, Shakespeare presents conventional piety and morality as factors that may modify spiritedness and reinforce natural attachments. Macduff exclaims that the sorrows of Scotland "strike heaven on the face" and describes Macbeth as "a devil more damn'd in evils" than any "in the legions of horrid hell" (4.3.5-6, 4.3. 55-57). To him, Duncan was a "most sainted king," while his queen, whom he admiringly describes as "oft'ner upon her knees than her feet, died every day she liv'd" (4.3.108-11). He invokes "heaven" three times as he seeks to convert his "grief" into "anger" (4.3.227-35). However, he is also prepared to calibrate his admiration for pious virtue pragmatically against his spirited patriotism: not only does he expose his wife and children to Macbeth's brutality, but he expresses a willingness to help Malcolm even if the latter is both lustful and avaricious, eventually abandoning his support, not for any moral reason, but because he becomes convinced that the prince's vices will "confound all unity" in Scotland (4.3.60-114). As with Macduff's attachments themselves, his adherence to conventional moral and religious codes both modifies and is itself sometimes radically modified by his spiritedness.

Rosse too understands that in "wild and violent" times, we may be "traitors and do not know ourselves" (4.2.18-19). Macduff's flight does not change Rosse's view that his friend is "noble, wise, judicious;" indeed he implies that it provides further evidence that he "best knows the fits o' th' season" (4.2.15-17). Similarly, Lady Macduff's son refuses to accept that his father should be "dead" to them just because he has withdrawn his support both from his family and the current regime, having been "set for" in such a threatening manner (4.2.36-37). Like Malcolm in the following scene, the boy takes a broader and less scrupulous view of Macduff's sudden flight than his mother. He understands that both political and domestic allegiances might have to be suspended in times of crisis.

The boy's suggestion that "traitor[s]" should not submit to being hanged if they outnumber "the honest men" betrays a precocious understanding that, unlike families, political regimes are inherently malleable, since they are ultimately sustained by power rather than by natural ties (4.2.44-58). This understanding leads him in effect to countenance violent revolution with an amoral insouciance which anticipates his father's willingness to accommodate himself to Malcolm's putative defects in order to overthrow Macbeth (compare 4.3.60-90). The parallels between Rosse, Macduff and Macduff's son confirm that an innate spiritedness may at times encourage men to distance themselves for a while both from their political and domestic allegiances and from the moral and religious codes by which these allegiances are reinforced. Although the capacity to do so may open the door to tyrannical ambition, as of course it does with Macbeth, it can also facilitate courageous resistance to such ambition on the part of those who combine this capacity with the underlying domestic attachments which still form the ultimate foundation of patriotism, despite being temporarily suspended.

Macduff's son naturally values self-reliance alongside his dearest attachments -his very youth seems to confirm that neither of these two contrasting elements within male nature have much to do with social conditioning. When Lady Macduff worries about what he will do without his family, he declares that he will live henceforth, like birds, on "what [he] get[s]" (4.2.31-36). At the same time, however, he is already instinctively aware that it is his role is to protect the family unit: he dies defending his father's name, while urging his mother to flee (4.2.83-85). The boy resembles Banquo in that his propensity for self-assertion is ultimately regulated by his domestic attachments. It is the combination of the two impulses which ultimately generates his fierce desire to protect his family. This, Shakespeare implies, represents the normal way in which the two contrasting elements within male nature can be reconciled, and perhaps the one that is most conducive to personal fulfilment.

In its more extreme forms, however, spiritedness is presented as a sort of confidence trick that nature plays on men, since its demands tend to pull them away from the very attachments which ultimately sustain them: like drink, it simultaneously "persuades...and disheartens" them -it is perhaps no coincidence that the porter's speech is delivered to Macduff, although it could equally well have been addressed to Macbeth himself (2.3.33-34). Hound-like men like Macduff are supremely useful to the state in times of political disruption for all the reasons given above, but they stand less chance than men like Banquo of finding fulfilment in domestic life: ironically, although Macduff plays a leading role in restoring the stability which protects thriving families, the price of doing so is that he must emulate Macbeth's own alienation from "human kindness."^[39] Siward typifies the tensions that are generated by the interplay between parental devotion and spiritedness which characterises such souls. He rigidly suppresses his grief after hearing of the "fair...death" of a son who, as he is gratified to learn, died "like a man" as "God's soldier," with "his prowess confirm'd," only allowing himself to be "comfort[ed]" by the appearance of Macduff bearing Macbeth's head, a sight which allows him to vent his potentially humiliating sadness as vengeful aggression (5.9.5-19). There is something monstrous about men like Macduff and Siward, but it is precisely this quality which allows them to be so useful to the state.

Milk and Gall

Just as Macduff could be said to embody the highest form of manliness, Lady Macduff is presented as quintessentially maternal. Her nurturing love overrides any worry she has about her own safety: she demands urgently of her son, "And what will you do now? How will you live?" (4.2.31). Like Lady Macbeth, she is exasperated by what she sees as her husband's cowardly surrender to "fear," but in her case, she wishes his courage to be focused on protecting his family: "he wants the natural touch, for the poor wren, the most diminutive of birds, will fight, her young ones in her nest, against the owl" (4.2.1-14). Under different circumstances and with a less spirited husband, one might presume that exasperation of the sort that Lady Macduff expresses might help to restrain egregious displays of male spiritedness. This, Shakespeare implies, is the normal function of maternal moderation, which in most circumstances helps to sustain both families and the wider civic order.

However, the portrayal of Lady Macduff also exposes the limitations of the dutiful self-denial which devoted parental care entails. To the moderate Lady Macduff, who obeys secular authorities so unquestioningly, no doubt assuming that nations are sustained primarily by loyal devotion in the same way as families, Macduff seems at first simply to be a "traitor..." both to family and country (4.2.3-4). Her assumption that the virtuous need fear no harm in a world which she assumes to be essentially just causes her to delay her flight in a manner which ultimately proves to be fatal (4.2.65-74). She herself belatedly acknowledges the ineffectuality of the "womanly defense" that she has "done no harm," and, by implication, the limitations of the pious codes of duty which normally reinforce attachments, observing that "in this earthly world...to do harm is often laudable, to do good sometime accounted dangerous folly" (4.2.74-79). In the end she even implicitly endorses her husband's decision to flee, having finally been forced by Macbeth's brutality to confront the fragility of the enclave of justice and harmony which thriving families and stable political regimes may combine to construct: when the murderers demand to know where her husband is, she declares defiantly that she hopes that he may be "in no place so unsanctified where such as thou may'st find him" (4.2.81-82). She now remains silent when the murderers unconsciously echo her own previous condemnation of Macduff as "a traitor," and, abandoning her earlier passivity, immediately complies with her son's injunction to "run away" (4.2.82-85; compare 4.2.68-74).

Overall, the contrast between Macduff, Macduff's son and Rosse on the one hand and Lady Macduff on the other suggests that whereas the nurturing element within feminine nature encourages the careful self-denial and conformity to codes of duty which are needed in order to establish enclaves of domestic harmony, the more spirited men are often predisposed to assert themselves in a much less restrained and scrupulous manner in order to create the stable political environment which ultimately protects these enclaves. Shakespeare perhaps implies that families, and indeed the civic order itself, flourish insofar as they can approach a point of equilibrium between these two contrasting priorities.

This point relates not only to the relationship between the two sexes, but to the internal dynamics of the individual soul. We may infer from the play that the loving families which provide so many with the ultimate good of deep, lasting attachments may best be protected and nurtured if both men and women strive to cultivate the quality that chiefly distinguishes the opposite sex, which they are both bound to possess at least in some measure: just as Banquo can show a self-denying care for his son which ultimately regulates his self-assertion, so Lady Macduff could have helped her family to evade the murderers if she had been able to activate her residual capacity for spirited self-reliance more promptly (2.1.4-5, 4.2.81-82).

Lady Macbeth's nature is more similar to Lady Macduff's than might at first appear. The play suggests that, although doubtless the more naturally spirited of the two women, she is nevertheless intrinsically unsuited to the aggressive role which she assumes at the start of the play. As we have seen, she can only gain sufficient courage to involve herself in the murder of Duncan by invoking a quasi-masculine spiritedness: "unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe topfull of direst cruelty" (1.5.40-43). She "stop[s] up th' access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake [her] fell purpose," by artificially overriding her feminine propensity to nurture: "Come to my woman's breasts, and take my milk for gall, you murth'ring ministers" (1.5.44-48). Her scornful comparison of "human kindness" to "milk" itself implies that this quality is quintessentially feminine (1.5.17). ^[40] Macbeth makes the corresponding assumption in praising his wife's "undaunted mettle": "Bring forth men-children only!" (1.7.72-74).

Lady Macbeth's spirited assertiveness ultimately proves to be much less robust than Macbeth's, precisely because it is largely assumed rather than natural. She originally plans to kill Duncan herself, albeit while simultaneously flinching away from the very idea, praying that her "keen knife see not the wound it makes," but in the end plays no more than an auxiliary role in the murder (1.5.67-68, 1.5.73, 1.5.27, 1.5.50-54). Although she is able to drug the grooms, prepare the daggers and then later, when Macbeth forgets to leave them at the scene of the crime, replace them by Duncan's body, even "gild[ing] the faces of the grooms" in the process, she cannot actually kill a man who "resembled [her] father as he slept," despite having previously drunk deeply in order to "fire" up her courage (2.2.1-13, 2.2.45-54). In sum, despite her best efforts, she is ultimately regulated by "th' milk of human kindness."

Moreover, as the play unfolds, we can see that Lady Macbeth has been thoroughly traumatised even by her purely ancillary involvement in the murder of Duncan. In the sleep-walking scene she famously reveals that she has been unable to free herself from the memory of Duncan's blood (5.1.31-52). Her eventual breakdown and suicide confirm that her natural capacity for self-reliance and self-assertion, although perhaps, as the play implies, exceeding that of many of her sex, is ultimately subordinate to her need for the network of ties which she has repudiated (5.3.37-45, 5.9.35-37). ^[41] Here again, Shakespeare uses disruption to sleep to illustrate the deep-seated nature of the imperatives which this need automatically generates (5.1.1-11; compare 2.2.32-40). The sleep-walking scene shows that, despite Lady Macbeth's original insistence that "these deeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will make us mad," she is in fact much less able to distract herself from her "rooted sorrow" and "that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart" than Macbeth -although even in her dreams she habitually displaces her remorse by focusing on practical issues like washing her hands or cajoling and reassuring her husband (2.2.30-31, 5.3.39-45, 5.1.26-39, 5.1.43-45, 5.1.50-52, 5.1.62-68). Whereas it is Macbeth who originally fears that he has "murdered sleep" and will never be able wash his hands clean, it is Lady Macbeth who continually sleep-walks in the end, while compulsively washing her hands (2.2.32-65).^[42] By contrast to Macbeth, who remains functional to the end, the fragility of the cool, discreet managing role to which Lady Macbeth initially assigned herself is ironically highlighted in the sleep-walking scene by her helpless rehearsal of this role before a horrified audience (3.4.31-35, 3.4.95-97).

Lady Macbeth is also more reliant on her marital attachment than her increasingly withdrawn husband. Earlier on in the play she plaintively demands, "How now, my lord, why do you keep alone?" while in the sleep-walking scene she concludes her somnambulation with an urgent, repeated injunction to Macbeth to give her his hand and come "to bed," as is apparently her habit, at which point, we are told, she is finally able to rest (3.2.8, 5.1.66-70). It is significant that even when talking in her sleep, she generally imagines herself to be conversing with her husband.^[43] (The only apparent exception is one terrified remark, which reveals that her heart-felt guilt is reinforced by a conventional fear of divine sanctions: "Hell is murky" -5.1.36; see also 1.5.53-54). We may infer from the fact that she draws no distinction between the killing of Duncan and that of Banquo and Lady Macduff that she still conceives of the couple as functioning as a marital unit, even though her husband deliberately ensured that he engineered the latter two murders entirely independently (5.1.39-43, 5.1.63-64).

Without doubt, the differences between Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff are in part innate. Like the male bias towards spiritedness, the feminine bias towards moderation apparently leaves room for many individual variations. At the other end of the scale from Lady Macbeth, for instance, we learn that Malcolm's mother, who was "oft'ner upon her knees than on her feet, died every day she liv'd" (4.3.109-11). Again, however, these differences seem to be aggravated by the presence or absence of children, perhaps in an even more extreme way than with the male characters. Lady Macbeth's innate propensity to nurture is revealed, almost despite herself, when she declares, "I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me," and, paradoxically, by the fact that she can think of no clearer indication of her determination to proceed with the murder than to declare that she would, while her baby was "smiling in [her] face, have pluck'd [her] nipple from his boneless gums, and dash'd the brains out," rather than emulate her husband's fickleness (1.7.54-59).^[44]

This famous oath should not be taken literally: it is easy to claim that one's spiritedness would override one's parental care in a hypothetical situation. In reality, however, if her son had lived, Lady Macbeth might have baulked even at exposing him to the backlash which the murder of Duncan was always bound to precipitate, let alone at "dash[ing] [his] brains out." Indeed, she might have been as exasperated by her husband's dangerous ambitions as Lady Macduff is by her husband's prioritisation of patriotism over paternal affection. As it is, however, she too lacks the sustaining purpose which children can provide, a lack which is even more grievous in her case than in her husband's, because of the particularly pressing nature of the maternal urge to nurture. Freud sees this lack as the underlying reason for Lady Macbeth's breakdown.^[45]

Macbeth is rendered doubly dangerous by the way in which Lady Macbeth, repudiating the innate "kindness" that usually leads women to strive to moderate male spiritedness, actively facilitates her husband's ambitions, which, as we have seen, are already burgeoning on his own account, untrammelled by parental ties. It is made abundantly clear in act 1, scene 7 that although the initial impetus for the murder comes from Macbeth, he would ultimately have baulked at "the horrid deed" if his wife had not worked so hard to provoke his manly aggression and ambition. Overall, Lady Macbeth's own assumption of aggressive ambition disturbs the natural balance between female moderation and male spiritedness, which, as the play implies, normally sustains both families and ultimately the civic order itself.

It is one of the great ironies of the play that, although Lady Macbeth's display of aggression certainly reflects a degree of natural spirit, it is fundamentally inspired by a sympathetic concern to support what she correctly understands to be her husband's desires: "Thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it" (1.5.18-30).^[46] Here she shows a sensitive appreciation of her husband's underlying feelings, at least as far as he is able to acknowledge them himself. Like any other lover, she strives to align herself with her beloved as closely as possible. Her inability to realise that at the deepest level Macbeth relies on his attachments far more than he knows is a failure of understanding rather than empathy, as is implied by the fact that she overlooks her own deepest needs in exactly the same way.

Lady Macbeth sees herself simply as helping her husband to override the conscience which "impedes [him] from the golden round" (1.5.28). She is never in any doubt that she is following Macbeth's initial suggestion, even when she is apparently taking the initiative: "What beast was't then that made you break this enterprise to me?" (1.7.47-48).^[47] She displays no trace of unilateral ambition even in her private response to the letter in which her husband first hints at the "enterprise" (1.5.1-30).^[48] Her concern is entirely for the marital unit: the planned murder will "to all our nights and days to come give solely sovereign sway and masterdom" (1.5.69-70). The sleep-walking scene can be seen as revealing "how dreadful was the struggle she had to subdue" in order to support her husband's ambitions.^[49] Overall, Shakespeare implies that in the absence of children, the innate feminine proclivity for sympathetic care may itself, paradoxically, induce women to embark on an effort to emulate the spiritedness of men, an effort which is not only unsustainable in personal terms, but which deprives their husbands of an important moderating influence.^[50]

Lady Macbeth is associated with the witches when she invokes "you murth'ring ministers, wherever in your sightless substances you wait on nature's mischief" (1.5.48-50). The witches, who "should be women," but have beards, seem to embody the distortion of feminine nature which is inevitably entailed by her attempt to prioritise spirited aggression over "kindness" (1.3.45-47). As with Lady Macbeth, the witches' encouragement of Macbeth's overweening spiritedness is insistently associated with an alienation from maternal feeling: the third witch has, without a trace of compunction, acquired the "finger of birth-strangled babe ditch-deliver'd by a drab," while the penultimate item in the cauldron which generates the apparitions is a "sow's blood, that hath eaten her nine farrow" (4.1.30-31, 4.1.64-65). The witches produce only apparitions of children, which resemble Lady Macbeth's invocation of the memory of her dead son, whose brains she claims she would have been prepared to "dash...out," in that, far from moderating Macbeth's ambition, as the presence of Fleance moderates Banquo's, they are used to incite him to "bear his hopes 'bove wisdom, grace and fear" (1.7.54-59, 4.1.75-100, 3.5.30-31).

The corollary of the many images of distortion or perversion in the play is the pervasive sense that nature sets firm parameters.^[51] Shakespeare hints at the moderation which he sees as characterising feminine nature by showing that the witches are no more able to commit acts of violence themselves than Lady Macbeth herself, but, like her, can only trigger disruption indirectly though their manipulation of Macbeth's spiritedness. We can infer that they are relatively powerless not only from their fear of Hecate in act 3, scene 5, but from their observation that the first apparition "will not be commanded," and that the second is even "more potent than the first" (3.5.1, 3.5.36, 4.1.75-76). Although the first witch plans to vent her spite on a woman who refuses to share her chestnuts by conjuring up winds which delay her husband's return from Aleppo, she grudgingly admits that "his bark cannot be lost" (1.3.4-25).^[52] She has only been able to obtain "a pilot's thumb" in her previous excursions because he happened to be "wrack'd as homeward he did come" (1.3.28-29). Similarly, the third witch's acquisition of the "finger of birth-strangled babe" is opportunistic rather than violent: it is the mother who strangles the child (4.1.30-31). Like Lady Macbeth, the witches fall uneasily between two stools: they can, as it were, curdle "th' milk of human kindness," but are ultimately unable to emulate the callous brutality of which men are capable.

Conclusion

At the centre of the play, in one of those unexpectedly abstract, apparently redundant speeches which are so characteristic of Shakespeare's mature work, Macbeth compares men to dogs: "the valued file distinguishes the swift, the slow, the subtle, the house-keeper, the hunter" (3.1.94-96). In one way, dogs are "all alike"--for instance, they all possess an innate spiritedness, which leads them to bark at strangers--but each also has a special "gift which bounteous nature hath in him clos'd" (3.1.97-100). I would suggest that "the swift" and "the slow" dogs correspond respectively to the spirited and the relatively moderate male characters in the play. The spiritedness of "subtle" men is different again, since it may be naturally vigorous, but moderated by their superior intelligence, which is bound to instil caution. Characters like Malcolm certainly stand in need of the untrammelled aggression of the warrior class, but the latter also need his prudent direction. Malcolm is the natural leader of the pack, as it were, precisely because he can control his own spiritedness and manipulate that of others.

The naturally "slow" are implicitly compared to "spaniels" and "water-rugs," who facilitate the hunt without actually being involved in the kill, and "shoughs," or shaggy lap-dogs, an apt image for men who are sufficiently moderate to be thoroughly domesticated (3.1.92-93). Men of this sort are useful to the family as objects of affection, pets as it were, and "house-keeper[s]," that is, watch-dogs, who are primarily focused on protecting their own households (3.1.96). Duncan, who rules justly, but is "meek" and "sainted," might serve as an example of this class of men (1.7.16-18, 4.3.108-09). His decision to appoint Malcolm as his heir rather than Macbeth suggests that he values his paternal attachment above the courage which is required to defend his kingdom. Such men may well find purpose and fulfilment in protecting their families, but are not suited to the role of political guardian. At an even lower rung in the hierarchy of male spiritedness, "curs" are a fitting image for those who are too fearful to be of use in either of these spheres: an example might be Donalbain, who apparently decides that it is "safer" to stay in Ireland than help his brother to oust Macbeth (2.3.138-41, 5.2.8-9).

At the other extreme, the spiritedness of the swift "hunter[s]" naturally drives them to attempt to play a dominant role in the world outside the family. The most egregiously spirited of these have the potential to become "demi-wolves," who can defend the state in the most heroic manner possible, but may also be willing to pursue their ambitions at the expense both of their natural attachments and of the conventional codes by which these ties are reinforced (3.1.92-93). The immediate catalyst for Macbeth's urge to "vault..." beyond the bounds of these restraints is provided by Duncan's failure to reward his courage adequately, just as the second murderer's "spite" is "incens'd" by injustice, but it is his childless marriage which in the first place encourages him to focus so relentlessly on his desire to distinguish himself (1.7.27, 3.1.108-10). Unlike Banquo, the Macbeths lack both the caution and the sense of larger purpose which parental devotion naturally instils. Even in his childless state, Macbeth's ongoing efforts to secure his succession are surely the least self-regarding of his concerns. The intensity of his furious reaction to the vision which seems to show him that these efforts are futile is a measure of the extent to which he has previously been sustained by his hope of founding a dynasty.

If a relatively unusual combination of circumstances is required for swift hunters to become wolf-like tyrants, it follows that even the most highly spirited natures must contain moderating elements: demi-wolves are hybrids, as the term suggests, and therefore potentially tameable. Macbeth is typical of such natures in being torn between his spiritedness and his need for "human kindness." Shakespeare implies that this need will inevitably prove to be the stronger force in the end, since close, lasting attachments are the ultimate good for which everyone longs, whether they know it or not.

Macbeth is initially deterred from pursuing his half-formed plan to murder Duncan by a deep reluctance to alienate himself from the network of ties and allegiances upon which he relies, although he can offer himself only superficial, practical pretexts for a volte-face which he considers to be so humiliatingly fearful. He would clearly have abandoned his ambitions at this stage if Lady Macbeth had not known exactly how to reignite his manly pride. The naked terror which he feels after actually committing the murder confirms, both to the audience and to Macbeth himself, that on the most fundamental level, which generally lies beneath, or beyond, the scope of conscious thought, even the most spirited of men rely on their attachments. Although Macbeth's extreme spiritedness allows him to distract himself from his epiphany for a while by focusing on the increasingly brutal means by which he hopes to secure his regime, he eventually has to acknowledge the futility of his ambition, and ultimately even makes a gruff attempt to limit his offences against the imperatives which are dictated by his own deepest needs. Overall, Shakespeare uses Macbeth to illustrate both the potential robustness of the spirited element of the male psyche and the fact that it is bound to be incompatible with personal fulfilment as well as political stability.

However, the play suggests that even the most spirited men are not normally wolf-like. As Plato reminds us in his discussion of the guardians of his imagined republic--which is itself concerned precisely with the issue of how best to combine moderation and spiritedness-- "the disposition of noble dogs is to be as gentle as can be with their familiars...and the opposite with those they don't know."^[53] Macduff resembles the "hounds and greyhounds" in Macbeth's list, who are as aggressive and unsuited to "house-keeping" as the "demi-wolves," but whose attachment to the household encourages them to hunt for others rather than primarily for themselves (3.1.92). The differences between Macbeth and Macduff can be explained primarily by domestic circumstances: Macduff is devoted to his "pretty chickens" (4.3.218). There is a complex, mutually transformative relationship between two powerful elements in the souls of such hound-like men: Macduff's extreme spiritedness has the potential to divide him from his family, but at the same time his strong domestic ties ensure that his thrusting aggression is sublimated into indignation on behalf of all the "widows" and "orphans" who suffer under Macbeth's tyrannical regime.

Although the patriotism of men like Siward and Macduff is strongly supported by codes of piety and honour, the latter's abrupt flight and subsequent willingness to resign himself to Malcolm's pretended faults show that he will not allow his efforts to oppose Macbeth's regime to be hamstrung by these codes any more than by domestic attachments. Macduff's son, who already displays a hound-like mixture of spirited self-reliance and protectiveness, seems to understand that the political order is ultimately underwritten by power rather than by natural ties and allegiances or the codes by which they are reinforced. "Kindness" and codes of duty may be integral to family life, and therefore arguably to human fulfilment, but the most spirited men are able to suspend them at times, precisely in order to establish or safeguard the conditions under which loving families may flourish. Hounds can only defeat demi-wolves by emulating their methods.

Slightly further down the hierarchy of male spiritedness, Banquo is clearly exceptionally courageous, since he plays a major role in defeating the Norwegian invasion, yet he differs from Macduff in that his spiritedness is regulated by his concern for his son (1.2.34-41, 1.4.29-32). This concern, which is strongly reinforced by his piety, certainly moderates his ambition, and probably enables him to lead a more fulfilling life than Macduff, but it also prevents him from mounting any resistance to Macbeth, despite holding him in the highest suspicion. It is not to disparage Banquo to say that he might be seen as one of the "mungrels" in the "catalogue" of men, since, having a slightly less spirited nature than either Macduff or Macbeth, he naturally straddles the gap between "hunt[ing]" and "house-keeping" (3.1.92). His military involvement at the start of the play is probably a direct extension of his concern to protect his family. Broadly, the position which each male character occupies in the "catalogue" of men is thus determined by an interplay between their innate level of spiritedness and a set of external circumstances, which include the extent to which they encounter serious injustice, and, most crucially, their experience of fatherhood, or, conversely, childlessness.

Men like Banquo, whose innate assertiveness is tempered by "th' milk of human kindness," are clearly far more common than those like Macduff, as is implied by the fact that the latter is not "of woman born." However, both hounds and "mungrels" play their part in upholding the delicate balance between moderation and spiritedness which sustains not only harmonious families, but ultimately the civic order itself. Families always need men like Banquo, who are softened by fatherly feeling, but who remain aggressive enough to protect them when they are under threat, but on occasions they also need those like Macduff, whose spiritedness leads them to extend their paternal care to the nation as a whole, and to prioritise political and military engagement over family attachments. Ironically, these latter are themselves less likely to form fulfilling attachments than more moderate men, for, especially in times of political disruption, the needs of the state conflict with those of the family and ultimately the individual. Macduff is in a sense monstrous in his ability to override his domestic attachments, but at the same time he is also supremely useful in restoring the stable political conditions which might allow ordinary families to thrive. By contrast, Macbeth is neither politically useful like Macduff, not personally fulfilled, like Banquo.

Contrary to initial appearances, the play presents women as naturally moderate. Lady Macduff is cautious and restrained because her innate, generous fund of "human kindness" has been channelled into maternal care. Her self-denying devotion to her children has doubtless formed the foundation of a loving family, but it is also precisely this quality which renders her vulnerable when she is forced to step outside the enclave of close domestic attachments. She assumes at first that the political world is as just as this enclave, failing to understand that the stable conditions which facilitate such attachments are themselves ultimately maintained by power rather than by natural ties or an immanent God.

There is little doubt that in the "catalogue" of women, Lady Macbeth is naturally more spirited than Lady Macduff, and yet in order even to play what turns out merely to be an ancillary role in the murder of Duncan, even she has to attempt artificially to "unsex" herself. She resembles the witches in that she initially inspires awe in Macbeth, but in the end can only manipulate his ambition, since she herself is not actually capable of physical violence. The witches embody the distortion of feminine nature which the attempt to prioritise spiritedness over "kindness" inevitably involves. We may infer that whatever innate spiritedness Lady Macbeth possesses is ultimately regulated by her attachments, not only from the reason which she gives for baulking at murdering Duncan, but from the fact that she assumes her aggressive and thrusting persona entirely out of sympathetic devotion to her husband. In the end, whereas the spirited element within Macbeth's nature allows him temporarily to override his need for a whole network of close ties, including his marriage itself--albeit at tremendous psychological cost--Lady Macbeth simply cannot endure this sort of radical isolation, or the thought that she has violated the imperatives which such ties naturally impose. In this way Shakespeare implies that, for better or worse, the spiritedness of women tends to be subordinated to their particularly pressing need to forge and maintain deep and lasting attachments.

It is Lady Macbeth's childlessness which creates the conditions that encourage her to strive to convert her "milk" into "gall": she can only urge Macbeth to advance himself at the expense of his personal and patriotic ties, while boasting that she herself would destroy her child rather than baulk at the task of murdering Duncan, because her powerful urge to provide nurturing care is entirely focused on her partner. Normally, as Lady Macduff's exasperation with her errant husband implies, the spiritedness of men is tempered not only by their own paternal care, but by the influence of maternal caution. Of the three sources of moderation which the play surveys, namely, prudent thought, pious and moral convention and the need to safeguard deep attachments, the latter is portrayed as by far the most powerful, since, according to Shakespeare's intuition, it is one of the fundamental elements of human nature.

Ideally, leaving aside for a moment the demands of the political sphere, which at times requires monstrous heroes, the natural balance between feminine moderation and masculine spiritedness which enables families to thrive should ideally find its echo in the individual soul, where both qualities are bound to be present, albeit often in uneven proportions. As Lady Macduff eventually realises, women sometimes have to draw on whatever spiritedness they possess, albeit primarily in times of political disruption, whereas, from a purely personal perspective, men would always be best advised to moderate to some degree the spirited aspect of their nature, since they can only satisfy their deepest needs by obeying the imperatives which intimate attachments naturally impose.^[54]

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1. Allan Bloom, "Interpretive Essay," in The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom, 2^nd ed. (Chicago: Basic Books, 1991): 355. ↩︎

2. Francis Fukuyama, Identity (London: Profile Books, 2018): 18. ↩︎

3. Bloom: 365. ↩︎

4. Carolyn Asp typifies the modern approach: "'Be Bloody, Bold, and Resolute': Tragic Action and Sexual Stereotyping in Macbeth," Studies in Philology, 78, 2 (2001): 153-69. ↩︎

5. All references to Measure for Measure are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997). ↩︎

6. Michael Hawkins thoughtfully explores Duncan's imprudence in "History, Politics and Macbeth," in Focus on Macbeth, ed. John Russell Brown (London: Routledge, 1982): 175-76. ↩︎

7. See Nick Moschovakis' introduction to "Macbeth": New Critical Essays, ed. Nick Moschovakis (London: Routledge, 2008): 46. Rebecca Lemon notes that Duncan is offending against the Scottish principle of succession, known as tanistry, by appointing Malcolm as his heir: "Sovereignty and Treason in Macbeth," in "Macbeth": New Critical Essays: 76. See also Stephen Deng, "Money and Mystical Kingship in Macbeth," "Macbeth": New Critical Essays: 171-73; Muriel Bradbrook, "The Origins of Macbeth," in Shakespeare: "Macbeth," Casebook Series, ed. John Wain, rev. ed. (London: Macmillan, 1994): 242. ↩︎

8. In Shakespeare's source, Holinshed's Chronicle, as cited by R. A. Foakes, "Macbeth only thinks of using force against Duncan after Malcolm has been nominated as 'successor in the kingdome'": "Images of Death: Ambition in Macbeth," in Focus on Macbeth: 13. In Holinshed, Macbeth thinks Duncan has defrauded him of "all maner of title and clame": cited in John Drakakis' introduction to "Macbeth": A Critical Reader, ed. John Drakakis and Dale Townshend (London: Bloomsbury, 2013): 9. See also G. Wilson Knight, "The Milk of Concord: An Essay on Life-Themes in Macbeth," in Shakespeare: "Macbeth": 148: Macbeth "hates to hear Duncan proclaiming princely honours on Malcolm, despite the promise of more distinctions for such as himself." ↩︎

9. The nobles presumably agree with Macbeth's self-estimation, since they choose him as king: Hawkins: 175. ↩︎

10. Leon Harold Craig, The War Lover (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994): 157. See The Republic: 547c. ↩︎

11. See Peter Hall's remarks in an interview with John Russell Brown: "Directing "Macbeth" in Focus on "Macbeth": 233. ↩︎

12. Lynne Dickson Bruckner observes that Malcolm often "perform[s]...emotions for strategic reasons," in "Grief, Authority and Affect in Macbeth," in "Macbeth": New Critical Essays: 203-04 and also 199; Hawkins: 180. ↩︎

13. Bruckner: 200-01. ↩︎

14. Hawkins: 173-74. ↩︎

15. Eugene M. Waith, "Manhood and Valor in Macbeth," in Twentieth Century Interpretations of "Macbeth," ed. Terence Hawkes (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1977): 63-64. ↩︎

16. Elsewhere in the play Malcolm compares "concord" to "sweet milk" (4.3.98). ↩︎

17. Hall: 238. Samuel Johnson, "Comments on Macbeth," in Shakespeare: "Macbeth": 63: "Courage is the distinguishing virtue of a soldier, and the reproach of cowardice cannot be borne by any man from a woman, without great impatience." ↩︎

18. See Cleanth Brooks, "The Naked Babe and the Cloak of Manliness," in Twentieth Century Interpretations of "Macbeth": 52; and Bradley: 117. See below for a fuller discussion of the role of children in the play. For surveys of this role, see Kenneth Muir, "Imagery and Symbol in Macbeth," in Aspects of "Macbeth" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977): 66-68; Sigmund Freud, "Some Character Types met within Psycho-Analytical Work," in "Shakespeare: "Macbeth": 143; and Wilson Knight: 171-72. ↩︎

19. For Macbeth's humanity, see A. C. Bradley, "Macbeth," in Shakespeare: "Macbeth": 114 ↩︎

20. L. C. Knights, "Macbeth," in Twentieth Century Interpretations of "Macbeth": 99: "...the man who breaks the bonds which tie him to other men...is...thwarting his own deepest needs." For an analysis of "the web of obligations and friendship that held the society of England together," and of the way in which "different kinds of kinship terminology overlap and shade into each other and are not clearly distinguished from friendship" in Shakespeare's time, see Alan Bray's The Friend, cited in Rebecca Ann Bach, "The "Peerless" Macbeth," in "Macbeth," New Critical Essays: 105-07. ↩︎

21. Helen Gardner, "A Reply to Cleanth Brooks," in Twentieth Century Interpretations of "Macbeth": 80. ↩︎

22. Hawkins: 168: Macbeth represents "a dangerous manifestation of fearless manhood." Bradley notes that Macbeth sees the murder almost as "an appalling duty": 120 ↩︎

23. Hawkins: 169. ↩︎

24. Muir: 73. ↩︎

25. Bradley: 120-01. ↩︎

26. Coleridge, "Marginalia on Macbeth," in Shakespeare: "Macbeth": 92: "Ever and ever mistaking the pangs of conscience for fears of selfishness." See also Bradley: 115. ↩︎

27. Bradley: 115-18. ↩︎

28. Bradley: 121-22. ↩︎

29. D. J. Palmer, "'A New Gorgon': Visual Effects in Macbeth," in Focus on "Macbeth": 56-57; Bradley: 123. ↩︎

30. Bradley: 115. ↩︎

31. Robin Grove, "'Multiplying Villainies of Nature,'" in Focus on "Macbeth": 133-36; Bradley: 113. ↩︎

32. For Macbeth's buried sadness, see Bruckner: 199. ↩︎

33. Gardner: 82. ↩︎

34. V. Y. Kantak, "An Approach to Shakespearian Tragedy: the 'Actor' Image in Macbeth," in Aspects of "Macbeth": 83-84. ↩︎

35. Brooks: 50. Julie Baramezel, "Macbeth": New Critical Essays: 120: "Only the Macbeths, the Weird Sisters, and the Three Murderers lie outside the circle of generation, in the 'unnatural' realm of explicit self-interest and unapologetic self-promotion." ↩︎

36. Freud: 142. ↩︎

37. Bradley: 124. ↩︎

38. Freud: 142. For the link between Macbeth's childlessness and his despair, see also Wilson Knight: 174. ↩︎

39. Plato would agree that the guardian class lack personal fulfilment, although for slightly different reasons. This is what necessitates the noble lie in his Republic: Bloom: 365. ↩︎

40. Peter Stallybrass, "Macbeth and Witchcraft," in Focus on "Macbeth": 197. ↩︎

41. Sarah Siddons, in her "Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth," argues that this scene represents "the triumph of Lady Macbeth's femininity and compassionate nature": cited by Laura Engel in "The Personating of Queens," in "Macbeth": New Critical Essays: 241. For other actors and early critics who have emphasised the character's wifely devotion, see Marvin Rosenberg, "Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," in Focus on Macbeth: 80-82. See also Derek Russell Davis, "Hurt Minds," in Focus on "Macbeth": 213; and the Victorian critics, Anna Jameson, Richard Moulton and William Maginn, cited in Sandra Clark, "The Critical Backstory," in "Macbeth": A Critical Reader: 33, 37. ↩︎

42. Freud: 145. ↩︎

43. Maynard Mack, cited by G. K. Hunter in "Macbeth in the Twentieth Century," in Aspects of "Macbeth": 10. ↩︎

44. See Siddons, as cited by Engel: 249. ↩︎

45. Freud: 143. ↩︎

46. Bradley: 136. ↩︎

47. See Carr, cited by Clark in "Macbeth": A Critical Reader: 36: "Where she only follows, she sometimes seems to lead." Carr sees the theme of the play as a whole as "the contrasted characteristics of sex." ↩︎

48. The changes which Shakespeare makes to his source often provide clues to his deeper purposes: the original Lady Macbeth is "verie ambitious, burning in unquenchable desire to beare the name of a queene": Holinshed, quoted in Drakakis: 10. ↩︎

49. Maginn, cited by Clark in "Macbeth": A Critical Reader: 37. ↩︎

50. Siddons, as cited by Engel: 251: "Yes, smothering her sufferings in the deepest recesses of her own wretched bosom, we cannot but perceive that she devotes herself entirely to the effort of supporting him." ↩︎

51. For the unnaturalness of Lady Macbeth, see Inga-Stina Ewbank, "The Fiend-like Queen: A Note on Macbeth and Seneca's Medea," in Aspects of "Macbeth": 63. For images of nature and its perversion in the play as a whole, see Wilson Knight: 167-70. ↩︎

52. Johnson: 65-66. ↩︎

53. The Republic: 375a-d, trans. Bloom. ↩︎

54. See Bloom: 364: "Spiritedness and gentleness are the warp and woof of the soul, each necessary to its healthy functioning, but in a delicate balance with one another." For a survey of the critics who see the play as advocating a synthesis of masculine and feminine qualities, see Moschovakis' introduction to "Macbeth": New Critical Essays: 45. ↩︎