MACBETH

MACBETH

Fair is foul, and foul is fair.

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

MACBETH

an army general and chieftain (lord) of Glamis

LADY MACBETH

wife of Macbeth

DUNCAN

king of Scotland

MALCOLM

older son of Duncan

DONALBAIN

younger son of Duncan

BANQUO

an army general

FLEANCE

Banquo’s son

MACDUFF

chieftain of Fife

LADY MACDUFF

wife of Macduff

LENNOX

a Scottish noble

THREE WITCHES

SCENE

SCOTLAND

hen a person is asked to tell the story of Macbeth, he can tell two stories. One is of a man called Macbeth who came to the throne of Scotland in the year of Our Lord 1040 and reigned justly and well for fifteen years or more. This story is part of Scottish history. The other story comes from a place called Imagination; it is gloomy and wonderful, and you shall hear it.

A year or two before Edward the Confessor began to rule England, a battle was won in Scotland against a Norwegian king by two generals named Macbeth and Banquo. After the battle, the generals walked together toward Forres, in Elginshire, where Duncan, king of Scotland, was awaiting them.

While they were crossing a lonely heath, they saw three bearded women, sisters, withered in appearance and wild in their attire.

“Speak, who are you?” demanded Macbeth.

“Hail, Macbeth, chieftain of Glamis,” said the first woman.

“Hail, Macbeth, chieftain of Cawdor,” said the second woman.

“Hail, Macbeth, king that is to be,” said the third woman.

Then Banquo asked, “What of me?” and the third woman replied, “Thou shalt be the father of kings.”

“Tell me more,” said Macbeth. “By my father’s death I am chieftain of Glamis, but the chieftain of Cawdor lives, and the king lives. Speak, I charge you!”

The women replied only by vanishing, as though suddenly mixed with the air.

Banquo and Macbeth knew then that they had been addressed by witches. They were discussing their prophecies when two nobles approached. One of them thanked Macbeth, in the king’s name, for his military services, and the other said, “He bade me call you chieftain of Cawdor.”

Macbeth then learned that the man who had yesterday held that title was to die for treason, and he could not help thinking, “The third witch called me ‘king that is to be.’”

“Banquo,” he said, “you see that the witches spoke truth concerning me. Do you not believe that your child and grandchild will be kings?”

Banquo frowned. Duncan had two sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, and he felt it disloyal to hope that his son Fleance should rule Scotland. He told Macbeth that the witches might have intended to tempt them both into villainy by their prophecies. Macbeth, however, thought the prophecy that he should be king too pleasant to keep to himself, and he mentioned it to his wife in a letter.

Lady Macbeth was the granddaughter of a king of Scotland who had died defending his crown against the king who came before Duncan and by whose order her only brother was slain. To her, Duncan was a reminder of bitter wrongs. Her husband had royal blood in his veins, and she was determined that he should be king.

When a messenger came to inform her that Duncan would spend a night in Macbeth’s castle, she steeled herself for a cruel act.

When Macbeth arrived, she told him that Duncan must spend a sunless morrow. She meant that Duncan must die (as that the dead are blind). “We will speak further,” said Macbeth uneasily. With his memory full of Duncan’s kind words, he would have rather spared his guest.

“Would you live a coward?” demanded Lady Macbeth, who seems to have thought that morality and cowardice were the same.

“I dare do all that may become a man,” replied Macbeth; “who dares do more is none.”

“Why did you write that letter to me?” she inquired fiercely. With bitter words she egged him on to murder, and with cunning words she showed him how to do it.

After supper Duncan went to bed, and two grooms were placed on guard at his bedroom door.

Lady Macbeth made them drink wine till they were in a stupor. She then took their daggers and would have killed the king herself if his sleeping face had not looked like her father’s.

Macbeth came and found the daggers lying by the grooms. Soon with red hands he appeared before his wife, saying, “Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more! Macbeth destroys the sleeping.’”

“Wash your hands,” said she. “Why did you not leave the daggers by the grooms? Take them back and smear the grooms with blood.”

“I dare not,” said Macbeth.

His wife dared. She returned to him with hands red as his own, but with a heart less white, she proudly told him, for she scorned his fear.

The murderers heard a knocking, and Macbeth wished it was a knocking that could wake the dead. But it was Macduff, the chieftain of Fife, who had been told by Duncan to visit him early. Macbeth went to him and showed him to the king’s room.

Macduff entered and came out again, crying, “O horror! Horror! Horror!”

Macbeth appeared as horror-struck as Macduff, and, pretending that he could not bear to see life in Duncan’s murderers, he slew the two grooms with their own daggers before they could proclaim their innocence.

Macbeth’s guilt did not shriek out, and he was crowned at Scone. One of Duncan’s sons fled to Ireland, the other to England. Macbeth was king. But he was discontented. The prophecy concerning Banquo oppressed his mind. If Fleance were to rule, a son of Macbeth would not rule. Macbeth decided, therefore, to murder both Banquo and his son. He hired two ruffians, who slew Banquo as he was on his way with Fleance to a banquet that Macbeth was giving for his nobles. Fleance escaped.

Meanwhile Macbeth and his queen received their guests very graciously, and he expressed a wish that has been uttered thousands of times since his day: “Now good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both.”

“We pray Your Majesty to sit with us,” said Lennox, a Scots noble. It was then that the ghost of Banquo entered the banqueting hall and sat in Macbeth’s place.

Not noticing the ghost, Macbeth observed that, if Banquo were present, he could say that he had collected under his roof the finest chivalry of Scotland.

The king was again pressed to take a seat. Lennox, who could not see Banquo’s ghost, offered Macbeth the chair in which it sat.

But Macbeth, with his eyes of genius, saw the ghost. He saw it like a form of mist and blood, and he demanded passionately, “Which of you have done this?”

Still none saw the ghost but he. To the ghost Macbeth said, “Thou canst not say I did it.”

The ghost glided out. Macbeth raised a glass of wine “to the general joy of the whole table, and to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss.”

The toast was drunk as the ghost of Banquo entered for the second time.

“Begone!” cried Macbeth. “You are senseless, mindless! Hide in the earth, thou horrible shadow.”

Again none saw the ghost but he.

“What is it Your Majesty sees?” asked one of the nobles.

The queen dared not permit an answer to this question. She hurriedly begged her guests to leave Macbeth, who was a sick man and likely to grow worse if he was obliged to talk.

Macbeth, however, was well enough the next day to converse with the witches whose prophecies had so maddened him.

He found them in a cavern on a thunderous day. They were dancing around a cauldron in which were boiling particles of many strange and horrible creatures, and they knew he was coming before he arrived.

“Answer me what I ask you,” said the king.

“Would you rather hear it from us or our masters?” asked the first witch.

“Call them,” replied Macbeth.

The witches poured blood into the cauldron and grease into the flame that licked it. A helmeted head appeared with the visor on, so that Macbeth could see only its eyes.

Macbeth began to speak to the head, but the first witch said gravely, “He knows thy thought.”

A voice in the helmet said, “Macbeth, beware Macduff, the chieftain of Fife.” The head then descended into the cauldron till it disappeared.

“One word more,” pleaded Macbeth.

“He will not be commanded,” said the first witch. Then a crowned child rose from the cauldron bearing a tree in his hand. The child said:

Macbeth shall be unconquerable till

The Wood of Birnam climbs Dunsinane Hill.

“That will never be,” said Macbeth. Then he asked to be told if Banquo’s descendants would ever rule Scotland.

The cauldron sank into the earth. Music was heard, and a procession of phantom kings filed past Macbeth. Behind them was Banquo’s ghost. In each king Macbeth saw a likeness to Banquo, and he counted eight kings.

Then he was suddenly left alone.

His next act was to send murderers to Macduff’s castle. They did not find Macduff, and asked Lady Macduff where he was. She gave a stinging answer, and her questioner called Macduff a traitor. “Thou liest!” shouted Macduff’s little son, who was immediately stabbed. With his last breath he told his mother to run. The murderers did not leave the castle with a single person alive.

Macduff was in England with Duncan’s son Malcolm when his friend Ross came to tell him that his wife and children were no more. At first Ross dared not speak the truth. But when Malcolm said that England was sending an army into Scotland against Macbeth, Ross blurted out his news, and Macduff cried, “All dead, did you say? All my pretty ones and their mother? Did you say all?”

His sole hope was revenge, but if he could have looked into Macbeth’s castle on Dunsinane Hill, he would have seen at work a force more solemn than revenge. Justice was working, for Lady Macbeth was mad. She walked in her sleep, suffering ghastly dreams. She would wash her hands for a quarter of an hour, but after all her washing she would still see a red spot of blood on her skin. It was pitiful to hear her cry that all the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten her little hand.

“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?” inquired Macbeth of the doctor, but the doctor replied that his patient must heal her own mind. This reply made Macbeth scornful of medicine. “Throw physic to the dogs,” he said; “I’ll none of it.”

One day he heard women crying. An officer approached him and said, “The queen, Your Majesty, is dead.”

“Out, brief candle,” muttered Macbeth, meaning that life was like a candle, at the mercy of a puff of air. He did not weep; he was too familiar with death.

Presently a messenger told him that he saw Birnam Wood on the march. Macbeth called him a liar and a slave, and threatened to hang him if he had made a mistake. “But if you are right you can hang me,” said Macbeth.

From the turret windows of Dunsinane castle, Birnam Wood did indeed appear to be marching. Every soldier of the English army held a branch that he had cut from a tree in that wood, and like human trees they climbed Dunsinane Hill.

Macbeth had still his courage. He went to battle to conquer or die, and the first thing he did was to kill the English general’s son in single combat. Macbeth then felt that no man could fight him and live. When Macduff came to him blazing for revenge, Macbeth said to him, “Go back; I have spilt too much of your blood already.”

“My voice is in my sword,” replied Macduff. He hacked at him and bade him yield.

“I will not yield!” said Macbeth, but his last hour had struck. He fell.

Macbeth’s men were in retreat when Macduff came to Malcolm, holding Macbeth’s head by the hair.

“Hail, king!” he said, and the new king looked at the old.

So Malcolm reigned after Macbeth; but in years that came afterward, the descendants of Banquo were kings.