Macbeth Fear And Conscience Essay, Research Paper

(1) Profr. Federico Pat n November, 1997 From the first time Macbeth appears

with the witches and Banquo, the reader could notice a kind of tension in the

scene. The three witches anticipate Macbeth’s future and he seems to be anxious

of what is going to happen with the prophecies. But why is he so anxious to

confirm the witches’ words, especially the third prophecy which proclaims him

king? I presume that it is because that idea was already in his mind. His

ambition and the idea of becoming the king of Scotland would lead him to his

first crime, murdering Duncan. But Macbeth fears. He is afraid of what he might

do. Murdering Duncan, he shall be king and will fulfill his deepest desires:

"Stars, hide your fires/ Let not light see my black and deep desires"

(I, iv, 51-52). But at this point of the play Macbeth does have the conscience

of what is evil and what is good. He knows that murdering Duncan will be an act

of dishonor and for a moment he will give up thinking of his ambitious thoughts.

But the process of committing the murder will be long: the very thought of the

deed horrifies him and, in order to succeed, Lady Macbeth will support him and

give him the courage to act. He will dare to "do all that may become a

man" (I, vii, 46). Now he is strong enough to achieve the deed though his

fear accompanies all the way, disguised in the form of a bloody dagger which in

fact leads him to Duncan’s chamber. He is so terrified after committing his

first crime that Lady Macbeth has to finish the plan leaving the daggers to the

grooms because he cannot come back to the crime scene. Now that the deed is

"done", that battle between his soul and his ambition has begun.

Little by little he will lose the fear that overtakes him but at the same time,

Macbeth will lose the conscience of his actions. Killing Duncan will lead him to

his death. In fact I presume that with Duncan’s death, Macbeth has died too.

Macbeth has lost the courtly values he had before Duncan’s murder and also has

realized the evil he can command in his heart. "False face must hide what

the false heart doth know" (I, vii, 82). He is a step forward of losing his

manhood. The process of this first crime is almost finished, his fears have

already been controlled, and his conscience almost overpowered. Years go by and

Macbeth, now the King of Scotland, will continue with his second crime. Willard

Farnham, in his book, says about the process between the first and the second

murder: "The quality of Macbeth’s recovery from the breakdown after the

murder of Duncan is indicated by his ability to form a plot for the

assassination of Banquo and Fleance without the spiritual support of Lady

Macbeth." The importance is stressed on Macbeth’s present and anything from

the past or the future which obscures that present must be erased. Banquo is his

next victim, who reminds him that past in which the witches prophecies declare

that he "shalt get kings, though thou be none" (I, iii, 66); and

threats his future as a king. At this point, Macbeth knows the sufferings he had

to endure while murdering Duncan with his own hands. This time without the

intellectual support of Lady Macbeth, he will give orders to murder Banquo and

his son, so that his hands will not be tainted with blood again. But his fear

remains with him, though he does not hesitate killing them. His fear will appear

this time after the deed with the apparition of the ghost of Banquo at the

banquet. The ghost reminds him his guilt and his punishment will rise to the

surface by means of his not-so-well-dominated fear. But Macbeth has proved to

himself that no matter how great his fear is, he can control it and in only one

scene he will confront this new proof of strength, almost killing the conscience

of his past and present deeds. Now the ghost of Banquo and Macbeth will battle

for recognition of their soul, even when Macbeth is no longer a living man.

Farnham says in this regard: "As Macbeth is put to the test by the ghost of

Banquo, we realize that between his first and second crime he has grown greatly

in criminal fortitude and that now, having recovered from one severe breakdown

in courage, he meets another by drawing upon his underlying strength much more

quickly than before." Therefore, in act III, scene iv, the second process

of Macbeth’s murder comes to a resolution. In one scene he recognizes through

Banquo’s ghost his deepest fear and guilt and fights against them. The reader

sees a Macbeth saying to the ghost filled by fear: "Thou canst not say I

did it" (III, iv, 49), passing to confront the apparition with: "Why,

what care I if thou canst nod! Speak too!" (III, iv, 69) and afterwards:

"Avaunt, and quit my sight!" (III, iv, 93) with a risen strength and

dominating his fear until at last he says: "Hence, horrible shadow! /

Unreal mockery, hence! Why, so; being gone, / I am a man again." (III, iv,

106-108) But Macbeth has lost his manhood, remaining by contrast the

"horrible shadow" of Banquo now embodied in him. The "horrible

shadow" that will commit the next crimes and which at the end will

recognize him as a "walking shadow". After the second series of

prophecies of the witches, Macbeth is more than ever committed to his dark

desires for ambition and power. From now on Macbeth will continue with his

crimes without any conscience of his evil doing; he has "almost forgot the

taste of fears" (V, v, 9) says after his third murder: Macduff’s wife and

children. This last murder will be committed without surrendering to his fear

and without the conscience of its punishment. In regard to the subject, Matthew

Proser points out: "With this crime conscience is all but repressed

completely. No ‘horrid image’ raises its head. Macbeth’s only acknowledgments of

conscience are reflected in the haste imposed upon the decision and in his

failure to commit the deed himself." Although he is afraid in the deepest

part of his sterile heart, the tyrant will not stop even when his present life

is meaningless, "a tale told by an idiot" (V, v, 26-27). His past full

of evil deeds is no longer important either because he cannot feel. now his

present and future demand more strength until "Birman Wood remove to

Dunsinane,(he) cannot taint with fear" (V, iii, 2). Fear: the sole emotion

Macbeth can or perhaps could feel until his tragic end. His last battle, the

battle which will lead him to his death, has come with full recognition of his

own fate. Birman Wood has been removed to the castle and Macduff –the man of

"none of woman born" (IV, i, 79)– will kill him. But Macbeth is no

longer the man unnerved by fear of the beginning of the play, supported by a

wife who at the end could not relieve her conscience from her guilt. Macbeth,

the "walking shadow", recognizing his end, will carry his meaningless

life and fight. At the end, the reader will hear a Macbeth saying: "I will

not yield" (V, vi, 66). His conscience never leads him to repentance.

Macbeth’s process of discovering his own fear and confronting it comes to a

resolution at the end of the play. Macbeth, in order not to surrender to the

forces of his own fear will try to show a strength that cost him his conscience

over his evil deeds and, in the long run, his own heart. The thane of the

beginning, the king after, and, at the end, the tyrant will fall down by his own

pressure for his sense of courage. A courage disguised under the mask of madness

which will remain with him until his death. Since I chose to write about

Macbeth’s fear and conscience, a very important question rose in my mind: Why

can the reader feel sympathy for his "deadly butcher"? I presume that

the answer lies on the way the hero leads us in his world and how he confronts

his weakness, the "evolution" or perhaps "degeneration" of

his perspective of evil and good and, of course, his perspective of what is free

will and fate. I would like to end with a quotation from Proser’s essay

"The Manly Image": "In the end what is heroic about him is his

refusal at the mercy of other outside himself, to passively will away his death

to agents of any mysterious force as he had self-deceptively attempted to will

away the lives of others. Having chosen himself as his own god and killed

without mercy, he ironically becomes subject to the rigor of his own judgment,

or perhaps misjudgment, and at the same time, his own blind justice."

? Farnham, Willard. Shakespeare Tragic Frontier. Oxford: Basil Blackwell

& Mott, 1973. ? Proser, Matthew. The Heroic Image in Five Shakespearean

Tragedies. Princeton University Press, USA, 1965. ? Shakespeare, William.

Macbeth. Penguin Books, England, 1967. Willard Farnham, Shakespeare’s Tragic

Frontier, p.122. Ibid., p.123. Matthew Proser, The Heroic Image in Five

Shakespearean Tragedies, p.82. Ibid., p.91