With very few exceptions, Macbeth does have a conscience, even to the very end. There are a couple of noteworthy exceptions, but for the most part, he keeps trying to override and ignore his conscience, to no avail.
Consider the murder of Duncan first. He fights with himself as he walks toward the room with the dagger. His wife has talked him into it, but he's still divided (hence the "is this a dagger I see before me?" speech). Afterward, he loses his nerve and exits the chamber, the daggers he just used to kill Duncan and his grooms still in his hand. When Lady Macbeth finds him, he cannot return to the chamber. He's already talking about how "Macbeth murders sleeps." She has to take the daggers and smear blood on the grooms to make the murders seem their fault.
Macbeth's next murder is Banquo. He hires murders to do the work for him, but he suffers "fits" when the ghost of Banquo appears at his banquet after the murder. He, of course, is the only person who can see this ghost. He is plagued with guilt, which indicates a very active conscience.
After this insane display, when Lady Macbeth dismisses the banquet guests, she turns to her lord and says, "You lack the season of all natures, sleep." His conscience won't let him sleep.
The closest we come to Macbeth not being troubled by conscience is at the end of Act III Scene 4, when he says:
I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er:
Strange things I have in head, that will to hand;
Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.
In other words, he's convincing himself that if he's in for penny, he's in for a pound. He's already done so much that there's no point in turning back now, and he may as well plow on. He will try to act first and think later in order to do what he believes he must do.
Even when Malcolm's forces advance on Dunsinane, Macbeth says to himself that the things that should accompany his old age, such as "honour, love, obedience, troops of friends," he cannot hope for. Instead, he can expect only "Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour"--lip-service from those who serve him--and breath, which he'd rather not even have (4.3). This suggests a conscience even now; he cannot completely subdue it.
In Scene V Act 1, he as Malcolm's English army advances upon Dunsinane, Macbeth hears the cry of women and responds thus:
I have almost forgot the taste of fears;
The time has been, my senses would have cool'd
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in't: I have supp'd full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts
Cannot once start me.
Only at this point does he admit that his conscience seems to be completely gone.
In Act V Scene 8, during the battle, Macbeth is standing alone in the battlefield and the thought of suicide occurs to him, then he says:
Why should I play the Roman fool, and die
On mine own sword? whiles I see lives, the gashes
Do better upon them.
That is, there's no point in killing myself so long as there are other people to kill. This is the sign of a completely seared conscience.
But then...when Macduff finds him, he says:
But get thee back; my soul is too much charged
With blood of thine already.
He still has some conscience here. He's essentially saying, "No more blood. Enough!"
When he learns that Macduff can, in fact, kill him, he does not want to fight him. However, this isn't because he's afraid of death, as is made clear by what follows. Macduff says he can live, but he'll be the "the show and gaze 'o the time," put in a cage or tied to a pole and paraded through the streets as the tyrant, to be jeered. Upon hearing this, Macbeth chooses death instead. This leads me to believe that his reason for not wanting to fight Macduff is as he said before: his soul was too much charged with blood of Macduff's already (having slaughtered his family).
No comments:
Post a Comment