Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849

NORTH.

Omit what intervenes – and give us the Soliloquy, Talboys. But before you do so, let me merely remind you that Macbeth's mind, from the little he says in the interim, is manifestly ruminating on something bad, ere he breaks out into Soliloquy.

TALBOYS.

"Two truths are told,
As happy prologues to the swelling act
Of the imperial theme – I thank you, gentlemen. —
This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill – cannot be good: – If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I am Thane of Cawdor:
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:
My thought whose murder is yet but fantastical
Shakes so my single state of man, that function
Is smothered in surmise; and nothing is,
But what is not."

NORTH.

Now, my dear Talboys, you will agree with me in thinking that this first great and pregnant, although brief soliloquy, stands for germ, type, and law of the whole Play, and of its criticism – and for clue to the labyrinth of the Thane's character. "Out of this wood do not desire to go." Out of it I do not expect soon to go. I regard William as a fair Poet and a reasonable Philosopher; but as a supereminent Play-wright. The First Soliloquy must speak the nature of Macbeth, else the Craftsman has no skill in his trade. A Soliloquy reveals. That is its function. Therein is the soul heard and seen discoursing with itself – within itself; and if you carry your eye through – up to the First Appearance of Lady Macbeth – this Soliloquy is distinctly the highest point of the Tragedy – the tragic acme – or dome – or pinnacle – therefore of power indefinite, infinite. On this rock I stand, a Colossus ready to be thrown down by – an Earthquake.

BULLER.

Pushed off by – a shove.

NORTH.

Not by a thousand Buller-power. Can you believe, Buller, that the word of the Third Witch, "that shalt be King Hereafter," sows the murder in Macbeth's heart, and that it springs up, flowers, and fruits with such fearful rapidity.

BULLER.

Why – Yes and No.

NORTH.

Attend, Talboys, to the words "supernatural soliciting." What "supernatural soliciting" to evil is there here? Not a syllable had the Weird Sisters breathed about Murder. But now there is much soliloquising – and Cawdor contemplates himself objectively– seen busy upon an elderly gentleman called Duncan – after a fashion that so frightens him subjectively– that Banquo cannot help whispering to Rosse and Angus —

"See how our partner's rapt!"

TALBOYS.

"My thought whose murder's yet fantastical." I agree with you, sir, in suspecting he must have thought of the murder.

NORTH.

It is from no leaning towards the Weird Sisters – whom I never set eyes on but once, and then without interchanging a word, leapt momentarily out of this world into that pitch-pot of a pond in Glenco – it is, I say, from no leaning towards the Weird Sisters that I take this view of Macbeth's character. No "sublime flashes of generosity, magnanimity, tenderness, and every exalted quality that can dignify and adorn the human mind," do I ever suffer to pass by without approbation, when coruscating from the character of any well-disposed man, real or imaginary, however unaccountable at other times his conduct may appear to be; but Shakspeare, who knew Macbeth better than any of us, has here assured us that he was in heart a murderer – for how long he does not specify – before he had ever seen a birse on any of the Weird Sisters' beards. But let's be canny. Talboys – pray, what is the meaning of the word "soliciting," "preternatural soliciting," in this Soliloquy?

TALBOYS.

Soliciting, sir, is, in my interpreting, "an appealing, intimate visitation."

NORTH.

Right. The appeal is general – as that challenge of a trumpet —Fairy Queen, book III., canto xii., stanza 1 —

"Signe of nigh battail or got victorye" —

which, all indeterminate, is notwithstanding a challenge– operates, and is felt as such.

TALBOYS.

So a thundering knock at your door – which may be a friend or an enemy. It comes as a summoning. It is more than internal urging and inciting of me by my own thoughts – for mark, sir, the rigour of the word "supernatural," which throws the soliciting off his own soul upon the Weirds. The word is really undetermined to pleasure or pain – the essential thought being that there is a searching or penetrating provocative – a stirring up of that which lay dead and still. Next is the debate whether this intrusive, and pungent, and stimulant assault of a presence and an oracle be good or ill?

NORTH.

Does the hope live in him for a moment that this home-visiting is not ill – that the Spirits are not ill? They have spoken truth so far – ergo, the Third "All hail!" shall be true, too. But more than that – they have spoken truth. Ergo, they are not spirits of Evil. That hope dies in the same instant, submerged in the stormy waves which the blast from hell arouses. The infernal revelation glares clear before him – a Crown held out by the hand of Murder. One or two struggles occur. Then the truth stands before him fixed and immutable – "Evil, be thou my good." He is dedicated: and passive to fate. I cannot comprehend this so feeble debate in the mind of a good man – I cannot comprehend any such debate at all in the mind of a previously settled and determined murderer; but I can comprehend and feel its awful significancy in the mind of a man already in a most perilous moral condition.

SEWARD.

The "start" shows that the spark has caught – it has fallen into a tun of gunpowder.

TALBOYS.

The touch of Ithuriel's spear.

NORTH.

May we not say, then, that perhaps the Witches have shown no more than this – the Fascination of Contact between Passion and Opportunity?

SEWARD.

To Philosophy reading the hieroglyphic; but to the People what? To them they are a reality. They seize the imagination with all power. They come like "blasts from hell" – like spirits of Plague, whose breath – whose very sight kills.

"Within them Hell
They bring, and round about them; nor from Hell
One step, no more than from themselves, can fly."

The contagion of their presence, in spite of what we have been saying, almost reconciles my understanding to what it would otherwise revolt from, the suddenness with which the penetration of Macbeth into futurity lays fast hold upon Murder.

BULLER.

Pretty fast – though it gives a twist or two in his handling.

SEWARD.