Part 26 (1/2)

Repeatedly we meet the idea that Nature shudders before the crime, and gives signs of coming disaster.

Macbeth himself says:

Stars, hide your fires!

Let not light see my black and deep desires; The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

and Lady Macbeth:

... The raven himself is hoa.r.s.e That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan Under my battlements.... Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of h.e.l.l, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark To cry 'Hold! hold!'...

The peaceful castle to which Duncan comes all unsuspectingly, is in most striking contrast to the fateful tone which pervades the tragedy. Duncan says:

This castle hath a pleasant seat; the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Unto our gentle senses.

and Banquo:

This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve By his loved masonry, that the heaven's breath Smells wooingly here; no jetty, frieze, b.u.t.tress, nor coign of vantage but this bird Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle; Where they most breed and haunt I have observ'd The air is delicate.

Perhaps the familiar swallow has never been treated with more discrimination; and at this point of the tale of horror it has the effect of a ray of suns.h.i.+ne in a sky dark with storm clouds.

In Act II. Macbeth describes his own horror and Nature's:

Now o'er the one half world Nature seems dead.... Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabouts.

Lady Macbeth says:

It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman Which gives the stern'st good-night.

Lenox describes this night:

The night has been unruly: where we lay Our chimneys were blown down; and, as they say, Lamentings heard i' the air; strange screams of death And prophesying, with accents terrible, Of dire combustion and confus'd events, New hatch'd to the woeful time: the obscure bird Clamour'd the live-long night: some say, the earth Was feverish and did shake.

and later on, an old man says:

Three score and ten I can remember well; Within the volume of which time I have seen Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night Hath trifled former knowings.

Rosse answers him:

Ah, good father, Thou see'st the heavens, as troubled with man's act, Threaten his b.l.o.o.d.y stage; by the clock 'tis day, And yet dark night strangles the travelling lamp.

Is't night's predominance or the day's shame That darkness does the-face of earth entomb When living light should kiss it?

The whole play is a thrilling expression of the sympathy for Nature which attributes its own feelings to her--a human shudder in presence of the wicked--a human horror of crime, most thrilling of all in Macbeth's words:

Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, And with thy b.l.o.o.d.y and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale.

In _Hamlet_, too, Nature is shocked at man's mis-deeds:

... Such an act (the queen's) That blurs the grace and blush of modesty ... Heaven's face doth glow, Yea, this solidity and compound ma.s.s With tristful visage, as against the doom, Is thought-sick at the act.

But there are other personifications in this most wonderful of all tragedies, such as the magnificent one: