12 L. A. Sherman 



Of course, the play in hand can be associated with none of 

 these propositions except the fourth. With this judgment our 

 author substantially agrees. But he makes Macbeth to have 

 been brought to disaster through ' error ', greatly intensified by 

 suggestion.'^ He concedes that Shakespeare does not allow his 

 hero to become bewitched unconsciously, against his will. The 

 fact is merely that he has lost his moral bearings, and takes evil 

 for its opposite. 



The author is not very clear in this part of his contention, and 

 is not convincing. The text of the play nowhere bears out the 

 notion that Macbeth mistakes evil for good. His moral sense is 

 neither atrophied nor addled. This is shown, it would seem in- 

 dubitably, when, leaving Duncan to his wife's attentions, he goes 

 aside (I. vii) from the banquet to think out the problem that has 

 been forced upon him. Instead of coveting the chance to do the 

 devil service while advantaging himself, he voices the verdict of 

 the ages against the deed which Lady Macbeth has proposed for 

 herself but which he knows will be left for him to carry through : 

 ' In cases of making away with princes, judgment always over- 

 takes the perpetrators here, in this life, so that acts of this kind 

 amount to nothing more than lessons in murdering. When these 

 lessons have been taught by experiments upon others, even- 

 handed justice presents the cup of poison that we have made them 

 drink to our own lips.' In other words, there is a Moral Order 

 in the universe, and crime punishes itself. Then, as if to nail the 

 argument against diabolism, Shakespeare makes this man endorse 

 the obligations of blood, of honor, of hospitalit}^, — and, lo, even 

 (11. 16-20) the claims of personal goodness. 'Scotland cannot 

 tolerate,' he finishes by saying, ' the man who abuses virtues even 

 as valueless to the country as Duncan's. Such pity for his fate 

 as one feels for an unsuccored new-born babe will ride like the 

 cherubim of the Almighty upon the unseen couriers of the air 



■^ Quiller-Couch's formulating statement is "... the sight and remem- 

 brance of the Witches, with the strange fulfilUnent of the Second Witch's 

 prophecy, constantly impose the hallucination upon him — ' Fair is foul, 

 and foul is fair.' ' Evil, be thou my good.' " 



114 



