“To Meet with Macbeth,” given by tutor Louis ... - St. John's College

to his own wife and babes who cry out to him from home as the tyrant “batter[s] at their peace”
(IV.iii.178). Macduff cries out explicitly in reply, “I must be from thence!” (IV.iii.212).
Saying “no,” though costly, is therefore possible, but before Macbeth can stop the Lady’s
harping mouth with this word, she sacrifices her child before their astonished eyes to demonstrate what
it means to be sworn to do more than womanhood does:
Lady Macbeth.
I have given suck, and know
How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.
(I.vii.54-59)
Let us appreciate how much it costs Lady Macbeth to say these words--how much she dares to make
them remember the broken pieces of their life’s history. If there be any doubt as to her having given
suck, the word “boneless” should take care of that. And if there be any doubt as to the present force of
the image, witness its immediate and postponed effects. She inserts between two past facts--her having
nursed and his having promised--a past perfect conditional that is felt not hypothetically, but as present
fact because its immediate effect on Macbeth is to dash out his own deep thinking and to leave him with
only one drastically simple concern, the possibility of failure, which sounds out of tune and slack to her
ears. She prescribes the immediate remedy to tighten and harmonize his cords of speech and action:
Macbeth.
If we should fail?
Lady Macbeth.
We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we’ll not fail.
(I.vii.59-61)
We hear three “fails” here just as we heard three “hails” from the Sisters on the heath. Remember
Macbeth’s longing for the Sisters to stay corporal and tell him more, rather than melt “as breath into the
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