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

Banquo’s ghost, seated and moving among the guests, brings into the open the two sides of
Macbeth’s tyranny. People are as unreal as ghosts to this tyrant: his power learns how to make them
disappear like shadows and mockeries; and ghosts are as real as people to this tyrant: his power learns
how to order the dead (the monuments of history) to become food for kites. The fear felt by the people
for their disappearing lives and families spreads across the land because the fear felt by Macbeth of his
dead historical rival—twice driven away—and of his living accomplices makes him stalk the land for
more fears to eat. Macbeth thus grows bigger, stronger, and more determined. “For mine own
good/All causes shall give way” (III.v.136-137). “Mine own good” includes in its meaning no more
difference between living people and dead people. Both are assailable to Macbeth’s appetite for blood.
So he moves forward, across the deepening river of blood to the land of promise—there to be free from
bondage to “saucy doubts and fears” (III.iv.26).
Act IV. The Knower and Doer of Nameless Things.
The next cause to give way in Macbeth’s pursuit of his own good is respect for the separate
parts and kinds of things in nature. In order to know deeper things without names, the Weird Sisters,
doing what they call “a deed without a name,” deposit dismembered bodily forms into their cauldron,
where souls come to inquire into things beyond mortal intelligence (IV.i.49). “More shall they speak
[says Macbeth], for now I am bent to know/By the worst means the worst” (III.iv.135-136). Knowing the
worst is good for us, too. Is this not why we attend tragedies—to learn the worst things to fear and to
pity from the master playwrights who already know our abiding questions? “Open, locks,/Whoever
knocks!” (IV.i.46-47). Macbeth first learns from the armed head that rises with thunder from the
cauldron to fear Macduff. He next learns from a bloody child that rises with thunder from the cauldron
to “laugh to scorn” the power of any man born of woman (IV.i.79). There is no pity in that laughter,
which he heard at the time of Duncan’s murder, though he did not know then how to appropriate it
from among the other voices and sounds of the night. Now, that laughter is his charm against tragedy.
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