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

Let us rather
Hold fast the mortal sword, and like good men
Bestride our down-fall’n birthdom.
(IV.iii.2-4)
It is Scotland that Macduff bestrides as protector while his family is cut down unprotected. The
coordinated exits and entrances make this double action painfully clear.
Thus we see for ourselves that to meet with Macbeth--having done no harm--is to invite an end
like that one. What name should we give to that deed, than which there is none worse on
Shakespeare’s stage? Let us look at this from another perspective. We see for ourselves what is
required to make a man able to kill Macbeth. This is a hard saying. We know from the cauldron that
being not of woman born is a necessary condition to harm Macbeth. But it is not sufficient. Macduff is
made into Macbeth’s worthy opponent once his goodness is seen to match Macbeth’s evil in its capacity
to make all causes (“Those precious motives, those strong knots of love,” IV.iii.27) give way to one great
thing—Scotland, his country, his “down-fall’n birthdom.” This is a terrible goodness, dreadful as sin to
Macduff who alone possesses it, and more than natural. One more thing let us try to say. This painful
exhibition of child-murder shows us the foul clearly, but not the fair. Although the boy shows wit,
loyalty, and an instinct for courage, his death is not fair to look upon. The filthy air is not yet clear for
the fair to appear, and the will of heaven is still to be questioned.
Macduff questions heaven when he hears words that Ross would prefer to “howl out in the
desert air”: “Wife, children, servants, all/That could be found,” “savagely slaughtered” (IV.iii.194, 205,
211-212). It takes some time for the magnitude of the loss to sink into Macduff’s soul. Five times he
questions the word “all.” This is one of Macbeth’s words of transport with which Macduff must now
become intimate as a man. Feeling the power of that word “all” to leave him utterly bereft and amazed,
he, too, is visited by a recollection of the two worlds, earthly and heavenly, and like his wife he finds his
place again in the earthly world of sin:
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