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

Macduff.
I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on,
And would not take their part? Sinful Macduff,
They were all struck for thee! Naught that I am,
Not for their own demerits but for mine
Fell slaughter on their souls. Heaven rest them now!
(IV.iii.222-227)
He answers his most apt question about the will of heaven by taking upon himself the sin and blood of
having left them all alone as food for the tyrant. He knew what he was doing—he now knows that he
knew. Heaven remains justified in Macduff’s eyes. He is not the sort of man to live in doubt about
ultimate things. No such man is fit to kill Macbeth, who is also not the sort of man to live in doubt.
Macduff (as we shall learn) is not born of woman, but “untimely ripped” from his mother (which
certainly kills her); he does not much like to speak and he does not feast (no “nave to the chops” seam
of identity); and he is as unavoidable as heaven’s thunder when we first meet him as the early morning
knocker at the gate. This bloody man Macduff is now fit to meet bloody Macbeth at sword’s length. “If
he ‘scape,/Heaven forgive him too!” he proclaims (IV.iii.234-235). “Too” should take the stress along
with “him,” for the two of them are now each other’s double.
Act V. The Nihilist Still Named Macbeth
The question of forgiveness that links Macduff and Macbeth is a question about the ends of
action. This question must now be answered altogether dramatically. The drums and colors of
impending war increase as both armies prepare to meet: “Hang out our banners on the outward
walls [Macbeth shouts]./The cry is still ‘They come!’” (V.v.1-2). “Come” was Lady Macbeth’s triply
spoken word to the spirits to stop in her the “passage to remorse,” and it is her ritual word as she goes
off to bed night after night alone (I.v.45). How does Lady Macbeth end? Malcolm says that people
think that by “self and violent hands” she “took off her life” (V.viii.70-71). Thus speak the moralistic
desires. We have heard them speak before, also through Malcolm’s secondhand reporting (of Cawdor’s
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