Shakespeare and the Early Modern Self 161
(III.v.98, 104–105). Strug gle as Macbeth might, he still cannot pos-
sess full manhood. When he faces the ghost he feels like a baby girl
(or perhaps a girl’s doll)— not a man, not a warrior, not a fully sound
and whole being.
Only a man who is not of woman born can harm Macbeth
(IV.i.80–81). Macbeth hears this prophecy from the witches, and it
deludes him into thinking that no mortal being can kill him in battle.
But of course there are human beings who are not of woman born.
Macduff , who does away with the tyrant, was “from his mo ther’s
womb / Untimely ripp’d” (V.viii.15–16), delivered by Caesarian
section. Like Oedipus, Macbeth is faced with a riddle, but Mac-
beth cannot answer his. The whole pro cess of conception and
birth is presumably a mystery to Macbeth. It is something he knows
all too little about. When he approaches these subjects he becomes
anxious and confused. Told that no man born of woman can harm
him, he does not have the mental fl exibility he needs to see that
the prophecy is not airtight testimony to his being indestructible
in battle. He can only take it in its literal sense. Oedipus, the or-
phan, has clearly thought a good deal about human origins and
ends, and can answer quite well when he is asked who goes on four
legs in the morning, two in the after noon, and three in the eve-
ning. Faced with a riddle involving children and birth, Macbeth is
helpless.
There is a normative version of the warrior in Macbeth. When
Macduff receives word that Macbeth’s henchmen have murdered his
family, including all his “pretty chickens” (IV.iii.218), his children,
he is staggered with grief. “Dispute it like a man,” says Duncan’s
son Malcolm. “I shall do so,” Macduff returns, “But I must also feel
it as a man” (I V.iii.220 –221). A nd so he does—if Macduff ’s lament
is brief it is also eloquent. “I cannot but remember such things
were, / That were most precious to me” (IV.iii.222–223). But
then he turns from lament to resolve: