944 shakespeare, William
that fate is showing them the path to greatness.
Fortuitous circumstances, she tells her husband,
“have made themselves” (1.7.54). Lady Macbeth’s
strategy persuades Macbeth, but it does not fool
Banquo. Reflecting on his friend’s success, Banquo
guesses at the unsavory role Macbeth has played in
obtaining it: “Thou hast . . . all / As the weird sisters
promised, and I fear / Thou played’st most foully for
’t” (3.1.1–3).
Other characters display different attitudes
toward fate. These contrast sharply with Lady
Macbeth’s eagerness to aid and abet her murderous
destiny and Macbeth’s stubborn insistence on fight-
ing his tragic and inevitable demise every step of
the way. Banquo and Macduff both yield gracefully
to fate. They treat destiny with a respectful defer-
ence. Banquo is pleased by the thought that his sons
should be kings, but not willing to murder in order
to make it happen. Macduff, as he storms Macbeth’s
castle, asks only: “Let me find him, Fortune, / And
more I beg not” (5.7.23–24). The murderers hired
to kill Banquo are utterly indifferent to fate because,
having already been buffeted by fortune and beset by
disaster, they have nothing to lose.
Even as Macbeth attempts to defy the Weird
Sisters’ prophecy, he seeks them out again to make
sure he is on the right track. He wants to have
his cake and eat it, too—to believe in the witches
and also be able to defy them. The second set of
predictions, like the first, is a mix of provocation
and prophecy. The Weird Sisters’ cryptic and delib-
erately misleading claims—that “none of woman
born / Shall harm Macbeth” (4.1.80) and that he
will be safe until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsin-
ane Hill—reassure Macbeth that he can sidestep
the destiny they showed to him earlier. But after
he leaves, he loathes himself for relying on the
witches a second time. He declares that all who
trust them will be damned and, in doing so, curses
only himself.
Shakespeare uses images of overripe fruit and
withered leaves to suggest an air of inevitability to
Macbeth’s demise: The time has come for him to
fall and decay. Macbeth himself, however, remains
willfully oblivious until the end. His delusion
is apparent when he tells Macduff only seconds
before his death that he bears a “charmèd life”
(5.8.12). Ultimately, Macbeth’s decision to “spurn
fate” and “scorn death” proves both foolish and
fatal (3.5.30).
Cassandra NelsonGuILt in Macbeth
Guilt can mean both responsibility for a crime
and the state of mind produced by committing
one. A defendant who loses his case is the guilty
party; a thief who escapes the law but is tormented
by remorse is guilty in another way. Shakespeare is
concerned with the second kind of guilt in Mac-
beth. Duncan’s murder takes place offstage at the
end of the first act, too early for it to serve as the
play’s climax. Instead, the dramatic action focuses
on the decisions that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth
make, leading up to the murder and its terrible
aftermath.
Macbeth first feels guilt while the “murder is yet
but fantastical” (1.3.140)—that is to say, at the mere
thought of killing the king. He knows, as does Lady
Macbeth, that doing so would be a triple transgres-
sion: It denies Duncan the loyalty they owe him as
subjects, the kindness they owe him as kin, and the
protection and hospitality they owe him as hosts. It
is important that both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth
realize that the murder is morally wrong. If they did
not, it would be impossible for them to feel guilty
about it afterward.
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth repeatedly voice
their desire for the cloak of night to cover their mis-
deeds: “Stars hide your fires; / Let not light see my
black and deep desires” (1.4.50–51). They assume
that if no one sees their crime, they cannot be held
accountable for the murder. Taking their desire for
secrecy a step further, Macbeth commands his eye
to “wink at the hand” (1.4.52), and Lady Macbeth
hopes the knife will “see not the wound it makes”
(1.5.48). Not only do they want to avoid blame—the
first kind of guilt—they also want to be ignorant of
the crime themselves, in order to escape the second
kind, too.
On the night Duncan is killed, the stars do hide
from view. But it is an unnatural darkness, a sign
that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have disrupted
the natural order of things. Lady Macbeth’s plan
to frame the guards succeeds in shifting blame for