FREE ESSAY ON MACBETH: HIS FEAR AND HIS CONSCIENCE

MACBETH: HIS FEAR AND HIS CONSCIENCE

Macbeth: His Fear and His Conscience
Carolina Medina L?pez
H.L.V. (1)
Profr. Federico Pat n
November, 1997
From the first time Macbeth appears with the witches and Banquo, the reader could notice
a kind of tension in the scene. The three witches anticipate Macbeth's future and he
seems to be anxious of what is going to happen with the prophecies. But why is he so
anxious to confirm the witches' words, especially the third prophecy which proclaims him
king? I presume that it is because that idea was already in his mind. His ambition and
the idea of becoming the king of Scotland would lead him to his first crime, murdering
Duncan.
But Macbeth fears. He is afraid of what he might do. Murdering Duncan, he shall be king
and will fulfill his deepest desires: Stars, hide your fires/ Let not light see my black
and deep desires (I, iv, 51-52). But at this point of the play Macbeth does have the
conscience of what is evil and what is good. He knows that murdering Duncan will be an
act of dishonor and for a moment he will give up thinking of his ambitious thoughts. 
But the process of committing the murder will be long: the very thought of the deed
horrifies him and, in order to succeed, Lady Macbeth will support him and give him the
courage to act. He will dare to do all that may become a man (I, vii, 46). Now he is
strong enough to achieve the deed though his fear accompanies all the way, disguised in
the form of a bloody dagger which in fact leads him to Duncan's chamber. He is so
terrified after committing his first crime that Lady Macbeth has to finish the plan
leaving the daggers to the grooms because he cannot come back to the crime scene.
Now that the deed is done, that battle between his soul and his ambition has begun.
Little by little he will lose the fear that overtakes him but at the same time, Macbeth
will lose the conscience of his actions. Killing Duncan will lead him to his death. In
fact I presume that with Duncan's death, Macbeth has died too.
Macbeth has lost the courtly values he had before Duncan's murder and also has realized
the evil he can command in his heart. False face must hide what the false heart doth know
(I, vii, 82). He is a step forward of losing his manhood.
The process of this first crime is almost finished, his fears have already been
controlled, and his conscience almost overpowered. Years go by and Macbeth, now the King
of Scotland, will continue with his second crime. Willard Farnham, in his book, says
about the process between the first and the second murder:
The quality of Macbeth's recovery from the breakdown after the murder of Duncan is
indicated by his ability to form a plot for the assassination of Banquo and Fleance
without the spiritual support of Lady Macbeth. 
The importance is stressed on Macbeth's present and anything from the past or the future
which obscures that present must be erased. Banquo is his next victim, who reminds him
that past in which the witches prophecies declare that he shalt get kings, though thou be
none (I, iii, 66); and threats his future as a king.
At this point, Macbeth knows the sufferings he had to endure while murdering Duncan with
his own hands. This time without the intellectual support of Lady Macbeth, he will give
orders to murder Banquo and his son, so that his hands will not be tainted with blood
again.
But his fear remains with him, though he does not hesitate killing them. His fear will
appear this time after the deed with the apparition of the ghost of Banquo at the
banquet.
The ghost reminds him his guilt and his punishment will rise to the surface by means of
his not-so-well-dominated fear. But Macbeth has proved to himself that no matter how
great his fear is, he can control it and in only one scene he will confront this new
proof of strength, almost killing the conscience of his past and present deeds.
Now the ghost of Banquo and Macbeth will battle for recognition of their soul, even when
Macbeth is no longer a living man. Farnham says in this regard:
As Macbeth is put to the test by the ghost of Banquo, we realize that between his first
and second crime he has grown greatly in criminal fortitude and that now, having
recovered from one severe breakdown in courage, he meets another by drawing upon his
underlying strength much more quickly than before. 
Therefore, in act III, scene iv, the second process of Macbeth's murder comes to a
resolution. In one scene he recognizes through Banquo's ghost his deepest fear and guilt
and fights against them. The reader sees a Macbeth saying to the ghost filled by fear:
Thou canst not say I did it (III, iv, 49), passing to confront the apparition with: Why,
what care I if thou canst nod! Speak too! (III, iv, 69) and afterwards: Avaunt, and quit
my sight! (III, iv, 93) with a risen strength and dominating his fear until at last he
says: Hence, horrible shadow! / Unreal mockery, hence! Why, so; being gone, / I am a man
again. (III, iv, 106-108)
But Macbeth has lost his manhood, remaining by contrast the horrible shadow of Banquo now
embodied in him. The horrible shadow that will commit the next crimes and which at the
end will recognize him as a walking shadow.
After the second series of prophecies of the witches, Macbeth is more than ever committed
to his dark desires for ambition and power. From now on Macbeth will continue with his
crimes without any conscience of his evil doing; he has almost forgot the taste of fears
(V, v, 9) says after his third murder: Macduff's wife and children. This last murder will
be committed without surrendering to his fear and without the conscience of its
punishment. In regard to the subject, Matthew Proser points out:
With this crime conscience is all but repressed completely. No 'horrid image' raises its
head. Macbeth's only acknowledgments of conscience are reflected in the haste imposed
upon the decision and in his failure to commit the deed himself. 
Although he is afraid in the deepest part of his sterile heart, the tyrant will not stop
even when his present life is meaningless, a tale told by an idiot (V, v, 26-27). His
past full of evil deeds is no longer important either because he cannot feel. now his
present and future demand more strength until Birman Wood remove to Dunsinane,(he) cannot
taint with fear (V, iii, 2). Fear: the sole emotion Macbeth can or perhaps could feel
until his tragic end.
His last battle, the battle which will lead him to his death, has come with full
recognition of his own fate. Birman Wood has been removed to the castle and Macduff --the
man of none of woman born (IV, i, 79)-- will kill him. But Macbeth is no longer the man
unnerved by fear of the beginning of the play, supported by a wife who at the end could
not relieve her conscience from her guilt. Macbeth, the walking shadow, recognizing his
end, will carry his meaningless life and fight. At the end, the reader will hear a
Macbeth saying: I will not yield (V, vi, 66). His conscience never leads him to
repentance. 
Macbeth's process of discovering his own fear and confronting it comes to a resolution at
the end of the play. Macbeth, in order not to surrender to the forces of his own fear
will try to show a strength that cost him his conscience over his evil deeds and, in the
long run, his own heart. The thane of the beginning, the king after, and, at the end, the
tyrant will fall down by his own pressure for his sense of courage. A courage disguised
under the mask of madness which will remain with him until his death.
Since I chose to write about Macbeth's fear and conscience, a very important question
rose in my mind: Why can the reader feel sympathy for his deadly butcher? I presume that
the answer lies on the way the hero leads us in his world and how he confronts his
weakness, the evolution or perhaps degeneration of his perspective of evil and good and,
of course, his perspective of what is free will and fate. I would like to end with a
quotation from Proser's essay The Manly Image:
In the end what is heroic about him is his refusal at the mercy of other outside himself,
to passively will away his death to agents of any mysterious force as he had
self-deceptively attempted to will away the lives of others. Having chosen himself as his
own god and killed without mercy, he ironically becomes subject to the rigor of his own
judgment, or perhaps misjudgment, and at the same time, his own blind justice. 
Bibliography
Bibliography
? Farnham, Willard. Shakespeare Tragic Frontier. Oxford: Basil Blackwell & Mott, 1973.
? Proser, Matthew. The Heroic Image in Five Shakespearean Tragedies. Princeton University
Press, USA, 1965.
? Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Penguin Books, England, 1967.
Willard Farnham, Shakespeare's Tragic Frontier, p.122.
Ibid., p.123.
Matthew Proser, The Heroic Image in Five Shakespearean Tragedies, p.82.
Ibid., p.91.
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Bibliography
? Farnham, Willard. Shakespeare Tragic Frontier. Oxford: Basil Blackwell & Mott, 1973.
? Proser, Matthew. The Heroic Image in Five Shakespearean Tragedies. Princeton University
Press, USA, 1965.
? Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Penguin Books, England, 1967.
Willard Farnham, Shakespeare's Tragic Frontier, p.122.
Ibid., p.123.
Matthew Proser, The Heroic Image in Five Shakespearean Tragedies, p.82.
Ibid., p.91.
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