When a person is asked to tell the story of Macbeth, he can tell two stories. One is of
a man called Macbeth who came to the throne of Scotland by a crime in the year of our
Lord 1039, and reigned justly and well, on the whole, for fifteen years or more. This
story is part of Scottish history. The other story issues from a place called Imagination;
it is gloomy and wonderful, and you shall hear it.
A year or two before Edward the Confessor began to rule England, a battle was won in
Scotland against a Norwegian King by two generals named Macbeth and Banquo. After the battle,
the generals walked together towards Forres, in Elginshire, where Duncan, King of Scotland,
was awaiting them. While they were crossing a lonely heath, they
saw three bearded women, sisters, hand in hand, withered in appearance and wild in their
attire. "Speak, who are you?" demanded Macbeth.
"Hail, Macbeth, chieftain of Glamis," said the first woman.
"Hail, Macbeth, chieftain of Cawdor," said the second woman.
"Hail, Macbeth, King that is to be," said the third woman.
Then Banquo asked, "What of me?" and the third woman replied, "Thou shalt be the father of
kings." "Tell me more," said Macbeth. "By my father's
death I am chieftain of Glamis, but the chieftain of Cawdor lives, and the King lives, and his
children live. Speak, I charge you!" The women replied only by vanishing, as though
suddenly mixed with the air. Banquo and Macbeth knew then that they had
been addressed by witches, and were discussing their prophecies when two nobles approached.
One of them thanked Macbeth, in the King's name, for his military services, and the other
said, "He bade me call you chieftain of Cawdor." Macbeth then learned that the man who had
yesterday borne that title was to die for treason, and he could not help thinking, "The
third witch called me, 'King that is to be.' " "Banquo," he said, "you see that the witches
spoke truth concerning me. Do you not believe, therefore, that your child and grandchild
will be kings?" Banquo frowned. Duncan had two sons, Malcolm
and Donalbain, and he deemed it disloyal to hope that his son Fleance should rule Scotland.
He told Macbeth that the witches might have intended to tempt them both into villainy
by their prophecies concerning the throne. Macbeth, however, thought the prophecy that
he should be King too pleasant to keep to himself, and he mentioned it to his wife in
a letter. Lady Macbeth was the grand-daughter of a King
of Scotland who had died in defending his crown against the King who preceded Duncan,
and by whose order her only brother was slain. To her, Duncan was a reminder of bitter wrongs.
Her husband had royal blood in his veins, and when she read his letter, she was determined
that he should be King. When a messenger arrived to inform her that
Duncan would pass a night in Macbeth's castle, she nerved herself for a very base action.
She told Macbeth almost as soon as she saw him that Duncan must spend a sunless morrow.
She meant that Duncan must die, and that the dead are blind. "We will speak further," said
Macbeth uneasily, and at night, with his memory full of Duncan's kind words, he would fain
have spared his guest.
"Would you live a coward?" demanded Lady Macbeth, who seems to have thought that morality and
cowardice were the same. "I dare do all that may become a man," replied
Macbeth; "who dare do more is none." "Why did you write that letter to me?" she
inquired fiercely, and with bitter words she egged him on to murder, and with cunning words
she showed him how to do it. After supper Duncan went to bed, and two grooms
were placed on guard at his bedroom door. Lady Macbeth caused them to drink wine till
they were stupefied. She then took their daggers and would have killed the King herself if
his sleeping face had not looked like her father's.
Macbeth came later, and found the daggers lying by the grooms; and soon with red hands
he appeared before his wife, saying, "Methought I heard a voice cry, 'Sleep no more! Macbeth
destroys the sleeping.' " "Wash your hands," said she. "Why did you
not leave the daggers by the grooms? Take them back, and smear the grooms with blood."
"I dare not," said Macbeth. His wife dared, and she returned to him with
hands red as his own, but a heart less white, she proudly told him, for she scorned his
fear. The murderers heard a knocking, and Macbeth
wished it was a knocking which could wake the dead. It was the knocking of Macduff,
the chieftain of Fife, who had been told by Duncan to visit him early. Macbeth went to
him, and showed him the door of the King's room.
Macduff entered, and came out again crying, "O horror! horror! horror!"
Macbeth appeared as horror-stricken as Macduff, and pretending that he could not bear to see
life in Duncan's murderers, he slew the two grooms with their own daggers before they
could proclaim their innocence. These murders did not shriek out, and Macbeth
was crowned at Scone. One of Duncan's sons went to Ireland, the other to England. Macbeth
was King. But he was discontented. The prophecy concerning Banquo oppressed his mind. If Fleance
were to rule, a son of Macbeth would not rule. Macbeth determined, therefore, to murder both
Banquo and his son. He hired two ruffians, who slew Banquo one night when he was on his
way with Fleance to a banquet which Macbeth was giving to his nobles. Fleance escaped.
Meanwhile Macbeth and his Queen received their guests very graciously, and he expressed a
wish for them which has been uttered thousands of times since his day—"Now good digestion
wait on appetite, and health on both." "We pray your Majesty to sit with us," said
Lennox, a Scotch noble; but ere Macbeth could reply, the ghost of Banquo entered the banqueting
hall and sat in Macbeth's place. Not noticing the ghost, Macbeth observed that,
if Banquo were present, he could say that he had collected under his roof the choicest
chivalry of Scotland. Macduff, however, had curtly declined his invitation.
The King was again pressed to take a seat, and Lennox, to whom Banquo's ghost was invisible,
showed him the chair where it sat. But Macbeth, with his eyes of genius, saw
the ghost. He saw it like a form of mist and blood, and he demanded passionately, "Which
of you have done this?" Still none saw the ghost but he, and to the
ghost Macbeth said, "Thou canst not say I did it."
The ghost glided out, and Macbeth was impudent enough to raise a glass of wine "to the general
joy of the whole table, and to our dear friend Banquo, whom we miss."
The toast was drunk as the ghost of Banquo entered for the second time.
"Begone!" cried Macbeth. "You are senseless, mindless! Hide in the earth, thou horrible
shadow." Again none saw the ghost but he.
"What is it your Majesty sees?" asked one of the nobles.
The Queen dared not permit an answer to be given to this question. She hurriedly begged
her guests to quit a sick man who was likely to grow worse if he was obliged to talk.
Macbeth, however, was well enough next day to converse with the witches whose prophecies
had so depraved him. He found them in a cavern on a thunderous
day. They were revolving round a cauldron in which were boiling particles of many strange
and horrible creatures, and they knew he was coming before he arrived.
"Answer me what I ask you," said the King. "Would you rather hear it from us or our masters?"
asked the first witch. "Call them," replied Macbeth.
Thereupon the witches poured blood into the cauldron and grease into the flame that licked
it, and a helmeted head appeared with the visor on, so that Macbeth could only see its
eyes. He was speaking to the head, when the first
witch said gravely, "He knows thy thought," and a voice in the head said, "Macbeth, beware
Macduff, the chieftain of Fife." The head then descended into the cauldron till it disappeared.
"One word more," pleaded Macbeth. "He will not be commanded," said the first
witch, and then a crowned child ascended from the cauldron bearing a tree in his hand. The
child said— "Macbeth shall be unconquerable till
The Wood of Birnam climbs Dunsinane Hill." "That will never be," said Macbeth; and he
asked to be told if Banquo's descendants would ever rule Scotland.
The cauldron sank into the earth; music was heard, and a procession of phantom kings filed
past Macbeth; behind them was Banquo's ghost. In each king, Macbeth saw a likeness to Banquo,
and he counted eight kings. Then he was suddenly left alone.
His next proceeding was to send murderers to Macduff's castle. They did not find Macduff,
and asked Lady Macduff where he was. She gave a stinging answer, and her questioner called
Macduff a traitor. "Thou liest!" shouted Macduff's little son, who was immediately stabbed, and
with his last breath entreated his mother to fly. The murderers did not leave the castle
while one of its inmates remained alive. Macduff was in England listening, with Malcolm,
to a doctor's tale of cures wrought by Edward the Confessor when his friend Ross came to
tell him that his wife and children were no more. At first Ross dared not speak the truth,
and turn Macduff's bright sympathy with sufferers relieved by royal virtue into sorrow and hatred.
But when Malcolm said that England was sending an army into Scotland against Macbeth, Ross
blurted out his news, and Macduff cried, "All dead, did you say? All my pretty ones and
their mother? Did you say all?" His sorry hope was in revenge, but if he could
have looked into Macbeth's castle on Dunsinane Hill, he would have seen at work a force more
solemn than revenge. Retribution was working, for Lady Macbeth was mad. She walked in her
sleep amid ghastly dreams. She was wont to wash her hands for a quarter of an hour at
a time; but after all her washing, would still see a red spot of blood upon her skin. It
was pitiful to hear her cry that all the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten her little hand.
"Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?" inquired Macbeth of the doctor, but the doctor
replied that his patient must minister to her own mind. This reply gave Macbeth a scorn
of medicine. "Throw physic to the dogs," he said; "I'll none of it."
One day he heard a sound of women crying. An officer approched him and said, "The Queen,
your Majesty, is dead." "Out, brief candle," muttered Macbeth, meaning that life was like
a candle, at the mercy of a puff of air. He did not weep; he was too familiar with death.
Presently a messenger told him that he saw Birnam Wood on the march. Macbeth called him
a liar and a slave, and threatened to hang him if he had made a mistake. "If you are
right you can hang me," he said. From the turret windows of Dunsinane Castle,
Birnam Wood did indeed appear to be marching. Every soldier of the English army held aloft
a bough which he had cut from a tree in that wood, and like human trees they climbed Dunsinane
Hill. Macbeth had still his courage. He went to
battle to conquer or die, and the first thing he did was to kill the English general's son
in single combat. Macbeth then felt that no man could fight him and live, and when Macduff
came to him blazing for revenge, Macbeth said to him, "Go back; I have spilt too much of
your blood already."
"My voice is in my sword," replied Macduff, and hacked at him and bade him yield.
"I will not yield!" said Macbeth, but his last hour had struck. He fell.
Macbeth's men were in retreat when Macduff came before Malcolm holding a King's head
by the hair. "Hail, King!" he said; and the new King looked
at the old. So Malcolm reigned after Macbeth; but in years
that came afterwards the descendants of Banquo were kings.