No, he need fear no more ‘sights.’ The Witches have done their work, and after this purposeless butchery his own imagination will trouble him no more.[1] He has dealt his last blow at the conscience and pity which spoke through it.
The whole flood of evil in his nature is now let loose. He becomes an open tyrant, dreaded by everyone about him, and a terror to his country. She ‘sinks beneath the yoke.’
New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows
Strike heaven on the face.
She weeps, she bleeds, ‘and each new day a gash is added to her wounds.’ She is not the mother of her children, but their grave;
But who knows nothing, is once seen to smile:
Where sighs and groans and shrieks that rend the air
Are made, not mark’d.
For this wild rage and furious cruelty we are prepared; but vices of another kind start up as he plunges on his downward way.
Luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful,
Sudden, malicious,
says Malcolm; and two of these epithets surprise us. Who would have expected avarice or lechery[2] in Macbeth? His ruin seems complete.
- ↑ The immediate reference in ‘But no more sights’ is doubtless to the visions called up by the Witches; but one of these, the ‘blood-bolter’d Banquo,’ recalls to him the vision of the preceding night, of which he had said,
You make me strange
Even to the disposition that I owe,
When now I think you can behold such sights,
And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks,
When mine is blanch’d with fear. - ↑ ‘Luxurious’ and ‘luxury’ are used by Shakespeare only in this older sense. It must be remembered that these lines are spoken by Malcolm, but it seems likely that they are meant to be taken as true throughout.
