Macbeth can rightly even be understood as a tragedy of imagination since only on the basis of the witches’ prophecies and their arbitrary imaginative interpretation through Macbeth, the plot, and therefore his doom, runs its course. Though the play was often, and appositely, labelled as a tragedy of power, ambition or fear1, it primarily constitutes a drama of imagination since that is what stands in the center of the plot and without it there would be no, or at least an entirely different storyline coming about.
Shakespeare uses imagination in Macbeth merely as a welcome means of characterization and detailed introspection of his tragic hero in order to present deeper insights into his thoughts, feelings and actions in detail. In doing so he takes up a pioneering role in his era since, in such an early period, one can only talk of a merely experimental character of imagination.
Shakespeare’s dramas were often praised as an imaginative expression of nature by posterity – especially by Johnson and Dryden – since he did not depict isolated aspects of (human) nature, but captured nature true to itself. Thus his figures carry nothing incidental or partial in themselves; rather, they are “the genuine progeny of common humanity” (see Oberkogler, p.13, ll.15-30). But this stands in another context, which will not be further discussed since it is not part of this paper.
6. The Negative Aspects of Imagination and Human Wishes as per Dr. Samuel Johnson With Regard to Macbeth
Samuel Johnson, the great moralist and universal scholar, takes up a particular significance as a Shakespeare-critic at this point. His views concerning imagination as well as the general desires and wishes of humans, which also play a significant role in Macbeth, shall form a shift between the ‘theory’ of the broadly diversified background information and the ‘practice’ of the analysis of the work as well as the imagination of the protagonist depicted therein.
Johnson’s psychology excludes an individualized concept of humankind and can therefore, in a sense, be seen as a final, last testimony for the preservation of a non-individualized concept of man propagated by the church. Thus, with Johnson, one can talk of an anachronistic way of thinking in this context, since he still opposes the general individual-friendly mindset of his time with his Middle-Age-based conservative idea of man.
“Johnson defined imagination as “Fancy; the power of forming ideal pictures; the power of representing things absent to one’s self or others.” He defined fancy as “Imagination; the power by which the mind forms to itself images and representations of things, persons, or scenes of being.” He defined fantasy as “Fancy; imagination; the power of imagining.”.” (Hagstrum, p.89, ll.7-12).
Hence, according to him the three terms ‘imagination’, ‘fancy’ and ‘fantasy’ are closely linked so that he uses them almost synonymously.
Johnson has a very negative conception of imagination, which is why one should try to avoid it as far as possible. This becomes especially evident in the headline of chapter 44 of his moral-didactic short novel The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (1759) which is titled “The Dangerous Prevalence of Imagination” (Johnson, p.405). The work, which merely serves as a medium for a consistently bleak and melancholic, but not pessimistic message about humankind and life (Fabian (Vol.2), p.227, l.25-27), thoroughly constitutes, according to Ewald Standop and Edgar Mertner, the nullity of the human search for happiness (Standop, p.367, l.20-21).
The basic message of the story goes approximately as follows: Everyone expects salvation from a change of his current situation, but personal happiness remains illusory since desire – just as we are about to see with Macbeth – never lets the human rest. Whatever way of life one chooses, it is always the wrong one. What matters alone is not to let life go by over the decision (Jens (Vol.8), p.818-819, The Prince of Abissinia).
In chapter 44 of The History of Rasselas Johnson continues with his negative depiction of imagination:
“There is no man whose imagination does not sometimes predominate over his reason, who can regulate his attention wholly by his will, and whose ideas will come and go at his command. No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability. All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity;” (Johnson, p.405, l.34ff.).
From the last, significant sentence alone one can come to the conclusion that Macbeth, to whom the statements of this quotation entirely apply, has to be mad according to Johnson.
He further carries out his explanation concerning imagination, which is to be avoided, as follows:
“To indulge the power of fiction, and send imagination out upon the wing, is often the sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation. […] He who has nothing external that can divert him must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; […] The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combinations, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot bestow. (Johnson, p.406, ll.7-20).
Johnson’s strict rejection, and almost demonization, of imagination becomes understandable after finding out that he himself had to battle his own strongly pronounced imagination throughout his life and that he must have suffered heavily from it. He “deeply and harrowingly feared that “dangerous prevalence” within himself, for he was a man of violent and powerful imagination, who often prayed for strength and sanity to overcome it.” (Hagstrum, p.92, l.1-4).
Already in 1749 Johnson has taken up the vanitas theme in his satirical-philosophical didactic poem The vanity of human wishes (1749) by, in imitation of the tenth satire of the Roman satire poet Juvenal, critically outlining a panorama of human pipe dreams over the entire humankind in order to reveal their vanity (Jens (Vol.8), p.821, The Vanity of Human Wishes / see Seeber, p.204, l.22-23).