This mirrors “the despair of a man who had knowingly made mortal war on his own soul”. (Bradley, p.301, l.5-6).
But especially the formation of a massive resistance in the shape of the united English-Scottish army, which now approaches his castle, massively contributes to his complete disillusionment. It signifies for him the beginning of his ruin and will shortly after finally indirectly (through the sword of Macduff) seal his death. Now Macbeth is trapped on the ground of hard facts; he sees himself and his situation clearly, and begins to understand that now there is no escape for him anymore and that his death is only a matter of time. Therefore, he knows, the only thing left for him according to his soldierly self-conception – one of his virtues which, in contrast to all his other former qualities, he never lost sight of throughout the entire drama – is to fight until his last breath: “They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, / But bear-like I must fight the course.“ (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 7, l.1–2). Out of this clear-sightedness his weariness with life accrues, which stands in strange discrepancy to his natural vitality (Rojahn-Deyk, p.216, l.21-24).
This is altogether an interesting observation of Shakespeare’s characterization of Macbeth, because even though he rampages like a berserker in the end, he nevertheless always knows to realistically estimate how it is with him. Therewith he displays a discrepancy between an astonishing clarity of consciousness on the one hand, and a boundless powerlessness on the other hand. For instance, this becomes evident when he – just after Banquo’s ghost appeared to him – has to soberly realize: “I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” (Macbeth, Act 3, Scene 4, l.134–136). Thus he knows that there is no way back for him onto the path of goodness, and that he can now only make the best of this fatal, muddled situation.
But even in his helpless position, when his imminent end already emerges, he is still capable of admitting in an impressively rational manner that “[…] that which should accompany old age, / As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, / I must not look to have;” (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 3, l.24–26). This also makes up a part of his greatness and suggests a feeling of pity1 to the recipient.
When Macduff then reveals to him that he came into the world via a caesarean section – “[…] Macduff was from his mother’s womb / Untimely ripped.“ (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 8, l.15–16) – Macbeth is at the end of his way, completely disillusioned and deprived of his deceptions through the witches. Nevertheless, he goes down without looking back, brave until the end, and fearless towards all failures. By now, he is so dulled that no horror can harm him, and no insight into the deception and no weariness of life can make him falter since, like he says in the fifth act: “I have supped full with horrors; / Direness familiar to my slaughterous thoughts / Cannot once start me.“ (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5, l.13-15 / see Naumann, p.400, ll.1-2; l.10-12; l.16-18). At this point at the latest he has given up any hope for an improvement of his tragic situation. He senses and knows that his end is drawing near.
Thus here, towards the end of the play, Macbeth can, if at all, only hope to survive, or rather to delay his death as long as possible and, in the process, tear as many of his enemies with him into death as possible, after he has now realized that death – even though he thought himself to be invulnerable up to this point due to his interpretation of the second prophecy series – is now inescapable for him as well.
10.1.3 Findings
Thus summarizing, it remains to be adhered that, since the prophecy of royal dignity, Macbeth fully and deliberately walks the path of crime and repeatedly succumbs to the short-lived hope that he could draw advantages from it, or that he would at least remain spared of the consequences (Standop, p.250, l.16-18). Yet he is consistently caught up by the aftermaths of his misdeeds (which, however, will not be thematized in greater detail at this point yet).
At the end of the play, any hope that he entertained turned out to be a merely illusory assumption, which either does not come true for him at all – such as, for instance, the desired happy life as king, the longed-for finality in the shape of security and certainty through the murders of Duncan and Banquo, as well as his hoped-for invulnerability after the witches’ prophecies in the fourth act – or at least provides him no permanent advantage. Thus, even though he becomes king, his life quality deteriorates drastically by it, instead of improving2. Lastly, he experiences solitude, despair as well as the loss of the world and the own self inside it.
Disillusioned, Macbeth has to finally realize shortly before his death that he did not become the royal hero, who would have succeeded in ringing in a new glorious era that stands in close connection with his name, like he possibly has envisioned in his pipe dreams, but that his life turned out to be – as bitter as it might be for him – “a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing.“ (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5, l.25–27) in the end (see Ryan, p.65, l.17-19). He has strived for self-superelevation and, in the process, ultimately destroyed himself and his own soul.
10.2 Imagination as a Mirror of Fears and Apprehensions: Negative Anticipation of the Future