From the moment he encounters the witches and hears their prophecies, Macbeth’s fate is sealed. His mind becomes ensnared by the tantalizing prospect of power, leading him to consider paths he would have previously dismissed. As his thoughts spiral, the seeds of ambition planted by the witches begin to grow uncontrollably. Lady Macbeth’s manipulation further fuels his resolve, igniting a ruthless desire to seize the throne at any cost.
There is virtually no other way for him but to act the way he does, even if he wanted to.
It also becomes evident from Macbeth’s intended self-splitting that he – just like his wife – has summoned his fate himself and, therefore, consequently has to take on the consequences. Thus, he creates his own hell and knows from the very beginning that it is his hell (Wiese, p.93, l.21-22), but his boundless ambition and his unconditional will for absolute power – which, incited by his peculiar power of imagination, strives for the highest – are way too strong as that he could be dissuaded by anything from this (in his eyes) necessary deed. In committing this crime against all better knowledge and in full consciousness of his goal – though in an only half-conscious, but not unfree state – he has decided to take the ill-fated, wrong path which, admittedly, offers him the kingship as the goal of his desire for power, yet along with him, and before him, it drags many innocent people into perdition2.
From the beginning, Macbeth made no secret of his “black and deep desires” (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 4, l.51). He wants to realize the evil and then commits it consciously and deliberately; in the process, he goes from distrust and hatred, over the coldness of eternal solitude into nothingness (Neis, p.54, l.22-24). Moreover, he becomes a gruesome, brutal felon who wanted evil to the extent of universal chaos, or at least risked it. Until the bitter end, Macbeth stands by himself and his misdeeds, being fully aware that they are unforgivable (Rudorff, p.47, l.20-23). Therefore he is not deceived by the ambiguous sayings of the witches’ prophesying visions, as much as he believes this to be the case (Neis, p.54, l.21-22).
Summarizing, Macbeth’s life journey leads from a loyal subject and warrior to a usurper and on to a tyrant and slaughterer. Paradoxically, especially because he wanted to demonstrate his manliness to his wife by murdering the king, “he has become less than a man by repudiating his natural instincts” (Muir, p.34, l.18-19) and, consequently, developed into a mere murder weapon.
Nevertheless, one can still feel compassion for Macbeth. Admittedly, one or the other argument here seems to contradict the statements in chapter 11.1, but this is exactly – with regard to Sanders’ thesis3 – what makes this drama so interesting, since some arguments can be turned according to the individual viewpoint of the respective recipient and, thus, be made usable for the opposite opinion.
Albeit the term ‘compassion’, in the narrower sense of the word, sometimes appears somewhat out of place in light of Macbeth’s crimes, one can still certainly speak of sympathy, an affective compassion or also a ‘co-suffering of’ (Mitleiden am) the tragic hero’s sufferings (see Lengeler, p.55, ll.5-18). Namely, by directly receiving a share in Macbeth’s thoughts and feelings, the audience experiences the felon not as a heartless man of action, but as suffering and craving for compassion and how he is torn by internal and external impulses. Though the audience certainly never entirely loses sight of his misdeeds and pretenses, the insight and perspective of the delinquent as a victim still causes the recipient to be moved less to revulsion and more to passionate sympathy. He cannot do anything about his unfortunate, imaginative predisposition; but it is what makes him receptive of the witches’ insinuations in the first place (Lengeler, p.57, l.8-11; l.14-17; l.19-21).
Furthermore, the supernatural character of the prediction and the astonishingly quick realization of the prophesied title of Thane of Cawdor have a mitigating effect. What also contributes to this are unfortunate coincidences such as Malcolm’s appointment as heir to the throne, Duncan’s unexpected visit in Inverness and the decisive incitement of Lady Macbeth, who succeeds in changing her husband’s mind, who has already decided against his inner urge to kill, and eventually drives him to commit regicide.
Thereby, his power of imagination plays an ambivalent role since it constitutes both the cause as well as the result of his passions. It equally manifests as a ‘temptress’ and as the voice of his ‘conscience’. Thus, on the one hand, it makes him see the dagger, which drives him to the murder but, on the other hand, it also produces the voices and visions that accuse him after the deed. Hence, Macbeth is completely confused and, in his powerlessness, does not know what is happening to him or what he should do now. Since he – as becomes evident here – does not comprehend himself and his passions, one can credit him for committing the murder out of his confusion.
In addition, his decline, the mortification of his last conscience-like impulses, does not take place without an agitating resistance – whereby the individual stages of his moral development, or rather his degeneration, almost ceaselessly lead downwards – but, on the contrary, after a long, grueling inner battle. Perhaps he did not want to act the way he then ultimately did.
So the drama spreads horror and compassion not only because a character gambles away his soul’s salvation here or has to endure the return of his dead victim, but especially because the consent to perdition simultaneously comes along with the passionate surge of Macbeth’s better, so to say human, nature. Thus, the bad outcome of his entanglement in passions is by no means fixed from the start. Through this insight, which unveils the crime to be a form of human suffering, Shakespeare manages to perform the feat of securing the offender the passionate sympathy of the recipient (Lengeler, p.58, ll.26-37). Robert B. Heilman even goes one step further by putting forward the thesis that, with his sympathy steering, Shakespeare does not only obtain the audience’s sympathy or compassion for Macbeth, but potentially even an identification with him, so “that we become Macbeth, or at least assent to complicity with him […].” (Heilman, p.135, l.1-2).
When he says “I have no spur / […], but only / Vaulting ambition […].” (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 7, l.25–27), the tragic hero deeply laments his helpless situation before his regicide, knowing that he will not be able to defy his boundless ambition (see Moorthy, p.192, ll.13-23). Here, he shows a hint of remorse, which can certainly evoke pity among the audience.