Macbeth: A Man Of Established Character

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motive which should energize back of his great deed:

The service and the loyalty I owe, In doing it, pays itself. But while he
destroys the king's enemies, such motives work but dimly at best and are
obscured in his consciousness by more vigorous urges. In the main, as we have
said, his nature violently demands rewards: he fights valiantly in order that he
may be reported in such terms a "valour's minion" and "Bellona's bridegroom"' he
values success because it brings spectacular fame and new titles and royal favor
heaped upon him in public. Now so long as these mutable goods are at all
commensurate with his inordinate desires - and such is the case, up until he
covets the kingship - Macbeth remains an honorable gentleman. He is not a
criminal; he has no criminal tendencies. But once permit his self-love to
demand a satisfaction which cannot be honorably attained, and he is likely to
grasp any dishonorable means to that end which may be safely employed. In other
words, Macbeth has ...

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not";
and his reason is so impeded that he judges, "These solicitings cannot be evil,
cannot be good." Still, he is provided with so much natural good that he is able
to control the apprehensions of his inordinate imagination and decides to take
no step involving crime. His autonomous decision not to commit murder, however,
is not in any sense based upon moral grounds. No doubt he normally shrinks from
the unnaturalness of regicide; but he so far ignores ultimate ends that, if he
could perform the deed and escape its consequences here upon this bank and shoal
of time, he'ld jump the life to come. Without denying him still a complexity of
motives - as kinsman and subject he may possibly ...

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