Macbeth: A Mature Man Of Established Character

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proper 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 ...

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is but what is 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 ...

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