The Fifth Soliloquy

Macbeth's Fifth Soliloquy:

how has he changed?

        Macbeth's world is falling apart. He is king of Scotland and seems to have all he desired, but threats to his rule are everywhere--or at least, he sees them everywhere. His position as king is doing him no good, and he is miserable and "in blood stepped...so far", and "full of scorpions is [his] mind". He used to be a better man, happy even; what changed? Macbeth did. In his first soliloquy, that moment when he first conceived of Duncan's murder and saw only the beginning of the dark path before him, he said that the mere thought of murdering his king, "shakes so my single state of man that function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is but what is not." He could not move under the burdenous weight of the thought, and his world had turned on end. He told us that the thought, "doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs against the use of nature." He even said that the idea was "yet fantastical"and still he had a huge physical reaction to it. This was a man appalled by the mere inkling of slaying his noble king. He fought against even the thought.

         Fastforward a bit, to when Macbeth has returned home to his castle in Glamis, having hardly spoken with his wife, and he has another soliloquy that already shows a drastic change. Instead of fighting off the thought out of horror, he is now wishing he could kill Duncan, if only there were no problems. He states at the beginning of the soliloquy that "if it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly." If only I could murder and get away clean, I'd do it right away! He's no longer concerned by the moral wrongness of it. He doesn't care that he'd be murdering someone. He's changed much in a short trip. All that stops him now is that "we have judgement here" and that "bloody instructions... return to plague th' inventor." It would come back to get him, and he'd always have to be on the look-out. In this soliloquy, he does decide against murder, but only just, and later Lady Macbeth easily pushes him over the edge--but he put himself on that edge first. He has already abandoned his morals with hardly a passing glance. 

        Now we are at his fifth soliloquy, months after the murder. Macbeth is king, and has everything he was going for. But he's also had Banquo, a former colleague and perhaps friend, murdered to secure his seat on the throne, and now Macduff seems to be posing a potential threat. Macbeth resolves in his fifth soliloquy that "from this moment, the very firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my hand."He is going to act without thinking, going straight from his emotions to his actions with no contemplation in between. He is going to have "no boasting like a fool" and he says "this deed I'll do before this purpose cool." What deed is he plotting? We can probably predict that he plans to murder Macduff, but that's not all. He says, "the castle of Macduff I will surprise... give to th' edge o' the' sword his wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls that trace him in his line. " He wants to kill everyone now. He has come all the way from being appalled at the thought of a single murder to resolving to commit mass murder with hardly any hesitation. Macbeth "violated his moral code" and now he is falling apart at the seams. He is no longer happy. He has no hope. He is thoughtless and cruel where once he was noble and good. He is rude to his wife who he once honored and valued. He is truly destroying himself. 

        This gets to the heart of the play, or a heart of it. Part of the point of this play is that Shakespeare is trying to show us that when you sacrifice right, when you do something you know to your core is evil, when you know that it's the most horrible thing that you should never, never do and you do it anyway, when you begin good and yet you knowingly choose evil, it will destroy you completely and utterly. Macbeth has brought about his own destruction. He once was a noble and honored warrior with a good life and good standing with the king. Now he is a broken and hollow man with darkness consuming his soul and evil filling his heart and mind and actions. He has gone from noble warrior to mass murderer. He has destroyed everything he once cared about. He has ruined his life. "Ye shall not eat of it...lest ye die." Genisis 3:3 Macbeth chose to live in sin and never leave it, and he is surely losing his life.  

         From beyond the violet mist today, we witnessed the beginnings of the culmination of the destruction brought on by turning to evil.