Macbeth act kill murder actions whilst chance elide

Text	Yet to entirely elide Macbeth’s power to choose is to overlook the many soliloquies which focus, obsessively, upon the moments in which Macbeth makes his decisions. We see this also in Act 1 Scene 7 when Macbeth admits that he wants to kill Duncan and hesitates only because of his worries over the consequences. Macbeth says, in the conditional tense, ‘If th’ assination / Could trammel up the consequence and catch / with his surcease, success’ then he would proceed with his ‘bloody instructions’. The metaphor of Macbeth's desire for the murder to ‘trammel’ up the consequences suggests that, like a dredging net, he wishes that the implications of the regicide would somehow be caught up in the murder itself rather than the inevitability of him facing justice for his actions. Then there is his indecision to his wife, his hesitation whilst hallucinating the dagger on his way to Duncan’s room. Moreover, whilst Macbeth is happy to believe in fate when it suits him—saying, in 1.3 ‘If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me / Without my stir’, he later decides to kill Macduff and his entire family in 4.1 even though the witches demand no such actions. ‘And yet I'll make assurance double sure’ he says, ‘and take a bond of fate’. The metaphorical idea of a ‘bond of fate’ that he will here ‘take’ is something active and far from the actions of a man struggling against powers which have taken away his choice. Instead, by Act 5, Macbeth comes to realise that he has been misled and that it was, therefore, his own ill-informed choices which have driven him to madness and tyranny, not fate: I pull in resolution, and begin To doubt th’ equivocation of the fiend That lies like truth. The word ‘equivocation’ here is key given contemporary fears about Catholic plots against the King in the wake of Robert Catesby’s attempted regicide. Henry Garnet, a Jesuit of Shakespeare’s time, for example, wrote ‘A Treatise of Equivocation’ outlining how Catholics were to avoid lying under oath by deliberately misleading without telling untruths (AO3).

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Yet to entirely elide Macbeth’s power to choose is to overlook the many soliloquies which focus, obsessively, upon the moments in which Macbeth makes his decisions.

We see this also in Act 1 Scene 7 when Macbeth admits that he wants to kill Duncan and hesitates only because of his worries over the consequences.

Macbeth says, in the conditional tense, ‘If th’ assination / Could trammel up the consequence and catch / with his surcease, success’ then he would proceed with his ‘bloody instructions’.

The metaphor of Macbeth's desire for the murder to ‘trammel’ up the consequences suggests that, like a dredging net, he wishes that the implications of the regicide would somehow be caught up in the murder itself rather than the inevitability of him facing justice for his actions. Then there is his indecision to his wife, his hesitation whilst hallucinating the dagger on his way to Duncan’s room.

Moreover, whilst Macbeth is happy to believe in fate when it suits him—saying, in 1.3 ‘If chance will have me king, why chance may crown me / Without my stir’, he later decides to kill Macduff and his entire family in 4.1 even though the witches demand no such actions. ‘And yet I'll make assurance double sure’ he says, ‘and take a bond of fate’. The metaphorical idea of a ‘bond of fate’ that he will here ‘take’ is something active and far from the actions of a man struggling against powers which have taken away his choice.

Instead, by Act 5, Macbeth comes to realise that he has been misled and that it was, therefore, his own ill-informed choices which have driven him to madness and tyranny, not fate:

I pull in resolution, and begin

To doubt th’ equivocation of the fiend

That lies like truth.

The word ‘equivocation’ here is key given contemporary fears about Catholic plots against the King in the wake of Robert Catesby’s attempted regicide. Henry Garnet, a Jesuit of Shakespeare’s time, for example, wrote ‘A Treatise of Equivocation’ outlining how Catholics were to avoid lying under oath by deliberately misleading without telling untruths (AO3).

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