Macbeth’s Fear of Conscience

In William Shakespeare’s famous play, Macbeth, the title character wrestles with conflicting and often frantic views of what it means to be king. As his royal ambitions are ignited and encouraged by a group of prophesying witches, Macbeth deals with bouts of near insanity. He pivots wildly between moments of cowardice and moments of violent power. Spurred on by his wife’s insistence and his own ideas of kingly bravery, Macbeth eventually concludes that a king must act quickly and ruthlessly, without careful thought that might inspire a falter in one’s resolve by igniting his conscience. Among the play’s moments that illustrate this idea of conscience, perhaps none better represent Macbeth’s opinion than his aside at the conclusion of act four, scene one. 

In the first scene of act four, Macbeth is navigating a panicked moment in which he must quell an aspect of his very nature: his human conscience. Encouraged by the foretelling of several witches, he has committed murder multiple times in a successful attempt to become king of Scotland. Though he achieves his goal of becoming king, he remains nervous about maintaining his position. At a banquet, Macbeth believes he has just been visited by the ghost of his former friend, one who has been murdered at Macbeth’s request. Though nobody else is able to see this apparition, Macbeth remains disturbed, and returns to the witches that originally began the events of the play. Though the witches provide Macbeth with some comfort in their seemingly positive words about his future, he remains convinced of his need to be proactive in maintaining his throne. Upon reaching this conclusion, Macbeth decides to commit yet another murder, this time slaughtering those in the home of one of his greatest oppositions, Macduff. By this point in the play, Macbeth has killed or ordered the killing of several people, even one of his own friends. That being said, he is still wrestling with his human nature and conscience. Even though he reasons that the killing of Macduff’s household will help him maintain his dream of being king, his conscience is still gnawing at him. In an aside, Macbeth bemoans this awareness of his conscience and ponders what he should do to flee from cowardice. He states, "Time, thou anticipat’st my dread exploits. / The flighty purpose never is o’ertook / Unless the deed go with it. From this moment / The very firstlings of my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand" (Macbeth, 4.1.164-168). In this passage, Macbeth decides he must act immediately to avoid giving himself time to change his mind. He knows his conscience may step in and make things difficult for him if he stops to think for long enough. He hopes to completely bypass his conscience by making quick decisions and acting on them hastily. In this moment, Macbeth solidifies his idea of a king’s necessity for quick action.

Macbeth has good reason to worry that time will stop him from carrying through with some of his more grizzly plans. Earlier in the play, Macbeth and his wife are preparing to kill the current king so Macbeth can take over the throne. When Macbeth is supposed to stab the king, he begins pondering what he is about to do. Macbeth, upon thinking carefully about what might happen if he were to kill the king, decides he no longer wishes to go through with their plan. He says, “We will proceed no further in this business. / He hath honored me of late, and I have bought / Golden opinions from all sorts of people” (Macbeth 1.7.34-36). Macbeth ultimately learns this is not the type of behavior that will make him king, nor is it a decision that will be respected by his wife. When he tells Lady Macbeth of his decision, she not only questions his ability to be king, she questions his very manhood, saying, “When you durst do it, then you were a man” (1.7.56). This idea seems to stick with Macbeth throughout the play, ultimately returning to his mind during his aside in act four, scene one. 

Though Lady Macbeth might have been a large force in Macbeth’s desire to be without his conscience, Macbeth also thinks about this idea early on in the play. After hearing what the witches have to say about him becoming king, he allows himself to ponder the obvious way this would have to be done: through the murder of the current king. He feels his conscience creeping up during this bout of thinking, a fact he disdains, as evidenced by his words, “Stars, hide your fires; / Let not light see my black and deep desires. / The eye wink at the hand, yet let that be / Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see” (Macbeth 1.4.57-60). At this moment, Macbeth pleads for a separation from his conscience. He feels uncomfortable with the idea of it shining a light upon his desire to murder. He wishes for the ability to act on his desires without his conscience illuminating the black, evil nature of these things. He would return to this idea later on when he determines to kill the family of Macduff.

In his famous tragedy, William Shakespeare shows us a troubled man locked into an internal battle against his own conscience. Influenced by witches, his wife, and his own ideology, Macbeth makes the tragic mistake of tossing aside this aspect of human nature in favor of rash and violent actions. He explains this idea to the audience in several asides, and as he commits more and more evil deeds, readers of this play come to find out that he has become eager to forgo his previously found kindness. As this ends up having disastrous consequences, both Macbeth and many of those around him end up finding out the true danger of rejecting human nature.