Macbeth's Soliloquies Explained

Soliloquy is defined as an “act of talking to oneself.” “In a soliloquy, it is as though all the action stops, and time stands still while the character reveals a deep inner struggle” (Romans, 2022). Soliloquies usually occur in monologues, but there is an explicit difference between monologues and soliloquies. A soliloquy can be a monologue, but not every monologue is a soliloquy. The monologue is a speech delivered to the other characters; meanwhile, a soliloquy is an act where a character talks to himself and reflects upon his deep and intimate thoughts. Soliloquies are an essential constituent of a drama. They are accepted dramatic conventions, especially in the theatre of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. Shakespeare has extensively used this dramatic convention in his famous tragedies; Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Henry V, Twelfth Night, etc. 

The most remarkable fact about Shakespeare’s Macbeth is the flair with which the playwright has interwoven certain events that lead to the tragedy in the end. Hamlet is alluring, King Lear is philosophical, but Macbeth is intricate. This intricacy accords the play its “richness” (Bernard, 1962, p. 49), making a study of it so gratifying and “every stage performance a discovery” (Bernard, 1962, p. 49). Paradoxically, despite a straightforward plot, the play is deemed convoluted. Unlike King Lear, Macbeth has no double-plotting. Still, the action in the play is made to progress at certain different levels, each of which involves a reversal of fortune in a particular order, accordingly giving birth to the consequent distinct tragedies in the play. 

Macbeth is the shortest ever tragedy written by William Shakespeare, without diversions or subplots, unlike any other tragedy by the playwright. However, Shakespeare extensively used parallelism, contrast and soliloquies in the play. Soliloquies are powerful dramatic conventions in Shakespearean tragedies; however, King Lear is an exception. Although Soliloquies were adopted as dramatic conventions in the 1590s and 1600s, it is interesting to know that Shakespeare was the first playwright in history to make such extensive use of soliloquies. Using soliloquies as a ‘dramatic convention’ is to divulge the most intimate and deep thoughts of a protagonist or an antagonist. In his play Macbeth, Shakespeare used soliloquy at seven different events, allowing us to delve deeper into Macbeth’s psyche and trace the development of his character throughout the play. 

In Act-I Scene-III of the play, the witches’ prophecy makes Macbeth happy at first, “Two truths are told / As happy prologues to the swelling act / Of the imperial theme.—I thank you, gentlemen”— (1.3.128-129). Macbeth expresses his overjoy after hearing the witches’ prophecy. Still, the feeling of overjoy is soon overpowered by a strong feeling of fear, “Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair / And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, / Against the use of nature? Present fears / Are less than horrible imaginings: / My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, / Shakes so my single state of man that function / Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is / But what is not” (1.3.134-142). Here we find Macbeth contemplating because deep down, he acknowledges witches being evil and their prophecies somehow diabolical, yet he finds it tempting. Nevertheless, again, his diabolical thoughts about murdering Duncan scare him. “Macbeth likes the idea of becoming King but is not yet willing to commit murder and the ultimate treason” (Aslan, 2016).

At the most understandable stage is the substantial tragedy—more simply “physical tragedy”, substantially, in which a person of the arch-estate falls victim to an exceptional misfortune that consequently leads to his downright wreckage or even death. Macbeth, the soldier with unmatched abilities, once a loyal kinsman to the king who wins the king’s battles and earns the king’s commendation, is allured by inner, rather diabolical zeal and external beseeching; he commits the sinister assassination of the king and takes over the throne, which he ultimately calls a “sterile” crown; “to be thus is nothing but to be safely thus” (3.1.49), he sounds afraid and does not feel safe being a king and sees Banquo as a threat; albeit plunging into an orgy of an atrocity which ultimately leads to the trichotomy of sacrifices; his queen, his crown and at the end of the day, his life. Macbeth’s rack and ruin contain more than the sheer loss of life or crown. It involves another wreckage impartially substantial: “the rapid and radical disintegration of two splendid personalities” (Bernard, 1962, p. 49).

Macbeth’s paradoxical enunciation of his plight does not indicate transformation in him but merely “rearticulates a self-alienation” (Wells, 2008, p. 224) that he has been experiencing since he first heard the witches’ prophecies. Nonetheless, by Act III, Scene 2, Macbeth has turned into a far more prototypical villain and professes “his manliness over that of his wife” (Went, 2000, p. 83). He becomes over-ambitious and begins to spur toward other terrible deeds, and starts to disregard and even challenge “Fate and Fortune” (Went, 2000, p. 83). Each successive murder reduces his human characteristics until he appears to be the more dominant partner in the marriage. For instance, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, when Tom Riddle asks Professor Slughorn about creating Horcruxes, he intends to create seven Horcruxes; “Tom Riddle: And how does one split his soul, sir? / Slughorn: I think you already know the answer to that, Tom. / Tom Riddle - Age 16: Murder. / Slughorn: Yes. Killing rips the soul apart. It is a violation against nature. / Tom Riddle - Age 16: [Adjusting ring on his finger, the same one in present-day Dumbledore’s office] Can you only split the soul once? For instance, isn’t seven... / Slughorn: Seven? Merlin’s beard, Tom! Isn’t it bad enough to consider killing one person? To rip the soul into seven pieces...” (Rowling, 2009).  Murder, as much as sinister it sounds, Rowling rightfully put it together, “rip the soul into… pieces”, and the moment Macbeth commits such atrocity, a part of his soul is ripped away, and he is transformed forever.

There is another tragedy, a downfall in the moral order. Now there is a  dichotomy between “a brave and honourable man plunged into cowardly and dishonourable conduct; an ambitious man, with his thoughts, both before and after the crime, set, not upon the reasons which would impel or justify him, but upon those which deter him. The brave and honourable man becomes a coward and a crook by executing a sinister and vile sin and opens a gateway to even greater cowardice and dishonour. The soliloquy “If it were done when ’tis done, then ‘twere well It were done quickly” (1.7.1-2) is that of a man who has ceased to be honourable by now, although he still might be aware of the exigencies of ‘honour’. Paradoxically, the idea of honour no longer holds meaning to Macbeth.

“For mine own good All causes shall give way” (3.4.135-136); here, the character of Macbeth has noticeably deteriorated and is being ramshackle progressively as the tragedy unfolds further. At first, the thought of murdering Duncan “unfixes” his hair and makes his heart pound against his ribs “against the use of nature”. A principle that the moralists hold asserts that the first crime is the hardest and that this first and most brutal crime leads to another with progressive ease. The murderer, having sinned and blown up all that he ever held sacred, finds it less violent to repeat the deed. Hence, having crossed the threshold once, Macbeth becomes used to the idea of murder and resorts to it again. “Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill” (3.2.55). The old Macbeth, who was the anguished soul-searching preceding the murder of Duncan, is no longer there when he murders Banquo. Murder ultimately becomes ‘second nature’ to the murderer. He is so profoundly consumed in the blood that “returning were as tedious as go e’er” (3.4.138). Macbeth turns into a man who, not unmindful of the loyalty that he owed to Duncan when he asks him to be his guest, later on, becomes so wholly callous as to order the murder not only of his enemies but of their wives, children and servants, and entertains the opinion that he has scarcely begun to do anything evil! “We are yet but young in deed” (3.4.144). Hence, it is a tragedy in the moral order and is deemed as accurate as of the physical and political downfall of a king.

If tragedy is identified in the moral terms in Macbeth, it would be safe to identify another tragedy, identified in terms of social tragedy. It is a rending of the social fabric, an overturning of the correct order, and a twisting the proper relationship among human beings. The murder of Duncan encompasses various levels of ‘sins’. Primarily, it is a sin against nature and society on many counts: firstly, it is deemed to be a murder—a sin against justice; the murder of a kinsman—a sin against piety; regicide—a sin against fealty; the murder of a guest by his host—a sin against the rules of hospitality which all civilised nations deem sacred (Bernard, 1962, p. 58).  “False face must hide what the false heart doth know” (1.7.82). 

In the first soliloquy of the play Macbeth, readers encounter the contradicting aspect of Macbeth’s personality, where he is constantly struggling with an existential dilemma of deciding between good and evil. He is being consumed by “what is not” (1.3.142), something that does not exist. The idea of being the King of Scotland overpowers his sense of right, and “he is drawn into his ambitious imaginings to the point where he loses touch with reality” (Romans, 2022). However, throughout the play, the multitude of Macbeth’s personality is evident, and his soliloquies give us access to his deep and intimate thoughts.

As readers get to witness Macbeth is dealing with the existential dilemma, in Act-I, Scene-VI, yet another aspect of Macbeth’s character’s development is seen; he has now a “vaulting ambition” of becoming the King of Scotland. “If it were done when ‘tis done, then’t were well / It were done quickly: if the assassination / Could trammel up the consequence, and catch / With his surcease success; that but this blow / Might be the be-all and the end-all here” (1.7.1-5). As Macbeth contemplates murdering Duncan, part of his conscience is still alive, but his ambition gets a better hold of him.

 “Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.” (2.1.33-64); the audience gets to hear the infamous “Dagger Speech” from Macbeth. This can be rightfully put together as a psychological tragedy where Macbeth’s soul is overpowered by his dark inner ambition, and he has become so blinded by his ambition that he ceases to exist altogether and transforms into a darker and more diabolical version of himself. Here if we probe a little into Macbeth’s psyche or try to understand the workings of his mind and call upon our moral stance, we can draw a conclusion that the moral decline of Macbeth’s character is so profound that even he is not able to decide the rationality and irrationality of his actions.

“Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath, / Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not (5.1.).” Macbeth’s once vaulting over-ambitious self is now plunged deep into the moralities and indiscretion, but it is too late for him. Moralists hold the stance that, sooner or later, human conscience wins the ongoing battle of ‘raison d'être’, and humans start to realise that they have been ruthless. Macbeth is now at that point and contemplates that will he ever have the true rewards of friendship, respect, and genuine love again. This is a moment of deep and personal insight for him where we meet a little but still intact part of his vulnerable and damaged soul.

Lastly, Macbeth’s soliloquy—“Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” (5.5.19), occurs when Macbeth finally realises his loss and expresses his despair and guilt. Macbeth is grieving the loss of his wife and sinking into a place profoundly dark and full of despair because of his former diabolical plotting.

In a nutshell, Macbeth’s soliloquies are a fine blend of Moral, Substantial, Social and Psychological tragedies that allow the readers or the audience to call upon their moral stance and trace the psychological, social, moral and substantial development of Macbeth’s character and leave us to question the possibility of the eventual salvation to such crime in the end.

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References:

Aslan. (2016, July 22). What is Macbeth saying in this quote? Retrieved April 04, 2022, from GradeSaver: https://www.gradesaver.com/macbeth/q-and-a/what-is-macbeth-saying-in-this-quote-302044
Bernard, M. A. (1962). The Five Tragedies in Macbeth. Shakespeare Quarterly, 49-61.
Romans, J. (2022, February 06). Macbeth’s Soliloquies Listed and Explained. Retrieved April 04, 2022, from Owlcation: https://owlcation.com/humanities/Macbeths-Soliloquies#:~:text=In%20a%20soliloquy%2C%20it%20is,and%20his%20own%20internal%20conflicts.
Heyman, D. (Producer), Rowling, J. K. (Writer), & Yates, D. (Director). (2009). Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince [Motion Picture]. United Kingdom: Warner Bros.
Shakespeare, W. (1623). Macbeth. London: The First Folio.
Wells, J. (2008). “To be thus is nothing”: Macbeth and the trials of. Macbeth: New Critical Essays, 224.
Went, A. (2000). CliffsNotes. Foster City, CA: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc.