ISC Macbeth Workbook Answers ( Evergreen ) : Act 1 Scene 7

While the feast in honour of king Duncan is in progress, an intensely disturbed Macbeth, alone on the stage, introspects the pros and cons of the contemplated murder in his soliloquy.

In the conflict between his ambition and poetic imagination, Macbeth at the end of his famous soliloquy, concludes that there is no justification to murder the king and that he would not go ahead with his plan because firstly he is not afraid of the deed as a moral evil but fears the consequences here on earth which would ultimately defeat his ambition and ruin him altogether. The deed of murder recoils on the head of the murderer in the end. Then Macbeth reasons with himself that Duncan is his relative and his honoured guest which is an argument in itself against killing Duncan. Duncan is a good king and his subjects will be seized with pity for the king and will be up in arms against Macbeth. He personifies pity and compares it to a helpless innocent baby, dead just after its birth, riding the wind and then compares pity to heaven’s little angels, who full of love and compassion, flitting through the air, denouncing his horrible crime all over the world. Finally, he feels that he has no other cause or incentive to ‘spur’ or goad him to this wicked deed except for his inordinate ambition which may even cause his downfall as happens with the over eager horseman who ‘o’erleaps’, misses his saddle and falls to the other side. These last lines epitomize a brilliant metaphor of horse..

Lady Macbeth enters and when he tells her that they will ‘proceed no further in this business.’ she sets to work to make him change his decision. With the ‘valour of her tongue’, she chastises him for his lack of determination. She accuses him of having no will power and behaving like a drunkard who in his drunken state is boastful but once he becomes sober, he knows he can never live up to his boastful declarations. She chides him that he is bold in his thoughts, but he is wanting when it comes to action. She accuses him of having made a false promise to her and doubts whether he truly loves her. She calls him a coward who would have the crown but would not play foul to get it. She declares that by his irresoluteness, he is behaving like the proverbial cat that wants to eat the fish in the pond but will not wet its feet.

Macbeth begs for her to stop saying that he has the courage to do anything befitting a man, but she raves on She goads him by giving her own example. She tells him that she would never have shrunk from carrying out what she had promised- As a mother, she is fully aware of what it is to love the little baby that suckles at its mother’s breasts. But had she made a vow to murder her own child, she would have calmly plucked it from her breast and dashed out its brains even as it was lovingly and trustingly gazing at her. This is how she, in a contemptuous manner, compares herself, a woman, with her husband. On Macbeth’s referring to the possibility of failure of the deed, she tells him to screw his courage to its sticking place and the plan will not fail.

Divulging her fool-proof plan to him, she changes tactics and assures him that she herself will drug the chamberlains so heavily that they will not be able to detect Macbeth while he commits the business. She, with her strong will and determination, succeeds in impressing him and ‘screwing his courage’ so much so that the dithering husband finally makes up his mind to commit this terrible deed and to put up an appearance of such joy that ‘false face must hide what the false heart doth know.