guilt.  In either case not only was he free to accept or resist the temptation, but the temptation was already within him.  We are admitting too much, therefore, when we compare him with Othello, for Othello’s mind was perfectly free from suspicion when his temptation came to him.  And we are admitting, again, too much when we use the word ‘temptation’ in reference to the first prophecies of the Witches.  Speaking strictly we must affirm that he was tempted only by himself. He speaks indeed of their ‘supernatural soliciting’; but in fact they did not solicit.  They merely announced events:  they hailed him as Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and King hereafter.  No connection of these announcements with any action of his was even hinted by them.  For all that appears, the natural death of an old man might have fulfilled the prophecy any day.[207] In any case, the idea of fulfilling it by murder was entirely his own.[208]

When Macbeth sees the Witches again, after the murders of Duncan and Banquo, we observe, however, a striking change.  They no longer need to go and meet him; he seeks them out.  He has committed himself to his course of evil.  Now accordingly they do ‘solicit.’  They prophesy, but they also give advice:  they bid him be bloody, bold, and secure.  We have no hope that he will reject their advice; but so far are they from having, even now, any power to compel him to accept it, that they make careful preparations to deceive him into doing so.  And, almost as though to intimate how entirely the responsibility for his deeds still lies with Macbeth, Shakespeare makes his first act after this interview one for which his tempters gave him not a hint—­the slaughter of Macduff’s wife and children.

To all this we must add that Macbeth himself nowhere betrays a suspicion that his action is, or has been, thrust on him by an external power.  He curses the Witches for deceiving him, but he never attempts to shift to them the burden of his guilt.  Neither has Shakespeare placed in the mouth of any other character in this play such fatalistic expressions as may be found in King Lear and occasionally elsewhere.  He appears actually to have taken pains to make the natural psychological genesis of Macbeth’s crimes perfectly clear, and it was a most unfortunate notion of Schlegel’s that the Witches were required because natural agencies would have seemed too weak to drive such a man as Macbeth to his first murder.

‘Still,’ it may be said, ’the Witches did foreknow Macbeth’s future; and what is foreknown is fixed; and how can a man be responsible when his future is fixed?’ With this question, as a speculative one, we have no concern here; but, in so far as it relates to the play, I answer, first, that not one of the things foreknown is an action.  This is just as true of the later prophecies as of the first.  That Macbeth will be harmed by none of woman born, and will never be vanquished till Birnam Wood shall