But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne,

she meant only that they would some day die; or that she felt any surprise when Macbeth replied,

     There’s comfort yet:  they are assailable;

though I am sure no light came into her eyes when he added those dreadful words, ‘Then be thou jocund.’  She was listless.  She herself would not have moved a finger against Banquo.  But she thought his death, and his son’s death, might ease her husband’s mind, and she suggested the murders indifferently and without remorse.  The sleep-walking scene, again, inspires pity, but its main effect is one of awe.  There is great horror in the references to blood, but it cannot be said that there is more than horror; and Campbell was surely right when, in alluding to Mrs. Jameson’s analysis, he insisted that in Lady Macbeth’s misery there is no trace of contrition.[231] Doubtless she would have given the world to undo what she had done; and the thought of it killed her; but, regarding her from the tragic point of view, we may truly say she was too great to repent.[232]

2

The main interest of the character of Banquo arises from the changes that take place in him, and from the influence of the Witches upon him.  And it is curious that Shakespeare’s intention here is so frequently missed.  Banquo being at first strongly contrasted with Macbeth, as an innocent man with a guilty, it seems to be supposed that this contrast must be continued to his death; while, in reality, though it is never removed, it is gradually diminished.  Banquo in fact may be described much more truly than Macbeth as the victim of the Witches.  If we follow his story this will be evident.

He bore a part only less distinguished than Macbeth’s in the battles against Sweno and Macdonwald.  He and Macbeth are called ‘our captains,’ and when they meet the Witches they are traversing the ’blasted heath’[233] alone together.  Banquo accosts the strange shapes without the slightest fear.  They lay their fingers on their lips, as if to signify that they will not, or must not, speak to him.  To Macbeth’s brief appeal, ‘Speak, if you can:  what are you?’ they at once reply, not by saying what they are, but by hailing him Thane of Glamis, Thane of Cawdor, and King hereafter.  Banquo is greatly surprised that his partner should start as if in fear, and observes that he is at once ‘rapt’; and he bids the Witches, if they know the future, to prophesy to him, who neither begs their favour nor fears their hate.  Macbeth, looking back at a later time, remembers Banquo’s daring, and how

                       he chid the sisters,
     When first they put the name of king upon me,
     And bade them speak to him.

‘Chid’ is an exaggeration; but Banquo is evidently a bold man, probably an ambitious one, and certainly has no lurking guilt in his ambition.  On hearing the predictions concerning himself and his descendants he makes no answer, and when the Witches are about to vanish he shows none of Macbeth’s feverish anxiety to know more.  On their vanishing he is simply amazed, wonders if they were anything but hallucinations, makes no reference to the predictions till Macbeth mentions them, and then answers lightly.