KING There’s no art
To find the mind’s construction in the face.
He was a gentleman on whom I built
An absolute trust.
Enter Macbeth, Banquo, Ross, and Angus
[To Macbeth] O worthiest cousin,
The sin of my ingratitude even now
Was heavy on me. Thou art so far before
That swiftest wing of recompense is slow
To overtake thee. Would thou hadst less deserved,
That the proportion both of thanks and payment
Might have been mine. Only I have left to say,
More is thy due than more than all can pay. (1.4.11-21)
The King all but rebukes himself, how could I have been so deceived? but concedes that there’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face; there’s simply no way of knowing someone’s true character from their outward appearance. (One may smile and smile and be a villain, as Hamlet observes; it’s proverbial.) But it’s clear that he’s devastated by Cawdor’s treachery: he was a gentleman on whom I built an absolute trust. Duncan perhaps appears frail and vulnerable; he is dependent on the loyalty of his supporters not only in practical terms but also, it seems, emotionally, and he feels things deeply. Hence his greeting to Macbeth, emphasising the unworthiness of the reward which he will receive for his astonishing service, which he frames in terms of his own unworthiness and inadequacy; it has the effect of emphasising Macbeth’s heroism and status, but at the expense of undermining or weakening the King’s own power. The sin of my ingratitude even now was heavy on me. (Treason and betrayal can be seen as forms of the sin of ingratitude, too.) Thou art so far before, your virtue and service are so far in excess of any reward that I can offer you, that the swiftest wing of recompense is slow to overtake thee. There’s no way I can thank and repay you either quickly enough, or adequately. In fact, would thou hadst less deserved, that the proportion both of thanks and payment might have been mine. If you’d been less of a hero, less deserving, then I’d have had a better chance of being able to reward you; the balance might be on my side of the equation. Only I have left to say, more is thy due than more than all can pay. The rhetoric is florid, as the couplet emphasises, but it’s also establishing Duncan as eloquent, moral, and perhaps a little old-fashioned, and therefore old (to enhance the impression of fragility). What he’s exemplifying here is the humanist device of copiousness, promulgated by writers like Erasmus and very much fostered in early modern education, demonstrating his skill in saying the same thing in a number of different, equally elegant ways. Duncan is saying, in effect, how can I ever repay you, three times over. (An impotent triplet, in comparison with the powerful threes of the witches?) There’s a good contrast, therefore, between the emotional, fussily eloquent old man, and Macbeth the soldier, a man of violence and apparently near super-human strength, who may in this scene still be stained with the mud and blood of the battle. And there are some serious and ironic precedents being established, building on the treason of the former Thane of Cawdor…
