LADY              Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be

What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o’th’ milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great,

Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly,

That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,

And yet wouldst wrongly win. Thould’st have, great Glamis,

That which cries, ‘Thus thou must do’ if thou have it,

And that which rather thou dost fear to do

Than wishest should be undone. (1.5.11-21)

This is such an amazing speech. Lady Macbeth has been reading the letter—speaking, as it were, in Macbeth’s voice, quoting the witches too—and now she speaks not to the audience, not to herself, not just aloud, in soliloquy, but specifically to the absent Macbeth. It’s an extraordinarily intense beginning, immediately conjuring (I use the word deliberately) Macbeth, as if continuing a conversation between the two of them. She’s not talking about the letter, she’s replying to the letter, in effect, on the spot. (Early moderns were interested in the intimacy of letters: ‘More than kisses, letters mingle souls’, John Donne wrote in a verse letter to his friend Henry Wotton.) She begins with a recap—Glamis thou art, and Cawdor—yes—but she’s already made up her mind about the next bit too; it’s definitely happening, and, implicitly, she’ll make sure of it: and shalt be what thou art promised. Like Macbeth, she shies away from articulating the thing explicitly (what thou art promised). Not quite ready to speak it aloud. (Perhaps also: afraid of being overheard?)

A temptation to laugh aloud with incredulity on her next line: yet do I fear thy nature; it is too full o’th’ milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Macbeth, the near super-human killer? She has doubts about his nature, his character? Apparently so. The milk of human kindness is even more interesting than it appears: milk and blood go together in this play, not least for Lady Macbeth (and an early modern audience would ‘know’ that breast milk in particular was blood transformed). To imagine Macbeth as being full of milk makes him oddly childlike, an infant, helpless; human kindness suggests being kind, gentle, caring to a modern ear but here it is also, perhaps primarily, kindness in the sense of humankind. You are all too human—and therefore, potentially, weak, fallible, prone to compassion. I worry that you’re ultimately just a man, and therefore not apt to catch the nearest way, to act decisively, expediently, take advantage of every chance that’s offered you. A concession, thou wouldst be great, you want to achieve status, power, reward; it’s not that you lack ambition—it’s just that you’re a bit squeamish about doing whatever it takes to get there, the illness, the willingness to do bad things, that should attend, accompany that ambition. You’re just not ruthless enough.

What thou wouldst highly, that wouldst thou holily. Holily has a mealy-mouthed onomatopoeic quality, highly/holily making Macbeth sound dainty, fastidious: you want that status and power and reward, but you don’t want to get your hands dirty; you want it to fall into your lap as if by divine intervention. (What and that, keeping it unnamed, unarticulated. And this is, of course, exactly what Macbeth has said, at least initially: he only wants the thing, that thing, if it comes his way by chance…) Oh no, you don’t want to play false, cheat, lie (and the rest) just to help fortune along a bit—but you still desire that outcome all the same, even though you know it’s wrong. Wouldst wrongly win. Thould’st have, great Glamis (a touch of mockery, in addressing him with his now-superseded title?)—you would, you want to have that which cries, ‘Thus thou must do’ if thou have it. That which cries, the thing, the unnamed thing; here it’s the crown, probably, a golden mouth crying out, calling to Macbeth, taunting him not only, if you want it, come and get it, but also ‘thus thou must do’ if thou have it. From that to thus; to have the thing, you must do the thing, the thing you’re picturing, that you’ve been imagining ever since you heard the witches. (Lady Macbeth doesn’t comment at all on the witches. She takes them completely for granted. In a sense, she doesn’t need them; she’s got such a clear sense of what needs to happen and how things should play out.) And yes, you fear that, the thing you know you need to do, you’re afraid of doing it—but at the same time you don’t want it not to be done. You don’t want it undone, un-done. That distinction between the doing and the done, the desire for something to be done, unable to be undone, but without the doing, is going to come back, again and again.