MACBETH                              Besides, this Duncan

Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been

So clear in his great office, that his virtues

Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against

The deep damnation of his taking off;

And pity, like a naked new-born babe

Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim, horsed

Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,

That tears shall drown the wind.     (1.7.16-25)

Duncan’s a good king; he’s borne his faculties, exercised his powers and prerogatives meekly. He’s emphatically not a tyrant; the question of whether it was lawful to kill a tyrant was a contentious and live issue at the time. And Duncan’s a good man; he has been so clear in his great office. He’s a virtuous, innocent exemplary king, and therefore his virtues will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued against the deep damnation of his taking off. It’s as if Macbeth is picturing the day of judgement, a soul weighed in the balance, poised between heaven and hell, angels pleading, devils taunting, as in the ‘dooms’ painted in medieval churches and whitewashed at the Reformation. (The one in the Guild Chapel in Stratford is now uncovered; Shakespeare’s father John had been on the council that ordered its obliteration in the year that Shakespeare was born.) Because Macbeth has no doubt that the murder of Duncan, his king, his guest, his kinsman, and a good, good man, is hellish, the work of the devil; it will bring deep damnation, not to Duncan, but to the man who betrays and kills him. Those angels are trumpet-tongued, loud and clear, recalling the last trumpet which announces the day of judgement, the end of the world.

Then suddenly, this extraordinary, suggestive, imprecise image of pity, like a naked newborn babe, striding the blast: a baby, helpless and frail, but also bloodied and wailing, riding on the wind, or perhaps the blast of the trumpets. A Christ figure? (It always makes me think of Southwell’s ‘burning babe’: ‘A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear; | Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed | As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed’. Southwell, a Jesuit priest, was martyred in 1595; the poem was first printed in 1602.) A whirl of sound, colour, wind (blood). (Children and babies, real and remembered and imagined, sometimes bloodied, come back again and again in this play.) And angels, again, like babies and yet more terrible, winged cherubim, horsed upon the sightless couriers of the air—angels on horseback, an army of cherubim hurtling, streaming through the air on horses which are sightless—blind? invisible? Either way it’s apocalyptic, blowing the horrid deed in every eye: this murder will be like the end of the world, a horrific sight, blasting the world. There’s a sense of a whirlwind, fierce, violent; the horrid deed will be like dust, drawing tears from every eye, every one that sees or imagines it, so that their tears shall drown the wind. There will be such weeping that it will overcome even the whirlwind of terror that the murder of this good king has unleashed. Macbeth is imagining and almost feeling that whirlwind in this moment.