MACBETH Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives.
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
A bell rings
I go, and it is done. The bell invites me.
Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.
Exit (2.1.56-64)
There’s terror and menace here, but also, I think, terrible sadness and loneliness and a kind of horror, in Macbeth, at himself. Thou sure and firm-set earth, hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear thy very stones prate of my whereabout, and take the present horror from the time, which now suits with it. The earth’s very stability—it is sure and firm-set—seems to imply Macbeth’s own instability, his feeling of insubstantiality, unreality, as he moves like a ghost. There’s a sense of dissociation, that he’s watching himself, already deeply traumatised. Yes, he doesn’t want to make a sound, he doesn’t want even the ground he walks on to hear his steps, or to be able to plot the direction in which he’s going; he doesn’t want even the stones to witness him, or to be able to bear witness against him, tell tales, prate. There’s nervousness here, but also a kind of shame, the awareness that what he’s going to do is so unnatural that nature itself, the ground he walks on, could cry out against him. Yet if the stones spoke, breaking the silence of the moment, that would also, paradoxically, be a kind of relief, taking the present horror from the time, which now suits with it.
A final resigned statement, underscored by the couplet (and the way in which the end of the speech shifts from long, complex sentences made up of polysyllabic words into short phrases, mostly monosyllabic, is also striking). Whiles I threat, he lives: while I stand here, vacillating, imagining, hating myself, talking rather than doing, Duncan’s still alive. Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives: and the longer I just talk about it, the greater the possibility that I’ll lose my nerve, as if deeds are a spark, a fire, and words the chilly draught that will extinguish it. At last, a bell rings: a single note? will he wait until the sound dies away, frozen, poised? I go, and it is done. (If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.) But also, Macbeth knows that once he moves from this spot, it’s over, for Duncan and for him. This is the last moment in which he can make a choice, back out. So the bell is not simply an invitation—the bell invites me—but a question. Will you? Can you? And he answers in the affirmative, because perhaps it’s no choice really, because the question has been asked, finally, by the person who rang the bell, Lady Macbeth. A final plea, that Duncan will still be asleep when Macbeth gets to him: hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell, that summons thee to heaven, or to hell. But hell, now, is where Macbeth himself is and will be, from this moment on.
