MACBETH      Now, if you have a station in the file

Not i’th’ worst rank of manhood, say’t;

And I will put that business in your bosoms

Whose execution takes your enemy off,

Grapples you to the heart and love of us,

Who wear our health but sickly in his life,

Which in his death were perfect.

SECOND MURDERER            I am one, my liege,

Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world

Hath so incensed that I am reckless what

I do to spite the world.

FIRST MURDERER                And I another,

So weary with disasters, tugged with fortune,

That I would set my life on any chance

To mend it or be rid on’t.     (3.1.103-115)

 

So, if you’re any kind of man at all (and, implicitly, if you’re any better than a dog); if you’re not the lowest of the low, the bottom of the heap, and you don’t want to be, you don’t want to stay there, you think you’re better than that: now’s your chance. Speak, says Macbeth. And I will put that business in your bosoms, I’ll give you a job, take you into my confidence, entrust a secret motivation to your hearts—it’s got a nasty intensity to it, getting inside their bodies, as he’s already got into their heads. And the execution of that business, its accomplishment (but it is, also, an execution, obviously, a hit)—in one go it takes your enemy off, does away with him, and at the same time grapples you to the heart and love of us. It means you’re on my team, enjoying the royal favour and protection, quite literally one of us; I’ll look out for you. Grapple, though. Coercive, suffocating, tightly gripped; bound forever. Because so long as he’s alive, we wear our health but sickly—I’m not safe, sick-feeling, faint, weakened, always looking over my shoulder, back to the ill-fitting garment, the pretence, just keeping up appearances of being a king, being OK—so long as he’s alive. But in his death I will be perfect, secure, hale, hearty, whole.

The Second Murderer pipes up for the first time: he’s made up his mind, it seems; perhaps he’s realised that his mate’s done the talking so far, and he wants to be in on this, to make his allegiance clear, my liege, my lord. That’s me, he says, I’m the loser, down and out, things can’t get worse. Everything in my life is against me, and I hate the world and everything in it: I am one whom the vile blows and buffets of the world hath so incensed that I am reckless what I do to spite the world. I don’t care anymore, I’m angry and hurt and I’ve got nothing to lose. The First Murderer too: I’m sick of it all, everything that life’s thrown at me, so weary with disasters, tugged with fortune, mauled about by the daily grind of existence, bad luck all the way. Life’s chewed me up and spat me out. I’ll do anything, set my life, risk my life on any chance that will either mend it or be rid of it. Do or die; death couldn’t be worse than the way I’m existing now.

In their weak, mean, cowed way, the murderers make something like the same choice as Macbeth has: nothing to lose, might as well try. He has to mock them, shame them, belittle them, not just because he needs them to do his dirty work, but because he looks at them and is reminded, partly, of himself, the story he’s told himself, of resentment and entitlement and shame.