FIRST WITCH Here’s another
More potent than the first.
Thunder. [Enter] Second Apparition, a bloody child
SECOND APPARITION Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth!
MACBETH Had I three ears I’d hear thee.
SECOND APPARITION Be bloody, bold, and resolute. Laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.
Descends
MACBETH Then live, Macduff. What need I fear of thee?
But yet I’ll make assurance double sure,
And take a bond of fate thou shalt not live,
That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies,
And sleep in spite of thunder. (4.1.74-84)
Apparition two, and apparently more potent than the first: a bloody child. Are they especially loud? Or is Macbeth drawing attention to their triple repetition of his name? (Another three in this play obsessed with threes.) The possible laugh here at Macbeth’s Had I three ears I’d hear thee is interesting; it might make Macbeth briefly more sympathetic, but it also feels risky, a danger of breaking the spell, the illusion. Perhaps that’s the point, introducing a bit of theatrical precariousness into the moment, to make it panicked, dangerous, on the edge. Be bloody, bold, and resolute (another triplet). Don’t hold back. Don’t be afraid: laugh to scorn the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm Macbeth. It sounds like a promise of invincibility: scoff at all your human enemies, for you cannot be hurt by any man born of a woman—which sounds like, any one at all. Apparition out, and Macbeth’s delighted: then live, Macduff—magnanimous in his newly proclaimed invincibility, or so it seems. What need I fear of thee? It doesn’t last though, he’s still suspicious, paranoid, and so but yet I’ll make assurance double sure and take a bond of fate thou shalt not live. Macbeth will, as it were, double down (double double), make doubly sure that Macduff cannot harm him; he’ll kill him all the same, guarantee to do so, enter into a contract, a bond with fate. Only then will he be able to tell pale-hearted fear, his own anxiety, suspicion, paranoia, rising panic (which is pale-hearted because, as he wants to think, it’s mere cowardice) that it lies, that there’s no reason any longer to be afraid. And then, then, he might sleep (at last) in spite of thunder.
The bloody child is often linked primarily to Macduff, and the question of being of woman born—but the play has regularly imagined babies, sometimes new-born, and children, sometimes dead. And, horribly, there are more to come, and not only metaphorically.
