Modern Age - Fall 2015 - 147

THE ART OF POLITICAL HEALING IN MACBETH

And Lennox is not finished. In his following words he touches
on what Scotland really needs: "So that, I say, / He has borne all
things well: and I do think / That had he Duncan's sons under his
key-/ As, an't please heaven, he shall not-they should find / What
'twere to kill a father; so should Fleance" (16-20; italics mine). His
words "an't please heaven, he shall not" are telling. The nation,
fallen under such a shadow, needs divine aid-but not necessarily through miraculous intervention, although there have been
incidents bordering on the supernatural more than once in the
play.2 The hope of Scotland lies in godly, vigorous men not merely
praying for assistance but actively rising to the occasion and reestablishing right in a "swift blessing" (48).
There's no soliloquy here or anywhere else of a Scottish lord's
planning his own version of Macbeth's tyranny, and no general
feeling that political murder is the way of the world.3 Instead
Shakespeare gives us Macduff's impassioned "Most sacrilegious
murder hath broke ope / The Lord's anointed temple, and stole
thence / The life o' the building!" (3.3.63-65) on discovering Duncan's body, and later "O Scotland, Scotland!" (4.3.101), a voice of
moral and patriotic outrage despairing of the means to bring
the nation back to its former health. Like Lennox, he wants healing that the ascent to the throne of the true, just, and legitimate
monarch promises. The political emphasis in the last two acts of
Macbeth is, then, on restoration of true and traditional order in
the face of tyrannical and bloody innovation.
In these dire circumstances Malcolm becomes more than a
minor figure. Before 4.3 we know little of him other than that he
is the newly proclaimed Prince of Cumberland (1.4.39), who later
with Donalbain has the sense to disappear after his father's murder (2.3.135). Act 4, scene 3 tells us much more. He reveals himself
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