eth to beware of Macduff.

Macduff escapes to England, but his wife and children are killed by
Macbeth's order.

Macduff persuades Duncan's son, Malcolm, to attempt the recovery of
the Scottish crown.

Malcolm and Macduff make the attempt. They attack Macbeth and kill
him.

Macbeth is one of the seven supreme Shakespearean plays. In the order
of composition it is either the fourth or the fifth of the seven. In
point of merit it is neither greater nor less than the other six. It is
different from them, in that it belongs more wholly to the kingdom of
vision.

Like most Shakespearean tragedy, Macbeth is the tragedy of a man
betrayed by an obsession. Caesar is betrayed by an obsession of the
desire of glory, Antony by passion, Tarquin by lust, Wolsey by worldly
greed, Coriolanus and Timon by their nobleness, Angelo by his
righteousness, Hamlet by his wisdom. All fail through having some hunger
or quality in excess. Macbeth fails because he interprets with his
worldly mind things spiritually suggested to him. God sends on many men
"strong delusion, that they shall believe a lie." Othello is one such.
Many things betray men. One strong means of delusion is the half-true,
half-wise, half-spiritual thing, so much harder to kill than the lie
direct. The sentimental treacherous things, like women who betray by
arousing pity, are the dangerous things because their attack is made in
the guise of great things. Tears look like grief, sentiment looks like
love; love feels like nobility; spiritualism seems like revelation.

Among these things few are stronger than the words spoken in unworldly
states, in trance, in ecstasy, by oracles and diviners, by soothsayers,
by the wholly excited people who are also half sane, by whoever obtains
a half knowledge of the spirit by destruction of intellectual process.

"to win us to our harm,
The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence."

Coming weary and excited from battle, on a day so strange that it adds
to the strangeness of his mood, Macbeth hears the hags hail him with
prophecy. The promise rankles in him. The seed scattered in us by the
beings outside life comes to good or evil according to the sun in us.
Macbeth, looking on the letter of the prophecy, thinks only of the
letter of its fulfilment, till it becomes an obsession with him.
Partial fulfilment of the p