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Macbeth is presented as a mature man of definitely

established character, successful in certain fields of

activity and enjoying an enviable reputation. We must not

conclude, there, that all his volitions and actions are

predictable; Macbeth's character, like any other man's at a

given moment, is what is being made out of potentialities

plus environment, and no one, not even Macbeth himself, can

know all his inordinate self-love whose actions are

discovered to be-and no doubt have been for a long time-

determined mainly by an inordinate desire for some temporal

or mutable good.



Macbeth is actuated in his conduct mainly by an

inordinate desire for worldly honors; his delight lies

primarily in buying golden opinions from all sorts of people.

But we must not, therefore, deny him an entirely human

complexity of motives. For example, his fighting in Duncan's

service is magnificent and courageous, and his evident joy in

it is traceable in art to the natural pleasure which

accompanies the explosive expenditure of prodigious physical

energy and the euphoria which follows. He also rejoices no

doubt in the success which crowns his efforts in battle - and

so on. He may even conceived of the proper motive which

should energize back of his great deed:



The service and the loyalty I owe,

In doing it, pays itself.



But while he destroys the king's enemies, such motives work

but dimly at best and are obscured in his consciousness by

more vigorous urges. In the main, as we have said, his nature

violently demands rewards: he fights valiantly in order that