Sarah on Macbeth's "If it were done" soliloquy

Macbeth 1.7.1-28 (Sarah Rasher)

This is perhaps the most important speech in the whole of the play, as it encapsulates the moral dilemma that Macbeth is facing and foreshadows Macbeth’s ultimate downfall. Macbeth launches into this soliloquy with the following statement: “If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly” (I.vii.1-2). Here Macbeth reasons that if he truly must murder Duncan, then it would be best if he did it quickly. This shows reluctance on Macbeth’s part—that he wishes to get the terrible deed over and done with and he lacks any sort of bloodlust. It does, however, also suggest that he is willing to commit the murder. This is perhaps the last time we see Macbeth as a free man, still capable of choice between moral and immoral acts.

Macbeth then expresses concerns about what comes after the murder; he admits that he wouldn’t have such a problem with the murder if the deeds did not often result in a chain of events which could very easily spiral out of his control. Macbeth is not afraid of punishment in the afterlife, but the possibility of facing the consequences of murder in life unsettles him. Macbeth gives very a convincing argument for not killing the King: he states that 1) evil begets evil, and such evil will “return / to plague th’ inventor,” a line of thought which has a shockingly karmic underpinning; 2) Macbeth is “his kinsman and his subject” and he therefore should be against the deed instead of perpetrating the crime (I.vii.9-10, 13). He even goes so far as to admit that Duncan is an excellent king—virtuous and uncorrupt—and that his great legacy will speak for him when he dies, so much so that the angels will be “trumpet-tongued…against / the deep damnation” of the King’s demise (I.vii.19-20). All of this is reinforced by Macbeth’s admission that his “vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself / And falls on th’ other” is the only “spur/ to prick the sides” of this plan to not kill the King  (I.vii.27-8, 25-6). He recognizes, again, that his own ambition will be his undoing as the “other,” here, refers of course the depths of disaster and despair. By the end of the soliloquy, Macbeth has convinced himself that he has no justifiable cause to kill the king, and instead seems to be inclined to deny his own ambitious nature. Lady Macbeth, however, has other plans…