 |
Lincoln and Shakespeare |
(Page 4 of 4) On April 9, the same day as Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox, Lincoln was traveling by boat back from Richmond to Washington with his family, some members of congress, and a visiting Frenchman, the Marquis de Chambrun, who gives the following account:
As we were steaming up the Potomac, that whole day the conversation dwelt upon literary subjects. Mr. Lincoln read to us for several hours passages taken from Shakespeare. Most of these were from Macbeth, and, in particular, the verses which follow Duncan's assassination. I cannot recall this reading without being awed at the remembrance, when Macbeth becomes king after the murder of Duncan, he falls a prey to the most horrible torments of mind. Either because he was struck by the weird beauty of these verses, or from a vague presentiment coming over him, Mr. Lincoln paused here while reading, and began to explain to us how true a description of the murderer that one was; when, the dark deed achieved, its tortured perpetrator came to envy the sleep of his victim. And he read over again the same scene.
That Lincoln would focus on this passage from Macbeth 3.2 at this precise moment in American history, and in his own life, five days from death, is deeply suggestive.
Here is some of what he read aloud, explicated, and read again:
Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave.
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.
Treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him further. (Macbeth, 3.2.19–26)
What drew Lincoln to this, aside from the literary and psychological interest the passage has for all its readers? Identification with Macbeth perhaps—which is a feature of the dream anecdote as well, where Lincoln is haunted by a corpse? Or his own feelings of exhaustion and guilt in having gained peace by sending so many—620,000—to peace? Does he share Macbeth's envy of the dead, articulated here with language that is especially and exactly political? Does he wish to be, like Duncan, in his grave?
© 2006, Stephen Dickey
Lincoln funeral broadside, 1865. Folger Shakespeare Library.