Why was Duncan’s Blood Golden?

Summary

This article is the account of an investigation of the meaning of a single line in the play Macbeth, a line which had been for many years a puzzle to me, until, in the course of a quite different inquiry, an answer finally suggested itself out of discoveries made in trying to reconstruct a vanished mental world which was quite familiar to Shakespeare and his audiences. My title refers to the point in the play Macbeth just after the discovery of Duncan’s murder by Macduff and the slaughter by Macbeth of the two drugged and innocent grooms. When Macduff, in that dagger-pointed atmosphere of suspicion which always follows assassinations, whether of ancient Scottish kings or of modern American presidents, asks Macbeth ‘Wherefore did you so?’, Macbeth replies:

Who can be wise, amaz’d, temp’rate and furious,

Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.

The expedition of my violent love

Outrun the pauser reason. Here lay Duncan,

His silver skin lac’d with his golden blood;

And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature

For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,

Steep’d in the colours of their trade, their daggers

Unmannerly breech’d with gore. Who could refrain,

That had a heart to love, and in that heart

Courage to make’s love known?