And he psychs himself up as he must have done any number of times before going into battle. And you know, the pity of Macbeth is that he spends his life killing people – that’s his job and he’s brilliant at it. It’s what the state employs him to do. Is it any wonder that he can’t cope with being a civilian? He knows you can’t be a civilian and behave like a soldier. He’s trying to reconcile those two things. Soldiers kill. It’s what they are obliged to do. And the more they kill, the more successful they are, the more heroic. In civilian life, one mistaken murder can bring down horror and
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