Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/19

4 cism—by Schlegel especially, and by Hazlitt. The wonderful rapidity of action which obtains in this tragedy, the exquisite adaptation of all its parts to form a perfect and consistent whole, and the inimitable use of violent contrasts which it presents, have been dilated upon by the German with a ripe and critical intelligence—by our countryman with the eloquence of vehement admiration. Coleridge also has a long essay upon this drama, to which the authority of his name has attached importance. Some of his criticisms, however, appear more subtle than sensible. He discovers that Lady Macbeth’s "is the mock fortitude of a mind deluded by ambition. She shames her husband by a superhuman audacity of fancy which she cannot support, but sinks in the season of remorse, and dies in suicidal agony." He discovers that the scene opens "with superstition;" as if Macbeth had dreamt he had seen the Witches. Surely there is a difference between the supernatural and the superstitious! The difference between mere apprehension and reality, between imagination and existence. The truth of supernatural events may be doubted or denied, but if admitted, to see it as it is, is not superstition. Degrading Lady Macbeth into a fanciful would-be heroine, Coleridge makes her lord a pre-determined scoundrel, "rendered temptable (by the Witches) by previous dalliance of the fancy with ambitious thoughts." "His soliloquy shewed the early birth-date of his guilt." According to this view, the temptation of the weird Sisters, and the "concatinating tendency of the imagination," was quite needless. A villain ab initio, "who, wishing a temporal end for itself, does in truth will the means," can find no palliation in the direct tempting of supernatural beings, nor in being subject to the masterdom of another human will. Then Macbeth makes the most grievous metaphysical mistakes. Before the deed, "the inward pangs and warnings of conscience are interpreted into prudential reasonings;" and afterwards, he is