Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/28

Rh “I have given suck, and know How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me :

I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd the nipple from his boneless gums, And dash't the brains out, had I but so sworn

As you have done to this.” Fearing that his better nature would relent, she had sworn him to the treacherous and bloody deed. She concludes by shewing clearly the opportunity. She will ply the two chamberlains with wine and wassel, until

“Memory, the warder of the brain, Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason

A limbeck only : When in swinish sleep Their drenched natures lie, as in a death

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Well may Macbeth exclaim in astonishment: “Bring forth men-children only For thy undaunted mettle should compose Nothing but males.” He reels under the fierce battery of temptation and when she has thus poured her spirits into his ear, and chas tised his compunctions with the valour of her tongue, he falls; without time for further thought, rushing into the commission of his first great crime. “I am settled, and bent up Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.

Away, and mock the time with fairest show : False face must hide what the false heart doth know.”

As in earliest time, the temptation was urged by the woman. Woman, infinitely the most virtuous, distances her partner when she has once entered the career of crime.

“Denn, geht es zu des Bösen Haus, Das Weib hat tausend Shritt voraus.”

The dagger scene is an illustration of Shakespeare's finest psychological insight. An hallucination of sight resulting from the high-wrought nervous tension of the regicide, and “the present horror of the time,” and typifying in form, the dread purpose of his mind; impressed upon his senses, but re