Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/31

16 “Macb. Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more / Macbeth doth murder sleep; the innocent sleep; Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great mature's second course, Chief mourisher in life's feast. Lady M. What do you mean : Macb. Still it cried, Sleep no more 1 to all the house : Glamis hath murder'd sleep; and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more 1” When the first agony of remorseful excitement has passed, its more settled phase is expressed in the life-weary, Hamlet-like melancholy of the passage: -

“Had I but died an hour before this chance, I had liv'd a blessed time; for, from this instant, There's nothing serious in mortality;

All is but toys; renown, and grace, is dead; The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees

Is left this vault to brag of.” The description of the night of murder is conceived to add to the supernatural. By lamentings in the air, earthquake, eclipse, prodigies in animal life, things “unnatural, even like the deed that's done,” the mental effect of awe is skilfully

produced, and the feeling of Macbeth's balance between fate and free-will is maintained just at that point which enables us both to sympathize and condemn. Macbeth at last hath obtained the “All hail hereafter ;” but

the furies of conscience rack his soul with cowardly and anxious thoughts. He is cowed by the presence of a brave and honest man, his old friend and colleague, whose royalty of nature, dauntless temper, and the prudence with which he acts, make him an object of fear, and his presence a rebuke. Jealousy, moreover, of the greatness which the weird Sisters had promised to the issue of Banquo, rankles in his mind, now debased by guilt and the fertile seed ground of all evil passion.