Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/34

Rh “Now good digestion wait on appetite, And health on both !”

playfully challenges the absence of Banquo as an act of unkindness, thus by a voluntary mental act calling before his mind's eye the image of the murdered man. When invited to sit, “The table's full.”—“Here's a place reserv'd, sir.”— “Where? which of you have done this 7” None see the shadowy form except Macbeth himself, and his first impression is that it is a sorry jest; but how quickly does he believe in the supernatural nature of his visitor? “Thou canst not say, I did it; never shake thy gory locks at me.” He looks “on that which might appal the devil,” but which no eyes but his own can see. Although “quite unmann'd in folly,” fear turns to daring, and he threatens the ghost: “Pr'ythee, see there ! behold I look lo! how say you ? Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.— If charnel houses, and our graves, must send Those that we bury, back, our monuments Shall be the maws of kites.”

The hallucination fades, and his natural high courage allows him on the moment to philosophize upon the appearance : “Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time,

Ere human statute purg'd the gentle weal; Ay, and since too, murders have been perform’d, Too terrible for the ear: the times have been

That, when the brains were out, the man would die,

And there an end : but now they rise again, With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, And push us from our stools: This is more strange Than such a murder is.”

Again roused from reverie by his wife, he excuses his be haviour by the same reference to a customary infirmity, which is twice alluded to for the same purpose by his wife: “I do forget:—

Do not muse at me, my most worthy friends; I have a strange infirmity, which is nothing To those who know me.”

C”