Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/36

Rh one but Macbeth, differing in this respect from that of Hamlet's Father. Moreover, Banquo's ghost is silent : Hamlet's ghost is a conversational being, subject to disap appearance at cock-crow, and other ghost laws; points indicating the poet's idea of the ghost of Banquo as an hal lucination, not as an apparition ; a creation of the heat oppressed brain, not a shadowy messenger from spirit-land. It is the pathological Nemesis of guilt, not a phantom returned to the confines of the day actively to assist in the discovery of guilt. The progress of the morbid action is depicted with exquisite skill. First, there is the horrible picture of the imagination not transferred to the sense, then there is the sensual hallucination whose reality is questioned and rejected, and now there is the sensual hallucination whose reality is fully accepted. Are we to accept the repeated assurance, both from Macbeth and from his lady, that he is subject to sudden fits of some kind 7 or was it a ready lie, coined on the spur of the moment, as an excuse for his strange behaviour ! “Sit, worthy friends, my lord is often thus, And hath been from his youth : ‘pray you, keep seat, The fit is momentary; upon a t-ought He will again be well; if much you note him,

You shall offend him, and extend his passion.” And again : “Think of this, good peers, But as a thing of custom : ’tis no other,

Only it spoils the pleasure of the time.” Doubtless it was a ready lie; otherwise the lady would have used the argument to her husband, instead of scoffing at his credulity. Macbeth, however, is at this juncture in a state of mind closely bordering upon disease, if he have not actually passed the limit. He is hallucinated, and, in respect to the appearance of Banquo, he believes in the hal lucination, and refers it to the supernatural agencies which