Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/37

22 discover the “secret'st man of blood.” The reality of the air-drawn dagger he did not believe in, but referred its pheno mena to their proper source, with as much truth, though not with as much phlegm, as Nicolai or any other sane subject of hal lucination could have done.

Unlike the hallucinations of

Nicolai and Ben Johnson, it caused terror although its un reality was fully recognised, because it suited with “the horror of the time” of which it was a reflex.

But between

this time and the appearance of Banquo, the stability of Mac beth's reason had undergone a fearful ordeal. He lacked “the season of all natures—sleep;” or, when he did sleep, it was “In the affliction of those terrible dreams

That shake us nightly.” Waking, he made his companions of the “sorriest fancies;” and, “on the torture of the mind,” he lay “in restless ecstacy.” Truly, the caution given by his wife was likely to become a prophecy: “These deeds must not be thought on After these ways; so, it will make us mad.” In the point of view of psychological criticism, this fact appears on the eve of being fulfilled by the man, when to sleepless nights and days of brooding melancholy are added that undeniable indication of insanity, a credited hal lucination. The fear was in reality fulfilled in the instance of the woman, although, at the point we have reached, when she with clear intellect and well-balanced powers is supporting her horror-struck and hallucinated husband, she offers a charac

ter little likely, on her next appearance, to be the subject of profound and fatal insanity. The man, on the other hand, appears to be almost within the limits of mental disease. Macbeth, however, saved himself from actual insanity by rushing from the maddening horrors of meditation into a course of decisive resolute action.

From henceforth he gave

himself no time to reflect ; he made the firstlings of his heart