Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/43

28 “Come, come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here; And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty make thick my blood, Stop up the access and passage to remorse; That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect, and it ! Come to my woman's breasts, And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers, Wherever in your sightless substances You wait on nature's mischief Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell ! That my keen knife see not the wound it makes;

Nor heaven peep through the blankness of the dark, To cry,

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With what vehemence and unchanging resolution does she carry out this fell purpose; how she dominates the spirit of her vacillating husband; with what inflexible and pitiless de termination she pursues that one great crime which gives her sovereign sway and masterdom | It is, however, to be re marked, that she is not exhibited as participating in her husband's crimes after the murder of Duncan.

Having seized

upon “the golden round,” her high moral courage and self contained nature, save her from those eternal suspicions and that restlessness of imagination which lead her husband onward from crime to crime. Her want of imagination, her very want of sympathy, would save her from that perver sion of sympathy, which, in her husband, resulted in useless There are e characters capable of com

deeds of blood.

mitting one great crime, and of resting updº it; there are others in whom the first crime is certainly and necessarily fol lowed by a series of crimes. A bad, cold, selfish, and unfeeling heart may preserve a person from that fever of wickedness which a more sympathizing nature is prone to run into when the sympathies are perverted, and the mobile organization lends itself to effect their destructive suggestions. We have above indicated the turning point of Lady Macbeth's madness to