Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/47

32 o' that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting.

Doct. Go to, go to ; you have known what you should not. Gent. She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that : Heaven knows what she has known.

Lady M. Here's the smell of the blood still: all the per fumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

Oh! oh! oh!

Doct. What a sigh is there ! The heart is sorely charged. Gent. I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body.” The diagnosis arrived at by the judicious and politic Doctor appears to have been, that she was scarcely insane, but so sorely troubled in conscience as to be prone to quit the anguish of this life by means of suicide. “ Unnatural deeds

Do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds

To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine than the physician.—

God, God, forgive us all ! Look after her;

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Remove from her the means of all annoyance,

And still keep eyes upon her.” A passage at the very end of the drama indicates, though it does not assert that the fear of the Doctor was realized— “his fiend-like queen,

Who, as 'tis thought, by self and violent hands Took off her life.”

This diagnosis of the Doctor, that actual disease was not present, is again expressed in his interview with Macbeth : “Macb. How does your patient, doctor 7 Doct.

Not so sick, my lord,

As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies, That keep her from her rest. Macb.

Cure her of that :

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd ; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow; Raze out the written troubles of the brain ; And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,

Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous grief, Which weighs upon the heart 2