Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/192

 *sciousness that the human which thus recurs does it in entire ignorance of the scene at which it knocks. That makes us catch our breath, to feel how thoughtlessly life is about to stumble into the tremendous scene. What a contrast of innocent unconsciousness,—so innocent, so remote from the event, that we should think it was impertinent if our pity for the shock it brings upon itself did not prevail! We wonder who will first discover what has occurred, whether man or woman; somebody is doomed to blunder into the ghastliness of that room where Macbeth murdered sleep. What will be the sensation that thrills from the inhospitable bed around which the angels of honor and loyalty ought to have watched with spotless wings? Some one steps into this pool where all the safeguards and trusts of human life lie drenched. How will he manage to escape from it, and will the tongue be palsied "with the act of fear" to refuse to the lips words adequate to express the villainy? And yet this must be done.

We therefore become aware of this additional feeling, that the life which knocks at the gate, though unconscious, is pregnant with the design of an overruling Power; just for a moment, there seems to be the supernatural arrival of something with a commission to detect the murder. Every knock smites the bare heart of Macbeth, who may well exclaim, "Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou could'st!"

Shakspeare makes another world for Macbeth,—a sequestered hell. The knocking announces the existence and reappearance of another life, as De Quincey