Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/379

 becomes the most intense, it is dispersed, as if the brain's own climax swelled to breaking. The collapse reminds him that the deed still waits to be accomplished: his dagger is yet clean. But its form is the bloody business which he has on hand to get through with before sweet morning. It seemed so clearly cut in his mind, and stayed so long before he could turn it out, that he thought it worth describing to his wife, as she indicates to us when at the banquet she calls his vision of Banquo

"Proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear; This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said, Led you to Duncan."

Now when the ghost of Banquo enters to occupy Macbeth's chair, the actor of the king's part need not strain himself to put on the highest degree of an appalled feeling. "Are you a man?" whispers his wife; and Macbeth gives the true tone to his share of the scene when he answers,—

"Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that Which might appal the devil."

He starts, to be sure; but he simply remarks, "The table's full." "Here is a place reserved, sir." "Where?" he exclaims, so little annihilated by the painting of his own consciousness. It has dazed him, as when a mirror shifts distant sunlight full into the eyes: they blink, and judgment cannot readjust the sight. So he dimly asks, "Which of you have done this?" He is not "distilled to jelly with the act of fear," but simply amazed at this