Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/385

 coupling which makes up wishing and doing into one train; so the doing stands some distance off idle on the track. The track which emerged from Hamlet's resolution met so many diverging lines at the controlling switch that he was in doubt upon which to run: at length, impatient chance unlocked the switch, and set the rail for a disaster. When Macbeth's wishing became linked to acting, he was not over-nice about his route. The subtle Hamlet considered till he could not start. The inconsiderate Macbeth, when he ceased to vapor and began to move, blundered with a full head of fantasy into ruin.

When a man's brain is well charged with blood, his powers are unified; but Macbeth's current was addicted to the lobes of figment to some defrauding of the rest. His wife's brain blushed all at once, and expanded to give the measure of her structure; so that her hope, implicating the whole of her, had all the substantiality of a deed. She was already the deed from which Macbeth's ambition swerved. He spawned spectres: she gave birth to men-children only. A woman inspired through and through with love for him, discontented with the slowness of his fortune, longing to touch the top and finish of her own; a helpmeet, whose unextinguished bridal ardor kept burning up all scruples as fast as her lover could rake them together. He, the still perfect object of her pride and passion, must become great: he must be lifted to a place whence all his qualities shall shine beyond cramped horizons with their petty crowds. She would kiss him into the compass of a