Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/393

 love," the "dear wife," and "dearest chuck." After the murderer has told him that Banquo is slain, he falls into musing which she strives to dispel: her words recall to him what a "sweet remembrancer" she is.

Therefore she hammers stern sentences out of the "undaunted mettle" of her love. They are iron levers to swing him out of the slough of his moods: disdainful smitings on the lover's cheek, they are, to bring them up to regal purple:—

"Shame itself! Why do you make such faces?" "Fie! for shame!"

She could never be capable of risking this style if she had not been wont to soothe his ear with words selected by choice moments of inclination. She would fain recur to them, but there must be a coronation first. When the day comes, there will be bystanders and observers, else she would bend over him with the old-time prattle and remarry him as king.

But, "if we should fail," he suggests, revolving possibilities. What deliberate forethought of contempt her answer yields, if it be properly emphasized,—"We fail!" That is, I'll parrot your phrase, and say "we," but out of disdain. Of us two, the one who fails will not be myself. We, indeed! there's one too much of us for that. Only screw your courage to the point, and we, as you say, will not fail.

If this fortitude which pulls Macbeth through a murder leaves her in our imagination unsexed and brutalized, we deprive ourselves of reasons why he should have