Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/416

 of psychological leading-matter by Middleton, or any one else who worked for the theatre and reduced the length of the play to bring it into acting limits. A miner strikes his pick through a thin partition behind which subterranean waters have been slowly gathering: they deluge his tunnel and sweep him away. In Shakspeare's mind the hidden precedent of the tragedy's action accumulated. The first scratch of his pen let it loose to flood the scenes. There was no preliminary warning. The psychological filtration through his brain from the sources of his plot bursted in like a freshet that explains itself without recalling separate rills.

Nor was the swift and unheralded action inspired solely by Lady Macbeth's impatience to be the wife of a king. All women run after their thoughts more eagerly than do the men. They are Atalantas without a weakness for the golden apples which are sent across the path to break up their desire for winning. But, if Atalanta secretly prefers a suitor, she will chase his golden apple. For whenever personal preferences divert a woman from her course, it is because they, too, grow in the Hesperides of her imagination. Men deliberate, study the ground, observe the obstacles, cluster round preponderating judgment and wait for its direction. Women are not heedless: they also can deliberate until the heart has become too deeply involved; but, when the heart is set upon something, they are the swift-footed couriers of the Ideal, and their only turn-*pike is as the bird flies. If there be any virtuous advantage to be gained, any scheme to carry out, any