Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/418

 She does not give Macbeth time to observe that to murder Duncan will exact of him the murder of Malcolm also, who is designated by the King to succeed him. She is in no temper to reflect that the taking-off of Duncan will plunge the husband into ever-renewing complications: her transport carries him away to fruitless crime. But the first blow spends her terrible ardor and disenchants her of murder. She can force it upon her husband, but is not endowed with the complexly woven tissue of talents and motives that can sustain reaction. His muscle drags him through successive scenes of feigning, inures him to the contemplation of fresh murders, and keeps his foot well planted to thrust and parry the foes of his own making. She is all made for love, and for the uttermost that love can suggest: there is no masculine fibre in her heart; it is packed with the invisible, fine-strung nerves of a feminine disposition. And they have been stretched to such a tension that, since no solider flesh sheathes and protects them as they relax, we see them ravelled: they no longer sustain the firm heart-beat and regulate the blood. There are symptoms, even before the murder is committed, that her strength threatens to be inadequate. She must have recourse to wine, to borrow courage from it that may last till morning; and her mood is so intense that the light body can absorb large draughts of it:—

"That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold."

It does not, however, cancel a susceptibility, which