Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/420

 weather of the "sore night" has hunted the moon and stars out of the heaven; the rain rushes at the panes to get vindictive entrance; the wind utters personal threats at these violators of "the Lord's anointed temple;"—

"The obscure bird Clamor'd the livelong night."

How finely seated in its place is that word "obscure"! Substitute for it the various reading, "obscene," and you destroy the sense which Shakspeare would convey of a creature heard but seldom seen at any time, sitting so moveless in the dark: not a leaf prates of its whereabout; the mysterious hooting seems to be one of the unexplained things of Nature.

Lady Macbeth's breath itself is intent to listen,—"Hark!" Then, as her novel tremor passes off, she interprets it:—

"It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, Which gives the stern'st good-night."

Far away, through innocent hamlets, human watchmen go their rounds, and let their "All's well!" mix with the dreams of inviolate chambers. Here is a different bellman to invite an eternal hour to murder sleep. She listens again, and her nerves are tightened by the hand of silence. "He is about it." How awfully does Macbeth's voice come struggling back into this stillness, where the wife begins to feel something personal in the air! So does he. "Who's there? What, ho!" And she expects to see something that was not invited:—