Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/422

 and that still cried, "Macbeth shall sleep no more," Lady Macbeth, intuitively feeling that she could dare no more, and could not risk another thought with her imagination, said,—

"These deeds must not be thought After these ways: so, it will make us mad."

The deed is done, but to her surprise it will not do for her too curiously to consider it. But no, the deed is not yet neatly finished. Macbeth, in his hurry to elude the dead man, has brought the bloody daggers with him. She must carry them back for him: not for his newly bought kingdom would he return along that entry and through that ghastly door. The exigency recalls the fair woman to her native temper. To put the needed finish to her night's business, she resumes her wonted contempt for darkness and the sight of the dead:—

"The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures."

While she is absent, there comes that knocking at the gate which appals Macbeth; and we quake with him in that moment which lets into the tragedy a human world again.

This world, unconscious of the hell which husband and wife have inaugurated within the castle, has been travelling all night to reach it. What morning redness salutes Lenox's and Macduff's eyes!

"Ring the alarum-bell!                       Malcolm! awake! Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit, And look on death itself! Up, up, and see