Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/424

 the woman's model, that it left out the element which carries Macbeth through this scene. To hear her husband describe his simulated rage in butchering the grooms, and draw that painting of Duncan in his blood,—

"And his gash'd stabs look'd like a breach in nature For ruin's wasteful entrance,"—

it is too much, and 'tis plain she is not needed. "Help me hence, ho!" her sex cries. It is the revulsion of nature in a feminine soul. Love has exhaled all its hardihood into the deed which is just now discovered. She, too, has only now really discovered it. The nerves part at the overstrain of seeing what the deed is like, and drop her helpless into a swoon.

She recovers, but her mind wakes to the necessity of playing a part, to the harassing assumption of royal demeanor to hide a slavish dread, to the cruel demands of courtesy, to the effort to sustain her husband's state, to the counterfeit composure of the banquet:—

"Better be with the dead, Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace, Than on the torture of the mind to lie In restless ecstasy."

She does not say this; but Macbeth avows it for her, since they are partners

"In the affliction of these terrible dreams That shake us nightly."

Banquo would have been safe enough from her; for the scheming love has been too rudely handled. But he is not safe from Macbeth, who does not reflect that,