Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/427

 utterly frayed away, although the guests relieve her by departure. Exhaustion so preoccupies her that love itself is too faint to pity or to cheer, and her only thought is to get to bed. She has begun to feel the drift of a hopeless future, against which she has no strength, by contending, to regain the old mooring-ground where they cut loose and allowed an unseen current to clutch the slim bark. Neither curiosity nor self-interest can rouse her when Macbeth mentions that he has strange things in head which he means to carry to performance.

"You lack the season of all natures, sleep,"

is all that her tired nature has left to say.

Her fortitude just eked her out to reach the gracious action that dismissed the guests, as she wished "A kind good-night to all!" Yes, good-night to all,—to us also. She gains the shelter of her chamber: then she entirely disappears from the action of the tragedy, to sicken in seclusion with the consciousness that her fatal love has purveyed successive murders for her household. She can be of no further use to Shakspeare now: such a terrible requisition of genius has exhausted her; she is removed from our view and consigned to the offices of women. For the courage that was screwed to the sticking-place was screwed by love's wrest one turn too far. But another kind of woman—massive, cruel, prompted by unmixed ambition, guided by pure hatefulness—would have had no trouble in assuming the dogged resolution with which Macbeth