Chapter II (4)

We now come to consider Lady Macbeth’s character. At all points she was her husband’s opposite, or rather his complement. Where he was strong, she was weak; where he was weak, she was strong. He was poetical and visionary of nature; she was plain and practical. He was indirect, false, secretive; she, on the contrary, was vehement and impulsive. Between what she willed and what she did was a straight line. She was troubled by none of his superstitious fears or visions. Her imagination was feeble and inactive, her character was energetic; she saw only the object immediately before her, and she went to it with rapidity and directness of purpose. She was skillful in management and ready in contrivance, as women are apt to be; while Macbeth was wanting in both these qualities, as men generally are. For herself she seems to have had no ambition, and not personally to have coveted the position of queen. Her ambition is but the reflection of Macbeth’s, and her great crime was wrought in furtherance of his suggestions and promptings. Mistaking entirely his character at first, proud of his success for his sake, and rightly reading him so far as to see that his ambition, which was insatiable, grasped at the throne, she lent herself to the murder of Duncan, in the belief that a throne once obtained, Macbeth’s ambition would be satisfied. Her moral sense was inactive, and not sufficient to lead her to oppose his project. It was not, as we shall see, utterly wanting in her, as in Macbeth. She seems to have been warmly attached to Macbeth, and always, after the murder is committed, she endeavors to soothe and tranquillize him with gentle and affectionate words. But she could not understand his superstitious hesitations when once resolved on action. His poetry and his imaginative flights, as well as his visions, were to her incomprehensible, and she made the natural mistake of supposing him to be infirm of purpose. Her mind was one of management and detail. The determination and suggestion of the murder are his; the management and detail of it are hers. This is a master-stroke of Shakespeare’s, by which he at once distinguishes the masculine from the feminine nature. Man is quick to propose and suggest a plan in its general scope; woman is always superior in adjusting the details by which it may be carried into execution. Lady Macbeth’s nature was not wicked in itself; it was susceptible of deep feeling and remorse. But her moral sense was sluggish, while her impulses were sudden and vehement; and as such women generally are, she was irritably impatient of the postponement of any project already decided upon. She had a strong will, and gave expression to it in an exaggerated way:—

“I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.”

This is but a vehement, passionate, and exaggerated way of saying that if she had sworn to herself to do _anything_, however shocking, as deliberately and determinedly as Macbeth had to commit this murder, she would do it in spite of consequences, and not like him be “afeard to be the same in thine own act and valor as thou art in desire.” She does not mean, nor did Shakespeare mean, that so hideous an act would be possible for her either to plan or to commit; but to prove her contempt of that condition of mind when “I dare not” waits upon “I would,” she seizes on the most horrible and repulsive act that she can imagine, and declares energetically that, shocking as that is, she would not hesitate to do even that, had she so sworn to do it as Macbeth had. Yet this wild and violent figure of speech is generally taken as the key of her whole character. It is nothing of the sort; for the very line preceding it proves that she had a tenderness of nature under all her energy, and a power of love as well as of will:—

“I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me.”

Well, despite that tenderness and love, which you, Macbeth, know I have, I would have done what is so contrary to all my nature, had I so sworn as you. Throughout this scene her sole object is to urge upon Macbeth, as vehemently as she can, the folly of dallying and hesitating to carry out a project which he alone had conceived, suggested, and determined, merely for fear of consequences and lest it should do him injury in the eyes of the world. He never feels nor suggests any moral objection; he does not pretend to feel it. His sole fear is lest he may not succeed; he only doubts whether it would not be better to postpone the execution of his project until a more fitting time. His decisions are less rapid than hers. She must at once act on the first strength of her resolve. She is impetuous, and would spring upon her prey at once. He, knowing that his fell purpose will only strengthen with meditation, and doubting whether the time has come to secure his object, proposes to postpone its execution. But there is no time for this. There are but a few hours in which all must be accomplished, and he is not ready with the detail. But to this proposal of postponement she says “No.” She knows that he never will rest till it is accomplished. Neither time nor place adhered when you “broke this enterprise to me,” she says; and now, when both “have made themselves,” execute your design, and no longer let “I dare not wait upon I would.” To this he feebly opposes, “If we should fail,” failure being the only thing that troubles him. She then suggests the plan in detail by which the murder can be effected; and he cries out, in a burst of admiration and delight,—

“Bring forth men-children only,
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males.”

Still, when the time approaches, Lady Macbeth needs all her courage, and she stimulates it with wine, lest it should break down:—

“That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold.”

She preserves her courage, however, to the end, never loses her self-possession, and takes care that the plan is carried out fully in all its details. But that accomplished, she utterly breaks down. She has over-calculated her strength; she was not utterly wicked, and her remorses are terrible. From this time forward we have no such scenes between her and her husband; he performs all his other murders alone, without her connivance or knowledge.

And here the main feature of this play must be kept in mind. Lady Macbeth dies of remorse for this her crime; she cannot forget it; it haunts her in her sleep; the damned spot cannot be washed from her conscience or her hand. What a fearful cry of remorse and agony is that of hers in her dream!—

“Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia
will not sweeten this _little_ hand! Oh! oh! oh!”

There is no poetizing here, no sentimental and figurative personifications; it is the cry of a wounded heart and conscience. It is written too in prose, not in verse. It is real, and not fantastic like the rant and poetry of Macbeth. That terrible night remains with her, and haunts her and tears her like a demon, and at last she dies of it.

How is it with Macbeth? Does the memory of that night torture him? Never for a moment. He plots new murders. He has tasted blood, and cannot live without it. On, on he goes, deeper and deeper into blood, till he is slain; and never, to the last, one cry of conscience.

Yet it is thought that Lady Macbeth urged on this amiable man, so infirm of purpose, so filled with the milk of human kindness, and was the mainspring of his crimes. Suffice it to say, in answer to this view, that after Duncan is killed he keeps her in complete ignorance of all he does, and his murders are thenceforward more terrible and pitiless, and with no faint shadow of excuse or apology. This cold-hearted villain stops at nothing; even her death does not awaken a throb in his heart. Is it not preposterous to suppose that the so-called fiend of the play, she who instigates and drives an unwilling victim to crime, should die of remorse for that crime; while the amiable accomplice, far from sharing any such feeling, only plunges deeper into crime when she does not instigate him, and develops at every step an increasing brutality and savageness of nature?

No; it is not the tall, dark, commanding, and imperious figure of Mrs. Siddons, with threatening brow and inflated nostrils, that represents Lady Macbeth; she is not at all of such character or features. She is of rather a delicate organization, of medium height, her hair inclining to red, her temperament nervous and sanguine, with a florid complexion and little hands. So was Lucrezia Borgia; and so was Lady Macbeth. She was personally fair and attractive. Can any one imagine Macbeth calling a dark, towering, imperious woman like Mrs. Siddons his “dearest love,” “dear wife,” or his “dearest chuck”?

But it is commonly thought that the murder of Duncan was suggested by Lady Macbeth, and that her husband was urged into it against his will and contrary to his nature. Such a view is utterly in contradiction of the play itself. The suggestion is entirely Macbeth’s, and he has resolved upon it before he sees her. The witches are a projection of his own desires and superstitions. They meet him at the commencement of the play, prophesying, in response to his own desires, that he is thane of Cawdor, and shall be king hereafter; but they respond also to his fears, by adding that Banquo’s children shall be kings. Those are the very points upon which all his thoughts hinge—his ambition to be king, his fears lest the throne shall pass from his family. Hence his hate of Banquo and Fleance. From this time forward he thinks of nothing else. As he rides across the heath, he is self-involved, abstracted, silent, sullen, revolving in his mind how to compass his designs, which are nothing less than the murder of the king. He does not dream that the prophecies of the weird women will accomplish themselves without his assistance, for they are projections of his own thoughts. He instantly receives news that he is made thane of Cawdor, and scarcely gives a thought to this honor, scarcely expresses his satisfaction; when the news is announced he says,—

“Glamis, and thane of Cawdor:
_The greatest is behind._—Thanks for your pains.”

And then immediately his mind reverts to the promise that Banquo’s children shall be kings:—

“Do you not hope your children shall be kings,
When those that gave the thane of Cawdor to me
Promis’d no less to them?”

Then he falls again into gloomy silence, and talks to himself inwardly. What does he say and think? He resolves to murder the king:—

“This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill; cannot be good. If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success,
Commencing in a truth? I’m thane of Cawdor.
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair,
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature? Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings;
My thought, whose _murder_ yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man, that function
Is smother’d in surmise; and nothing is
But what is not.”

Yes, already he dreams of murder. He sees not his way clear; he will trust to chance; but he dreams of murder. And full of these thoughts, he rushes to his wife to fill her mind with his project, to consult her as to how it can be carried into execution; for he cannot plan in detail; and though the thought crosses him, that

“If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me,
Without my stir,”

yet this is but a hope; for in the next scene he has determined to take the matter into his own hands and trust nothing to chance. As soon as he hears that Malcolm is made Prince of Cumberland and heir to the throne, he determines absolutely to kill the king:—

“The Prince of Cumberland!—That is a step
On which I must fall down, or else o’erleap,
For in my way it lies. Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires;
The eye wink at the hand; yet let that be,
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.”

He has already written to Lady Macbeth; and his letter has but one thought and one theme,—the promise that he shall be king. Much as she fears his nature, she knows thoroughly his desires, and has faint glimpses of his real character; she knows that he _means_ to be king, and sees that he would “wrongly win;” that his ambition is great, and that his mind is filled solely with one idea. But she fears that he is “too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way;” and when she hears that Duncan is coming to the castle, and that Macbeth is hurrying to see her before the king’s arrival, she doubts his plan no longer. For a moment she is aghast. “Thou’rt mad to say it,” she says to the messenger who announces the king’s approach; for she sees that he comes to his death:—

“The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.”

He has been lured here by Macbeth to compass his destruction; and in a moment Macbeth will be with her. Then, summoning up all her courage at once, she resolves to aid him in his ambitious and murderous design. She calls upon the “spirits that tend on mortal thoughts” to unsex her, to alter her nature, to make her cruel and remorseless, to let nothing intervene to shake her purpose; for she is not quite sure of herself. She knows what “compunctious visitings of nature” are, and she strengthens herself against them. She is not naturally cruel; and she cries out to the spirits to “stop up the access and passage to remorse” now open in her nature, to change her “milk for gall,” and to cover her with “the dunnest smoke of hell,” so that her

“keen knife _see_ not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, Hold, hold.”

In this tremendous apostrophe, in which she goads herself on to crime, the woman’s nature is plainly seen. Macbeth never prays to have his nature altered, to have any passages to remorse closed up; never fears “compunctious visitings of nature,” nor desires darkness to hide his knife, so that he may not _see_ the wound he makes. But she knows she is a woman, and that she needs to be unsexed, and feels that she is doing violence to her own nature; still her will is strong, and she cries down her misgivings, and resolves to aid Macbeth in his design.

Macbeth meets her in this mood. There is no salutation or greeting on his part; he has but one idea,—Duncan is coming, and is to be murdered. His first words are,—

“My dearest love,
Duncan comes here to-night.”

Whereupon she asks, “And when goes hence?” “To-morrow,” he answers, and pauses; and adds, “as he purposes.” But in the look and in the pause Lady Macbeth has read his whole sold and intent. There is murder in that look; and she cries:—

“O, never
Shall sun that morrow see!
Your face, my thane, is as a book, where men
May read strange matters.”

There is no explanation between them. He has conveyed all his intention by a look and a gesture, as she herself distinctly says. He has ridden headlong, as fast as horse could carry him, away from the king, full of this one idea; and the king has vainly “coursed him at the heels,” having the purpose, as he himself says, “to be his purveyor.” And his thoughts have spoken in his looks so unmistakably, that they are perfectly understood. If there be any doubt by whom the murder was suggested, it is made perfectly clear by what Lady Macbeth subsequently says to him in the next scene in which they are presented. When he begins to doubt whether the murder had not better be postponed, she says:—

“What beast was’t, then,
That made you break this enterprise to me?”

It was not of my plotting, but of your own; “Nor time, nor place, did then adhere, and yet you would make both;” you desired it and still desire it, but are afraid of consequences. These words of hers would indeed seem to indicate that he had urged the crime upon her against her will at a previous interview not reported in the play, or perhaps by a letter; for she says distinctly, that when he broke the enterprise to her,—

“Nor _time_, nor _place_,
Did then adhere, and yet _you would make both_:
They have made themselves.”

It would plainly seem, therefore, that Macbeth had broken this enterprise to her, and urged it on her, even before the king had determined to come to his castle, and that he intended to make time and place. This would account completely for her opening speech, and for the fact that he does not make any explanation to her of his intentions other than by his look and intonation when they first meet; for certainly there is nothing in the play about the time and place of the murder except as herein indicated. It would also explain the surprise of Lady Macbeth when she hears that her husband is coming, and the king after him: “Thou’rt mad to say it,” she says; and “the raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements.” The time and place had made themselves, then; and it is on hearing this that she suddenly changes from calm to vehement emotion, and makes that wonderful apostrophe to the spirits to unsex her. She sees that all has been resolved, and that she has need of her utmost resolution.

There is no warrant of any kind that, in the simple words, “And when goes hence,” she meant more than she said. It was the most natural question that she could possibly ask. Granting that she intended equally with him to commit the murder, what is more natural than that she should wish to know how long the king was to stay, so as to know how soon it was necessary to carry out the plan of murder, and what time there was in which to make all the arrangements? Not only Macbeth pauses after saying “To-morrow” (so, at least, is the punctuation in all editions), before adding “as he purposes,” but Lady Macbeth, in her answer, says that she sees in his face that he intends that “never shall sun that morrow see.” Yet, in the recitation of these parts on the stage, and as generally read, the meaning is given to Lady Macbeth’s simple words; and Macbeth is made perfectly innocently to answer without showing in his look any “strange matter.” But the king is coming close on his heels; there is no time to arrange details; and Macbeth goes away to receive him, saying, “We will speak further.”

The characters, as exhibited in the next scenes, have been already sufficiently discussed. He shows his superstitions, his visions, his poetry, and his hesitations; she, with the stern determination of a woman who has screwed her courage to the sticking-place, is agitated by no visions, but, feeling the necessity of immediate action, she occupies herself in the arrangements of details, and thus dulls her conscience.

After all the excitements which have agitated Macbeth—after his soliloquy, in which he says there is no spur to prick the sides of his intent, but only vaulting ambition; but if he were sure of success, he would jump the life to come—there comes a moment when he either has or pretends to have a hesitation about proceeding further in “this business.” He does not hesitate for conscience’ sake, but because, being ambitious, he now would like to wear the golden opinions he has won, “in their newest gloss,” and not cast them aside so soon, before he has had the satisfaction of being wondered at and admired a little longer. He had gained praise and high position, and his vanity was gratified. He naturally would pause before committing a hideous murder. But he never pretends that this feeling comes from any moral sense. His mind has been too long strained with one thought; and, as in all men of excitable brain, there comes a moment of reaction. He cannot see his way clear. He fears the effect of his crime. He does not see how it can be done so that he may avoid suspicion, and attain the object beyond the murder and for which he commits it, without running too great risks, and thus exposing himself to the vengeance of the king’s friends. He fears that his “bloody instructions” may “return to plague the inventor”—not hereafter, but “_here_.” But what most troubles him is, that he cannot see the practical way, cannot arrange the details so as to secure a chance of avoiding suspicion. Here his wife comes to his aid. She has thought out a plan and arranged the details. She sternly opposes his proposal to abandon his design, for she knows that his hesitation is only for a moment, and that nothing less than to be king can ever satisfy him. Better, then, do the deed at once. His only opposition after this is, “If we should fail?” But as soon as he sees the feasibility of her plan, all his scruples are gone; he is more than convinced, he is delighted, and enters upon it with a joy which he does not pretend to conceal.

During all these scenes, up to the murder of Duncan, Lady Macbeth is laboring under an excitement of mind which sustains her in carrying out the design of her husband. The time is purposely made very short—only a few hours between the arrival of Duncan and his death—so that she may not break down. All is hurry and movement, and arrangement of detail. There is no time for reaction. The very necessity for immediate action serves as an irritant to the nerves, and strains all her thoughts and feelings to an unnatural pitch. Still, when the murder is on the point of being done, she keeps up her courage by drink; for the strain is almost too great. In this excited state her inflamed will has got completely the command of her; and to have it all over, and not caring about the dreadful design longer, she says that had Duncan “not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it.” But though she can talk of dashing out the brains of her babe while it was smiling in her face, she was not, even in this excitement, able to strike Duncan, because she thought he looked like her father. Her woman’s hand would have failed her had she attempted it. But all her powers are bound up in this one design. She has come to a violent determination, and this she will carry out, come what may. She thrusts aside all compunction of conscience, and makes such a noise by action in her brain, that its still small voice cannot be heard.

Macbeth, on the contrary, is of a colder and more brutal nature. His determination is sullen, and it lies like an immovable rock on which the flames of his imagination burn like momentary fires of straw, and over which his superstitious visions pass like clouds or fogs, and then clear away, leaving the rock unchanged. Just before he commits the murder, Banquo comes in and tells him that the king

“hath been in unusual pleasure, and
Sent forth great largess to your offices.
This diamond he greets your wife withal,
By the name of most kind hostess; and shut up
In measureless content.”

But this does not touch Macbeth, nor induce a moment’s hesitation. Banquo then speaks of the three weird sisters, and says, “To you they have show’d some truth;” and Macbeth answers falsely:—

“I think not of them;
Yet, when we can entreat an hour to serve,
We’d spend it in some words upon that business,
If you would grant the time.”

Thus, cold and collected, he bids him “Good repose,” sends off the servant, and waits for the bell to ring, which is the sign that all is ready for him to murder Duncan. In this interval we have his three characteristic features brought out one after the other: the cloudy vision of the air-drawn dagger; then the straw-fire of his poetry about Hecate and withered murder’s sentinel, the wolf, and Tarquin’s ravishing strides; and, as these clear off, the stern, sullen resolution underneath—“Whiles I threat he lives;” “I go, and it is done.”

When the murder is done, the two are equally distinct in character,—she energetic and practical, he visionary and superstitious; and so they part.

Thus far, be it observed, Lady Macbeth has supposed her husband to be merely “infirm of purpose;” but the next scene is to open her eyes to a glimpse of his real character.

Macbeth has become perfectly calm and cold again in a few minutes, and makes his appearance immediately after the knocking. He is completely master of himself, offers to conduct Macduff to the king, and when Macduff says he knows it will be a “joyful trouble” to him, answers like a proverb, calmly, “The labor we delight in physics pain.” The king is then found dead, and the noise brings Lady Macbeth from her room. What a difference is now visible in the way in which she and he speak and act! When Macduff says, “Our royal master’s murdered!” she cries out, “Woe! alas! what, in our house?” and says not a word more. Macbeth, however, who is only afraid of shadows, but who, with the daylight, has no fear of looking at dead bodies, or adding one or two more with his sword, goes to the room of Duncan, and then reappears, without the faintest shadow of feeling, and makes a little hypocritical poem on the event:—

“Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There’s nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.”

“What is amiss?” says Donalbain. And Macbeth cries, “You are, and do not know’t. The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood is stopp’d; the very source of it is stopp’d.”

This is Macbeth’s rant and fustian. He has no feeling, and, as usual, he makes the pretense of poetry serve him. The head, the spring, the fountain, the source is stopped, is stopped.

And this stuff he recites coolly, although he has but a moment before wantonly killed the two grooms; nay, he does not mention it until afterwards, on their being spoken of by Lenox, when this hypocritical villain cries:—

“O, yet I do repent me of my fury,
That I did kill them.

_Macd._ Wherefore did you so?

_Macb._ Who can be wise, amaz’d, temperate and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:
The expedition of my violent love
Outrun the pauser, reason.—Here lay Duncan,
His _silver_ skin lac’d with his _golden_ blood;
And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature,
For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,
Steep’d in the colors of their trade, their daggers
Unmannerly breech’d with gore: who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make’s love known?”

During this amazing speech, in which he poetizes so elaborately, and with such curious artifice coldly paints the picture of the man and friend he had just murdered, Lady Macbeth has been looking and listening in silence. Suddenly, for the first time, she sees what her husband really is; she sees that he has neither heart nor conscience; for no man possessing either could have acted or talked as he has since the murder of Duncan. So far from having any feeling of shame or remorse, he, without provocation, wantonly, and with no sufficient object, has added two other murders to it; and, with a cold-blooded artificial hypocrisy, he paints in his stilted way the scene of Duncan’s death, and has command enough of himself to seek out elaborate and high-flown phrases. But Lady Macbeth, whose courage, stimulated by excitement, has carried her through the murder, now suddenly breaks down. This new revelation of her husband’s character, and the ghastly picture which he summons up before her of the scene of the murder, are too much for her. She swoons, loses all consciousness, and is carried out. In her violent excitement, while there was something practical to busy her mind and her body with, she could carry back the daggers and smear the grooms with blood; but she could not bear the vivid remembrance of it when there was nothing to do, and when the excitement was over: as women will go through extreme dangers, stand at the surgeon’s table during terrible operations, be great and strong in a great crisis, and then suddenly faint and fall when the work is over, unable to bear the remembrance of what they have gone through.

This swooning of Lady Macbeth is the crisis of her nature. From this time forward she is no more what she has appeared; we hear no more urging of Macbeth to strengthen his throne by other crimes; no more taunts by her that he is infirm of purpose; no more allusions to his amiable weaknesses of character. She has begun to know him and to fear him. She only endeavors to tranquilize him and content him with what he has got. But still she does not know him; for his nature, before hidden, like secret writing, comes out little by little before the fire of his heated ambition and superstitious fears.

At this swooning-point the two characters of Lady Macbeth and her husband cross each other. She has thus far only made the running for Macbeth, and he now takes up the race and passes her; she not only does not follow, but withdraws. Henceforth he rushes to his goal alone; alone he arranges the death of Banquo and Fleance.

When next they meet she is no longer the same person we have known; she feels the gnawing tooth of remorse; she is calmed and cowed by what she has done:—

“Nought’s had, all’s spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
’Tis safer to be that which we destroy,
Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy.”

And as Macbeth enters she endeavors to tranquilize his mind. She has his confidence no longer; he avoids her, and keeps alone after the murder of the king. She, not yet aware of the abysses of his nature, and little imagining that he has been plotting the murder of Banquo, supposes that the secret of his perturbations, of the solitude he now seeks, and of his avoidance of her, is the remorse that he begins to feel, and says as he enters:—

“How now, my lord! why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making,
Using those thoughts which should indeed have died
With them they think on? Things without all remedy
Should be without regard: what’s done is done.”

His answer shows it is no remorse which is haunting him; his sorry fancies are new plots of murder:

“We have scotch’d the snake, not kill’d it;”

and we are still “in danger of her former tooth.”

“But let
The frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,
Ere we will eat our meal in _fear_, and sleep
In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly: 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. Duncan is in his grave;
After life’s fitful fever, he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further!”

Here is one of those cases where he uses his poetry as a cloak to his real thoughts. Yet despite his hypocrisy, which takes in his wife, his real meaning is clear. He would rather die than to go on in this fear: rather be like Duncan, whom they have at all events “sent to peace,” and whom nothing can “touch further,” than on “the torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy.” What is this “fear”? what is this “torture of the mind”? Is it, as Lady Macbeth supposes, from remorse? Oh, no! he tells us himself what it is; it is solely because Banquo and Fleance are alive:—

“O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!
Thou know’st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.”

This it is that tortures him, and this only.

“But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne,”

says she; meaning, as she has throughout this scene, solely to console him and draw his thoughts away. They may die; a thousand accidents may happen to them; you may outlive them; don’t torture yourself with vain fears. “_There’s_ comfort yet,” he cries, “they are assailable;” and now, after his old fashion, he breaks into poetry:

“Then be thou _jocund_: ere the bat hath flown
His cloister’d flight; ere, to black Hecate’s summons,
The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums,
Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note.”

“What’s to be done?” she cries; for having completely misunderstood him through all the previous part of this interview, she completely fails to see what he now means. But he has no longer confidence in her; and so, with caressing words, and probably with some caressing act, he answers her:

“Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou applaud the deed.”

How could she suspect his real meaning? This murdering hypocrite had just told her that Banquo was coming to the feast that night, and bade her be jovial, and said to her,—

“Let your remembrance apply to Banquo;
Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue.”

And this he proposes to her after having just left the murderers whom he has hired to waylay and kill Banquo, and entertaining no real doubt in his mind that Banquo will never reach the supper—certainly never reach it unless his plot miscarries. Well might she “marvel at his words.” What follows is full of poetry and wickedness; but it is plain that he was a mystery to her now, a riddle which she could not read.

The banquet-scene now comes, and Macbeth, believing that he has secured the death of Banquo and Fleance, is happy, until the murderers come in and tell him that Fleance has escaped. This upsets him:—

“Then comes _my fit_ again: I had else been perfect,
Whole as the marble, founded as the rock,
As broad and general as the casing air:
Now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.”

So he poetizes his condition, for superstitious fears always inflame his imagination; but he cannot regain his composure; his “fit” is on him, as it “hath been from his youth.” He conjures up the phantom of Banquo to threaten him and his throne, and this ghost shakes him with superstitious terror. Lady Macbeth, to whom it is invisible, rouses herself at this; and not only not comprehending these starts and flaws of fear, but having a contempt for him, endeavors to recall him to himself by sharp words; but it is useless, his fit will not leave him, and the company is dismissed in confusion. When the guests have gone, Lady Macbeth’s spirit and courage, which were momentary, have fled. She does not taunt him, but soothes him. He, as soon as he recovers himself, begins with Macduff, whom he also means to murder:—

“Strange things I have in head, that will to hand,
Which must be acted, ere they may be scann’d.”

To this she only says, not imagining his meaning,

“You lack the season of all natures, sleep.”

Henceforward Lady Macbeth disappears; we hear nothing of her save in the terrible sleep-walking scene; she is dying of remorse. But Macbeth goes to the weird sisters, to learn whether “Banquo’s issue shall ever reign in this kingdom.” They answer, “Seek to know no more:” and he cries out, “I _will_ be satisfied; deny me this, and an eternal curse fall on you.” And when they show him the issue of Banquo, kings, he is enraged beyond control, and curses them. Henceforth for him no hesitations, no delays. He speaks directly enough now.

“From this moment
The firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand. And even now,
To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:
The castle of Macduff I will surprise;
Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o’ th’ sword
His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls
That trace him in his line. No boasting like a fool;
This deed I’ll do before this purpose cool:
But no more _sights_!”

And no more _sights_ he has; but he is still haunted by fears. And when “the English power is near, led on by Malcolm, his uncle Siward, and the good Macduff,” burning for revenge, Macbeth’s spirit falters. He rushes into violent rages and then subsides into vague fears, and then endeavors to strengthen his heart by recalling the mysterious promises of the weird sisters that he shall not fall by the hand of any man of woman born, or before Birnam wood come to Dunsinane; but, do all he can, “he cannot buckle his distempered cause within the belt of rule,” though he declares,—

“The mind I sway by and the heart I bear
Shall never sag with doubt, nor shake with fear.”

Still he does fear; and in one of his dispirited moods, after blazing out at the messenger who tells him of the approach of Birnam wood,—

“The devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac’d loon!
Where got’st thou that goose look?”

he says, finding that there are ten thousand men coming to attack him, and his followers are not stanch,—

“This push
Will chair me ever, or disseat me now.
I have liv’d long enough: my way of life
Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf:
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honor, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny.”

But in a moment he is himself again, and cries:—

“I’ll fight till from my bones the flesh be hack’d.
Give me my armor.”

In this mood the illness and death of the queen is nothing to him; he fights bravely to the end; though, superstitious to the last, his “better part of man” is cowed by the knowledge that Macduff “was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped,” and so not of woman born.

And so, by the sword of Macduff, perishes the worst villain, save Iago, that Shakespeare ever drew.

We have called the witches the projections of Macbeth’s evil thoughts, and suggested that they were only objective representations of his inward being. To this it may be objected that they were seen also by Banquo. But this may well be; for Banquo also seems to have had evil intentions, which are vaguely hinted at in the play. He constantly harps on the idea that his children are to be kings. Approaching the castle of Inverness at night, before the murder of the king, he says,—

“Hold, take my sword....
A heavy summons lies like lead upon me,
And yet I would not sleep: merciful powers!
Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature
Gives way to in repose!—Give me my sword.”

Meeting then Macbeth, he gives him the diamond sent by the king to Lady Macbeth; and after speaking of Duncan’s “measureless content,” he says,—

“I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:
To you they have show’d some truth.”

At which Macbeth proposes an interview, to

“Spend it in some words upon _that_ business.”

To which he readily consents.

The “cursed thoughts,” then, are connected with his dreams about the weird sisters.

At his next appearance the same thoughts agitate him in Macbeth’s palace at Fores. His first words are—in soliloquy—

“Thou hast it now, king, Cawdor, Glamis, all,
As the weird women promis’d; and, I fear,
Thou play’dst most foully for’t: yet it was said
It should not stand in thy posterity,
But that myself should be the root and father
Of many kings. If there come truth from them
(As upon thee, Macbeth, their speeches shine),
Why, by the verities on thee made good,
May they not be my oracles as well,
And set me up in hope? But, hush! no more.”

When it is recollected that, after the scene on the heath with the soldiers, these are nearly all the words we have from Banquo, it seems to be pretty clearly indicated that his thoughts at least were not perfectly honest and what they should have been.

The weird sisters are but outward personifications of the evil thoughts conceived and fermenting in the brains of Banquo and Macbeth; both high in station, both generals in the king’s army, both friends, and both nourishing evil wishes. They are visible only to these two friends; and though they are represented as having an outer existence independent of them, they are, metaphysically speaking, but embodiments of the hidden thoughts and desires of Banquo and Macbeth; as such they are a new and terrible creation, differing from the vulgar flesh-and-blood witches of Middleton. They look not like the inhabitants of the earth; they vanish into thin air; wild, vague, mysterious, they come and go, like devilish thoughts that tempt us, and take shape before us, as if they had come from the other world. The devils that haunt us and tempt us come out of ourselves, like the weird sisters of Macbeth.

INDEX.

Actors, in England, 234–239.

Adam, figure of, by Michel Angelo, 26.

Adriani, Giovanni Battista, letter of, to Vasari, 140.

Æschines, statement by, regarding Miltiades, 129, _note_.

Æschylus and Euripides, 30;
quotation from, 206.

Agasias the Ephesian, 109.

Agathenor, 94.

Ageledas, teacher of Polyclitus, 88.

Agoracrites, 66, 67, 70;
and Alcamenes, 71;
and Phidias, 72;
statue of Nemesis, at Rhamnus, by, 70, 91.

Ajax, the antique, 6.

Alberti, Leon Battista, 3, 8.

Alcamenes, 55;
the Venus of the Gardens, by, 68, 90;
and Agoracritos, 71;
and Phidias, 72, 96;
high distinction of, as an artist, 90;
works in the Temple of Zeus, 93.

Alcimus Avitus, quotation from his _De Origine Mundi_, 127.

Alexander, taming Bucephalus, statue of, at Rome, 77, 78;
praises Apelles and Lysippus, 131.

Alfieri, 8.

Ammonius, 108.

Anacreon, quotations from, 144.

“Ancora imparo,” a motto used by Michel Angelo in old age, 13.

Androsthenes, 88, 92.

Angelo, Michel, 4–7;
everything in Florence recalls, 8;
his house, 8, 9;
birth, 9;
death, 10;
early studies, 10;
early efforts as a sculptor, 10;
his Cupid and Bacchus, 10;
his Pietà, 11, 20;
colossal figure of David, 11, 20;
Sistine Chapel, 11;
the Moses, 11, 20;
Medici Chapel, 11;
Pauline Chapel, 11;
the Last Judgment, 11;
sculptor, painter, architect, engineer, and poet, 11, 43;
erection of St. Peter’s, 11;
his circumstances and characteristics, 12;
always learning, 13;
his later poetry, 13;
his power as a sculptor, 13, 20, 39;
his great works in the Medicean Chapel, 13–21;
meaning of his statues of Day, Night, Aurora, and Crepuscule, 16–18;
quatrain by, 17;
influence of Savonarola and Dante on, 17;
his works bad models for imitation 20;
figure of Christ by, in the Church of the Minerva, 20;
his struggles against ill-health and overwork, 20, 21;
his frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, 21–29;
Bramante’s jealousy of, 21, 22, 24;
Pope Julius II. strikes him with a cane, 25;
his extraordinary rapidity in working, 25, 26;
greater as a painter than as a sculptor, 26;
of heroic spirit, 29;
fragments of letters by, 30, 36;
Rafaelle and, 30–33, 35;
anecdote of, 32;
personal characteristics of, 33, 34;
and Vittoria Colonna, 34;
extract from a sonnet by, 34;
Dante the favorite poet of, 35;
Savonarola the friend of, 35;
originality of, 35;
devotion to his family, 36;
generosity of, 36, 37;
violent temper of, 33, 37;
patience of, 37;
difficulties under which he labored, 37, 38;
described by Vigenero, 38;
the impatience of his genius, 39;
appointed architect of St. Peter’s when sixty years old, 39;
Palazzo Farnese, the Church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli, and the
Laurentian Library, designed by, 41;
not responsible for St. Peter’s as it now stands, 42;
poetry of, 42, 43;
trained in all the arts, 43;
the greatest monuments of his artistic power, 44;
enduring kingdom of, 48;
popular errors about, 49, 50, 69;
compared with Phidias, 79, 80.

Antenor, the first maker of iconic statues, 129.

Antoninus Pius, 230.

Apelles, and Alexander, 131;
praised by Nicephorus Chumnus, 132;
price paid for one of his portraits of Alexander, 132;
portraits of Campaspe and Phryne by, 132;
story about, by Pliny, 132.

Aphrodite Urania, chryselephantine statue of, by Phidias, 53, 58.

Apollo, the Temple of, at Phigaleia, 53.

Apollodorus, 182.

Apollonius, 109.

Appian hymn, the, 206.

Arcesilaus, sketches by, 135;
price received by, for a drinking-cup, 170;
for a statue of Fabatus, 170, 176.

Aretino, 3, 8.

Arezzo, discoveries at, 178.

Arezzo, Guido di, 4.

Argos, the Temple of Juno at, 53.

Ariosto, 3;
Dante and, 30;
lively spirit of, 42.

Aristotle, distinction drawn by, between Phidias and Polyclitus,
99–102.

Arrian, cited, 66, 70.

Art, deathblow of pagan, 1;
Christianity and, 1;
and religion, 2, 4, 208;
the golden age of Italian, 4;
spirit of Greek and Roman, 19;
ancient works of, difficulty of determining authorship of, 69;
the toreutic, 100;
the productions of, always show the true spirit of religion among
any people, 208;
and nature, 232, 233.

Artemisia and Mausolus, 132.

Arts, all, aid each other, 43.

Athena Areia, statue of, by Phidias, 53, 58;
its height, 62;
described, 65.

Athena Lemnia, statue of, by Phidias, 62;
beauty of, 65.

Athena of the Parthenon, chryselephantine statue, by Phidias, 50–68,
82, 83, 97, 98, 111, 209, 210.

Athena Promachos, the, cast from spoils taken at Marathon, 59;
its height, 62, 64.

Athenagoras, cited, 66, 70.

Aulus Gellius, definition of “facies” by, 121.

Aurelius, Marcus, the Meditations of, 190–193, 228;
how the Meditations were written, 191;
no book of ancient literature higher and purer, 192;
his dust, 192;
a conversation with, 193–230;
Jesus of Nazareth reverenced by, 199;
supposed ideas of God held by, 199–202;
cannot understand modern pronunciation of Latin, 217;
purely a Stoic, 220;
did not persecute Christians, 220;
letters of, on the proper treatment of one’s enemies, 228.

Aurora, figure of, by Michel Angelo, 14–21.

Ausonius, cited, 68.

Baldi Chapel, the, 7.

Bargello, the, 6.

Bartolommeo, Fra, 31.

Baruch, cited, 150.

Batrachus, 107.

Beethoven and Mozart, 30.

Bembo, 4.

Berlinghi, family of the, 10.

Bibbiena, 3.

Biblical history, in Michel Angelo’s frescoes, 28, 29.

Boccaccio, 3.

Boiardo, 3.

Borgia, Lucrezia, 264.

Bostick and Riley, translation of Pliny by, 135.

Bramante, instigates Pope Julius II. to summon Michel Angelo
to Rome, 21;
jealous of Michel Angelo’s fame, 22;
tries to induce the Pope to discharge Michel Angelo, 24.

Brass-casting, decline of the art of, 170.

Brick, printed on by the ancient Romans, 167.

British Museum, so-called plaster casts in, 164, 165.

Bronze statues, the method of the ancients in casting, 142.

Browning, Robert, 233.

Browning and Tennyson, 30.

Brunelleschi, 5, 6, 8, 40;
designs Church of San Lorenzo, 13.

Brunn, Dr., cited, 59, 60;
on Pliny’s Natural History, 120, 137–139.

Bryaxis, 68.

Buggiardini, 21.

Buonomini, Michel Angelo’s father one of the twelve, 10.

Byzantine tradition, 4.

Callicrates, and the Parthenon, 51, 52.

Callimachus, nicknamed, 130;
drill supposed to have been invented by, 171.

Cambronne, 74.

Campaspe, portrait of, by Apelles, 132.

Canossa, the Counts of, 10.

Canova, opinion of, as to the use of proportional compasses by ancient
sculptors, 171.

Caprese, birthplace of Michel Angelo, 9.

Carmine, Church of the, 7.

Carpion and the Parthenon, 51.

Carrara, Michel Angelo at, 37.

Casting, from life or from the round, difficulties of, 159, 160;
distinction between, and modeling, 155, 161.

Casting in plaster, alleged practice of, among the Greeks and
Romans, 115–189;
introduced by Verrocchio, 188.

Casts, plaster, not found in ancient houses or tombs, 157,
158, 176, 177.

Cato, book published by, 167.

Catulus, 67.

Cellini, the Renaissance Perseus of, 6;
accomplished in many arts, 43.

Ceres, the Temple of, at Eleusis, 52, 53.

Chalcosthenes, executed works in baked earth, 148.

Changes, only gradual, do real good, 197.

Christ, and Communism, 222, 223;
example of, not always followed by Christians, 226.

Christianity and Art, 1.

Christians, not persecuted by Marcus Aurelius, but punished as
Communists, 220–222;
attitude of, toward the government, 221, 227;
theory and practice of, 225, 226.

Cicero, Demosthenes and, 30;
on the meaning of _vultus_, 121;
quoted, 125, 134, 141, 149, 152.

Cimabue, 4.

Clay, not a material for casting, 134;
why used by the ancients instead of gypsum, 158, 159.

Clemens Alexandrinus, cited, 68.

Colonna, Vittoria, and Michel Angelo, 34.

Columbus, 4.

Communists, the early followers of Christ were, 222.

Compasses, proportional, used by ancient sculptors, 171, 172.

Condivi, doubtful assertion of, 25.

Cooke, a safe guide for the tragic actor, 236.

Copies, exact, not made by ancient sculptors, 174–176.

Corœbus, begins the Temple of Initiation at Eleusis, 52.

Creed, every religious, should be living, 196.

Crepuscule, figure of, by Michel Angelo, 14–21.

Ctesilaus, 67, 97;
compared with Phidias, 96.

Cydon, competition of, with Phidias, 97, 98.

Cymon, 67.

Cyrenaicn, the, fragments of figures from, 164, 165.

Dædalus, statue to Hercules by, 182, 186.

Dallaway, cited, 109.

Damophilus, 117, 146.

Daniel, Michel Angelo’s figure of, 27.

Dante, 3, 5, 6, 8;
his influence on Michel Angelo, 17;
and Ariosto, 30;
the favorite poet of Michel Angelo, 35.

David, Michel Angelo’s statue of, 8, 11.

Day, Michel Angelo’s colossal figure of, 14–21.

Deity, figure of the, by Michel Angelo, 27.

Delacroix and Ary Scheffer, 30.

Delphi, group of statues at, 59, 60, 62, 64, 121.

Demetrius, on the work of Phidias, 81;
introduces the realistic school of portraiture, 130.

Demosthenes and Cicero, 30.

Devils, the, that haunt and tempt us, come out of ourselves, 286.

D’Hancarville, cited, 109.

Dibutades of Sicyon, 137–139.

Diocletian, ruins of the Baths of, 41.

Diodotos, 70.

Dion Chrysostomos, on the style of Phidias, 81.

Dionysius of Colophon, 132.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, on the art of Phidias, 81, 102;
on the works of Polyclitus, 89.

Dives and Lazarus, 223.

Dolls, ancient, 166.

Drama, reaction in the, against conventionalism, 233.

Drill, the, supposed to have been invented by Callimachus, 171.

Dryads, 1.

Dust of the dead, 192.

Duty, the, of considering adverse doctrines, 224, 225.

Ectypa of baked clay, 156.

Eleusinian mysteries, meaning of the, 217, 218.

Eleusis, the Temple of Initiation at, 52;
the Temple of Ceres at, 52.

Elgin marbles, the, 49–114.

Elis, work of Phidias at, 53, 54.

Elpinice, portrait of, by Polygnotua, 132.

Epicurus, the face of, carried about by the Romans, 150.

Equanimity, the last watchword given by Antoninus Pius, 230.

Erechtheum, the, 94.

Esaias, Michel Angelo’s figure of, 27.

Euphranor, 73.

Euripides, Æschylus and, 30;
on the immensity of God, 206.

Ezekiel, Michel Angelo’s figure of, 27.

Fables of the ancients, the mythical garb of great truths, 211, 212;
true to the imagination, not to the reason, 212.

Facts, but dead husks, 212.

Faith, death of, 196;
easily degenerates into superstition, 204;
of the ancients compared with ours, 218–220.

Fame, what is, 228.

Fechter, as Hamlet, 236.

Fedi, 6.

Ficino, Marsilio, 3.

Firmicus, story by, about Zagreus, 101.

Florence, the city of the Renaissance, 5;
ungrateful, 7;
Dante and, 8.

Fol, Mr., the collection of, in Rome, 156, 168.

Forcellinus, cited, 120, 122, 123.

Forms, of little consequence, compared to essences, 195.

Formulas check growth in the spirit, 195;
but are useful, as trunks in which we pack our goods, 195.

Fornarina, the, 31, 34.

Francis I. and Leonardo da Vinci, 74.

Fresco-painting, source of the term, 25.

Fronto, _De differentiis Vocabulorum_ of, 122, _note_.

Galatea, the, of Raffaelle, 32.

Galileo, 4, 8.

Garrick, 236–238.

Germans, as students of Shakespeare, 237.

Ghiberti, 6, 8, 43.

Ghirlandajo, Michel Angelo’s early master, 10, 22.

Giorgione, 4.

Giotto, 4;
the campanile of, 6;
frescoes of, 7;
accomplished in many arts, 43.

Glycon, 109.