If he do bleed,

I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal,

For it must seem their guilt,

her nature rallies, and the strength derived from the inner life fills up a gap in action where the mere strength of action had failed.

CHAP. VII.

ii.

iii, from 68.

The Concealment of the murder forms a stage of the The first Shock of action which falls into two different parts: the single effort Concealwhich faces the first shock of discovery, and the very different ment. strain required to meet the slowly gathering evidence of guilt. In the Scene of the Discovery Macbeth is perfectly at home: energetic action is needed, and he is dealing with men. His acted innocence appears to me better than his wife's; Lady Macbeth goes near to suggesting a personal interest in the crime by her over-anxiety to disclaim it.

Yet in this scene, as everywhere else, the weak points in
Macbeth's character betray him: for one moment he is left
to himself, and that moment's suspense ruins the whole
episode. In the most natural manner in the world Macbeth
had, on hearing the announcement, rushed with Lennox to the
scene of the murder. Lennox quitted the chamber of blood
first, and for an instant Macbeth was alone, facing the grooms
still heavy with their drugged sleep, and knowing that in
another moment they would be aroused and telling their
tale: the sense of crisis proves too much for him, and under
an ungovernable impulse he stabs them. He thus wrecks
the whole scheme. How perfectly Lady Macbeth's plan
would have served if it had been left to itself is shown by
Lennox's account of what he had seen, and how the grooms
stared, and were distracted; no man's life
Was to be trusted with them.

CHAP. VII. Nothing, it is true, can be finer than the way in which Macbeth seeks to cover his mistake and announces what he has done. But in spite of his brilliant outburst,

Who can be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment?

and his vivid word-picture of his supposed sensations, his efforts are in vain, and at the end of his speech we feel that there has arisen in the company of nobles the indescribable effect known as 'a sensation,' and we listen for some one to speak some word that shall be irrevocable. The crisis is ii. iii. 124. acute, but Lady Macbeth comes to the rescue and faints! It matters little whether we suppose the fainting assumed, or that she yields to the agitation she has been fighting against so long. The important point is that she chooses this exact moment for giving way: she holds out to the end of her husband's speech, then falls with a cry for help; there is at once a diversion, and she is carried out. But the crisis ii. iii. 132. has passed, and a moment's consideration has suggested to the nobles the wisdom of adjourning for a fitter occasion the enquiry into the murder they all suspect: before that occasion ii. iv. 24- arrives the flight of the king's sons has diverted suspicion into an entirely new channel. Lady Macbeth's fainting saved her husband.

32.

The long

Strain of

To convey dramatically the continuous strain of keeping Conceal- up appearances in face of steadily accumulating suspicion is ment. iii. more difficult than to depict a single crisis. Shakespeare manages it in the present case chiefly by presenting Macbeth to us on the eve of an important council, at which the whole truth is likely to come out.

i. ii.

iii. i. 30.

We hear, our bloody cousins are bestowed
In England and in Ireland, not confessing

Their cruel parricide, filling their hearers

With strange invention: but of that to-morrow.

It is enough to note here that Macbeth takes the step-the fatal step, as was pointed out in the last study-of contriving

Banquo's murder simply because he cannot face the suspense CHAP. VII.
of waiting for the morrow, and hearing the defence of the
innocent princes made in presence of Banquo, who knows
the inducement he had to such a deed. That he feels the
danger of the crime, which nevertheless he cannot hold him-
self back from committing, is clear from the fact that he will
not submit it to the calmer judgment of his wife. The con- iii. ii. 45.
trast of the two characters appears here as everywhere. Lady
Macbeth can wait for an opportunity of freeing themselves
from Banquo:

Macb. Thou know'st that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives.
Lady M. But in them nature's copy's not eterne.

To Macbeth the one thing impossible is to wait; and once
more his powerlessness to control suspense is his ruin.

iii. ii. 37.

We have reviewed the contrasted characters under Tempta- The first Shock of tion, in the Deed of sin itself, and in the struggle for Conceal- Nemesis.

ment it remains to watch them face to face with their iii. iv. Nemesis. In the present play Shakespeare has combined the nemesis which takes the form of a sudden shock with the yet severer nemesis of a hopeless resistance through the stages of a protracted fall. The first Shock of Nemesis comes in the Banquet Scene. Macbeth has surrendered himself to the supernatural, and from the supernatural his retribution comes. This is not the place to draw out the terrible force of this famous scene; for its bearing on the contrast of character under delineation it is to be remarked that Macbeth faces his ghostly visitation with unflinching courage, yet without a shadow of doubt as to the reality of what nevertheless no one sees but himself. Lady Macbeth is equally true to her character, and fights on to the last in the now hopeless contest-her double task of keeping up appearances for herself and for her husband. Her keen tact in dealing with Macbeth is to be noted. At first she rallies him angrily, and seeks to shame him into self-command; a moment shows

CHAP. VII. that he is too far gone to be reached by such motives. Instantly she changes her tactics, and, employing a device so often effective with patients of disordered brain, she endeavours to recall him to his senses by assuming an ordinary tone of voice; hitherto she has whispered, now, in the hearing of all, she makes the practical remark:

iii. iv. 83.

My worthy lord,

Your noble friends do lack you.

The device proves successful, his nerves respond to the tone of everyday life, and recovering himself he uses all his skill of deportment to efface the strangeness of the episode, until the reappearance of his victim plunges the scene in confusion past recovery. In the moment of crisis Lady Macbeth had used roughness to rouse her husband; when the courtiers iii. iv, from are gone she is all tenderness. She utters not a word of reproach: perhaps she is herself exhausted by the strain she has gone through; more probably the womanly solicitude for the physical sufferer thinks only how to procure for her husband 'the season of all natures, sleep.'

122.

The full
Nemesis.

v. i.

At last the end comes. The final stage, like the first is brought to the two personages separately. Lady Macbeth has faced every crisis by sheer force of nerve; the nemesis comes upon her fitly in madness, the brain giving way under the strain of contest which her will has forced upon it. In the delirium of her last appearance before us we can trace three distinct tones of thought working into one another as if in some weird harmony. There is first the mere reproduction of the horrible scenes she has passed through.

One two why then 'tis time to do't. . . . Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him. . . . The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?

Again there is an inner thought contending with the first, the struggle to keep her husband from betraying himself by his irresolution.

No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that you mar all with this

...

starting. . . . Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so CHAP. VII. pale. . . . Fie! a soldier and afear'd?

And there is an inmost thought of all; the uprising of her feminine nature against the foulness of the violent deed.

Out, damn'd spot!... Here's the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand

and the sorely charged heart' vents itself in a sigh which the attendants shudder to hear. On Macbeth Nemesis heaps itself in double form. The purely practical man, without resources in himself, finds nemesis in an old age that receives no honour from others..

My way of life

Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;

And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have, but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud, but deep.

V. iii. 22.

135.

Again, as the drunkard finds his refuge in drink, so the victim of superstition longs for deeper draughts of the supernatural. Macbeth seeks the Witches, forces himself to hear iv. i. the worst, and suffers nemesis in anticipation in viewing future generations which are to see his foes on his throne. iv. i. 110– Finally from the supernatural comes the climax of retribution (when Macbeth is seen resting in unquestioning reliance on an from iv. i. ironical oracle till the shock of revelation comes, the pledge of his safety is converted into the sign of his doom, and the brave Macbeth, hero of a hundred battles, throws down his sword and refuses to fight.

80.

V. v, from 33; v. viii, from 13.

V. viii. 22.