Part 2 (1/2)

”If it were done when 'tis done, then 'tell It were done quickly: if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success: that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all; here, But here upon this bank and shoal of time We'd jump the life to come”

Is not this the same soul which also in a soliloquy questions fate?--”Whether 'tis better in the mind”

Macbeth, too, has Hamlet's peculiar and exquisite intellectual fairness--a quality, be it re, seldoood points:

”this Duncan Hath borne his faculties so reat office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, tru off”

Is it not like Hamlet to be able to condemn himself in this way beforehand? Macbeth ends this soliloquy ords which come from the inmost of Hamlet's heart:

”I have no spur To prick the sides ofambition, which o'erleaps itself, And falls on the other”

Hamlet, too, has no spur to prick the sides of his intent, and Hamlet, too, would be sure to see how apt a of the desire This ue alone should have been sufficient to reveal to all critics the essential identity of Hamlet and Macbeth Lady Macbeth, too, tells us that Macbeth left the supper table where he was entertaining the King, in order to indulge hiue, and when he hears that his absence has excited co, he does not attee conduct, he merely says, ”We will proceed no further in this business,” showing in true Hamlet fashi+on how resolution has been ”sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought” In fact, as his wife says to him, he lets ”'I dare not' wait upon 'I would'

like the poor cat i' the adage” Even hipped to action by Lady Macbeth's preternatural eagerness, he asks:

”If we should fail?”

whereupon she tells hi place, and describes the deed itself Infected by her th consents to what he calls the ”terrible feat” The word ”terrible” here is surely more characteristic of the humane poet-thinker than of the chieftain-murderer Even at this crisis, too, of his fate Macbeth cannot cheat himself; like Hamlet he is compelled to see himself as he is:

”False face must hide what the false heart doth know”

I have now considered nearly every word used by Macbeth in this first act: I have neither picked passages nor oue that Hamlet is far more clearly sketched in this first act of ”Macbeth” than in the first act of ”Hamlet” Macbeth appears in it as an irresolute dreaentle-hearted, of perfect intellectual fairness and bookish phrase; and in especial his love of thought and dislike of action are insisted upon again and again

In spite of the fact that the second act is one chiefly of incident, filled indeed with the murder and its discovery, Shakespeare uses Macbeth as the mouthpiece of his reater singer even than Romeo, Hamlet is a poet by nature, and turns every possible occasion to account, char the ear with subtle hare, he postpones action and sings to himself of life and death and the undiscovered country in words of suchin the world's literature save perhaps to the last chapter of Ecclesiastes Froreat lyric poet, and this supreift is so natural to hiift, however, is possessed by Macbeth in at least equal degree and excites just as little notice It is credible that Shakespeare used the drahest lyrical utterance

Without pressing this point further let us now take up the second act of the play Banquo and Fleance enter; Macbeth has a feords with the a servant an order, Macbeth begins another long soliloquy He thinks he sees a dagger before hi:

”Come let me clutch thee:-- I have thee not and yet I see thee still

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of thefrom the heat-oppressed brain?

I see thee yet in form as palpable As that which now I draw

- - - - - - - - - - Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses

Or else worth all the rest: I see thee still; And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood Which was not so before--There's no such thing”

What is all this but an illustration of Haood or bad But thinking s on hisacadened or real, so here Shakespeare shows us how Macbeth loses his foothold on reality and falls into the void

The lyrical effusion that follows is not very successful, and probably on that account Macbeth breaks off abruptly: