Part 2 (2/2)

”Whiles I threat he lives, Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives,”

which is, of course, precisely Hamlet's complaint:

”This is most brave; That I, the son of a dear father e by heaven and hell, Must, like a whore, unpack my heart ords”

After this Lady Macbeth enters, and the hest tension Macbeth must speak from the depths of his nature with perfect sincerity Will he exult, as the aest step towards his goal?

Or will he, like a prudent man, do his utmost to hide the traces of his crime, and hatch plans to cast suspicion on others? It is Lady Macbeth who plays this part; she tells Macbeth to ”get some water,”

”And wash this filthy witness from your hand,”

while he, brainsick, rehearses past fears and shows himself the sensitive poet-dreamer inclined to piety: here is the incredible scene:

”_Lady M_ There are two lodged together

_Macb_ One cried, 'God bless us!' and 'A their fear, I could not say 'Amen,'

When they did say 'God bless us'

_Lady M_ Consider it not so deeply

_Macb_ But wherefore could not I pronounce 'A, and 'Ae colouring the weakness of self-pity is to be found again and again in ”Has Ophelia to remember his sins in her orisons When he first sees his father's ghost he cries:

”Angels and host leaves hio pray” This new trait, most intimate and distinctive, is therefore the most conclusive proof of the identity of the two characters The whole passage in the mouth of a murderer is utterly unexpected and out of place; no wonder Lady Macbeth exclaiht After these ways: so, it will ives rein to his poetic iination, and breaks out in an exquisite lyric, a lyric which has hardly any closer relation to the circumstances than its truth to Shakespeare's nature:

”Methought I heard a voice cry, 'Sleep no more!

Macbeth does murder sleep,'--the innocent sleep: Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,”

and so forth--the poet in love with his own i hi unbends his strength, and finally urges hirooone; he is physically broken noell as o no more; I aain I dare not”

All this is exquisitely characteristic of the nervous student who has been screwed up to a feat beyond his strength, ”a terrible feat,” and who has broken down over it, but the words are altogether absurd in the mouth of an ambitious, half-barbarous chieftain

His wife chides him as fanciful, childish--”infirers back herself; but nothing can hearten Macbeth; every household noise sets his heart thu?

How is't with me when every noise appalstortured:

”What hands are here? Ha!

They pluck out s into another incomparable lyric: