“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.”
The disturbance of an innocent soul by painful suspicions of another’s
guilty intentions and wishes, and fear of the cursed thoughts of sensual
nature.
_Ib._ sc. 2. Now that the deed is done or doing—now that the first reality
commences, Lady Macbeth shrinks. The most simple sound strikes terror, the
most natural consequences are horrible, whilst previously every thing,
however awful, appeared a mere trifle; conscience, which before had been
hidden to Macbeth in selfish and prudential fears, now rushes in upon him
in her own veritable person:—
“Methought I heard a voice cry—Sleep no more!
I could not say Amen,
When they did say, God bless us!”
And see the novelty given to the most familiar images by a new state of
feeling.
_Ib._ sc. 3. This low soliloquy of the Porter and his few speeches
afterwards, I believe to have been written for the mob by some other hand,
perhaps with Shakespeare’s consent; and that finding it take, he with the
remaining ink of a pen otherwise employed, just interpolated the words—
“I’ll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in
some of all professions, that go the primrose way to the
everlasting bonfire.”
Of the rest not one syllable has the ever-present being of Shakespeare.
Act iii. sc. 1. Compare Macbeth’s mode of working on the murderers in this
place with Schiller’s mistaken scene between Butler, Devereux, and
Macdonald in _Wallenstein_.—(Part II. act iv. sc. 2.) The comic was wholly
out of season. Shakespeare never introduces it, but when it may react on
the tragedy by harmonious contrast.
_Ib._ sc. 2. Macbeth’s speech:—
“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.”
Ever and ever mistaking the anguish of conscience for fears of
selfishness, and thus as a punishment of that selfishness, plunging still
deeper in guilt and ruin.
_Ib._ Macbeth’s speech:—
“Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou applaud the deed.”
This is Macbeth’s sympathy with his own feelings, and his mistaking his
wife’s opposite state.
_Ib._ sc. 4.—
“_Macb._ It will have blood; they say, blood will have blood:
Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak;
Augurs, and understood relations, have
By magot-pies, and choughs, and rooks, brought forth
The secret’st man of blood.”
The deed is done; but Macbeth receives no comfort, no additional security.
He has by guilt torn himself live-asunder from nature, and is, therefore,
himself in a preternatural state: no wonder, then, that he is inclined to
superstition, and faith in the unknown of signs and tokens, and
super-human agencies.