LADY MACBETH.
The imagination of the reader is powerfully aroused by these dark inuendoes, and the mind, prepared by a secret undefinable state of suspense and emotion, is doubly startled by the woman’s sudden, hushed
Lo you, here she comes!
It is possible that, with something of the terrors of a guilty conscience herself, the poor waiting woman at first imagines that the queen has been listening and caught her plotting with the doctor, for the second exclamation shows an otherwise unaccountable surprise at her being asleep;
This is her very guise, and, upon my life, fast asleep: observe her: stand close.
Doctor. How came she by that light?
Gent. Why it stood by her. She has a light by her continually: ’tis her command!
Observe the short sentences—as of people listening—watching—under the pressure of a powerful motive and interest. The light—the doctor’s surprise at seeing her carry it about with her, and the reply. “She has a light by her continually. ’Tis her command.”
This is a new and fearful discovery of the internal state of the wretched woman’s mind. Here we have at once a view of her night-terrors, the guilty phantoms which throng her bedside. It is as if a lurid gleam had been suddenly cast upon her soul from the half-opened gates of hell itself.
Doct. You see her eyes are open.
This is so remarkable a feature in a somnambulist that, even when aware of it, we can scarcely—while looking on a countenance from which stare two wide-gazing eyes—realize that they take no note of present objects, but are bent only on the immaterial, supernatural world.
The gentlewoman who has so often seen her thus replies (at this moment more cool than the doctor):
Gent. Ay, but their sense is shut.
Doct. What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.
Gent. It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands: I have known her continue this a quarter of an hour.
Lady. Yet here’s a spot!
It is not possible to call up a more harrowing type of guilt than that furnished by this bloody queen, thus haunted by the idea of what she has done, still the ordinary processes of nature themselves are interrupted, and she is driven to this species of insanity. It is the more striking in her, from the contrast it affords with her supposed callousness of character, and the haughty, masculine, I had almost said fiendish scorn of all those phantoms of guilt which her more human husband saw in advance. This is the proud and cruel mind which feared Macbeth’s softer nature could never be worked up to the commission of the deed necessary to seat them on the throne:
yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full of the milk of human kindness,
To catch the nearest way: Thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition; but without
The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly
Thou wouldst holily: wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win, etc. etc.
This is the sarcastic despiser of all that would impede her “from the golden round.” This is the bloody tigress who with a deep, low joy, triumphed over the unsuspecting visit of her royal guest, king, and victim:
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
This is the cool, sagacious, strong-minded counsellor who urged on, advised, and superintended with a fatal firmness the dire and sacrilegious murder. This is she who, when her bad, weak husband shrank from the dangerous and horrible task imposed upon him, heaped him with contemptuous reproaches—scorching ridicule, and infidel remonstrances. This is the haughty insulter of heaven—the self-confident derider of things holy—(the scorner of God, the sneerer at virtue.) Where are now her high bearing—her bitter taunts—her bold conception, her daring courage—the strong nerve that neither earth nor heaven could shake? Where is the hand that drugged the “possets” of the “surfeited grooms”—that “laid the daggers ready”—that, scorning the childish fear of a dead face, took itself the bloody weapons back to their places? Where is the fearless tongue that hooted and laughed at the terrors of Macbeth; and that, on returning from placing back the daggers and from smearing the faces of the grooms, (triumphantly showing the hands dripping with gore) sternly said—
My hands are of your colour; but I shame
To wear a heart so white!
There she stands—the same being, successful in her guilt—in the full possession of all for which the work was done—unpunished—undiscovered—unquestioned—disturbed by nothing but the eye of God. Behold guilt with all that earth can give of power and exemption—the terrified maid on one side—the watchful doctor on the other—herself confessing, under a torture more awful than that of the rack, the bloody secret of her soul, and the physician taking notes of what falls from her lips! Behold guilt! in its castle—surrounded by its guards, with all the sources of earthly pleasure at its command.
Doct. Hark! she speaks. I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.
Lady. Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One, two; why, then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afraid? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
Doct. Do you mark that?
Here is the dream of the past scene on the night of the murder mingling with the subsequent stings of conscience—hours and days floating through her distempered imagination at the same moment—the cruel purpose, the atrocious execution—the actual presence of the fatal event, with its unrelenting determination, and guilty hope and the trembling terrors of future remorse and fear—all together—all crowding at once upon the mind, in those capricious fragments of reality which unite with such terrible probability in the solemn hour of sleep. The “damned spot” is the first—the predominant and blasting thought; the horrible fixed phantom preying on her mind. Wash as she may, the red trace will not out. She has continued in this “accustomed action with her” a quarter of an hour at a time—striving and striving—rubbing and rubbing—and dwelling upon the hour of her guilt, till the constant contemplation of it has driven her mad. Amid all the charms, the long-promised, dearly-prized charms of royalty—with the golden round at length upon her brow—at all hours of the day and night—in the sunshine and in the darkness—in solitude and at the banquet—this spot, this “damned spot,” is there—always there—and so she is destined to go on, vainly rubbing and rubbing, to her grave.
One, two.
She hears over again the clock telling the hour of that dreadful night.
Why, then ’tis time to do’t.
Here is the habit of sin. She is committing the deed over again.
Hell is murky!
In her imagination her ghastly, staggering lord is at her side uttering this exclamation in fear, which she repeats in scorn.
Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard?
But as she speaks, the deed is already long done. She is still with the trembling, spiritless, haggard partner of her crime, and seems to address him with one of those unnatural sickly flickerings of consolation and peace which only render more visible the surrounding despair.
What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account.
A sad comfort at the best, but ominously significant on the lips of this woman, at the very moment when the springs of her life are giving way under the mere load of guilty recollection. But instantly she is transported back again to the fatal hour. She is gazing upon the pale face of the butchered old king, weltering in gore. She sees all things stained, dripping, flooded—and with that kind of awful composure which one feels often in a great crisis, she pauses to make a remark of wonder:
Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
These sudden transportations from place to place—from time to time—to and fro—backward and forward—is a perfect representation of the shifting changes, the starts and fragments of a rolling dream.
The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?—What! will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’ that, my lord; no more o’ that;—you will mar all with this starting.
Here another awful deed of her husband flashes across her recollection. But still rubbing, still toiling—still with a perseverance which shows how frightfully she is under the dominion of horror at her crime, she is striving and ever striving to efface its mark, and through all with the perception that it is in vain. Then she is at the banquet, where Macbeth’s phrenzy conjures up the ghost of Banquo, and half betrays them.
The Doctor has now seen and heard enough to show him the nature of the secret which is destroying the life of his patient, and his horror overflows immediately in a sort of confidential communication with the waiting woman.
Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.
Gentlewoman. She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that: Heaven knows what she has known.
Lady. Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! oh! oh!
Doctor. What a sight is there! The heart is sorely charg’d.
Gent. I would not have such a heart in my bosom, for the dignity of the whole body.
Here we have the moral of this grand mighty scene. Guilt—successful guilt—guilt in the bosom, of a scoffer—an atheist—a blasphemer—guilt in the strongest impersonation of earthliness—of nerve—courage—self-confidence—power, philosophy—profound sense, and a high order of human genius. Lady Macbeth had obviously all these. She impresses you powerfully with a haughty superiority over every one around her. She would do to lead an army—to defend a citadel. Her mind is that of a Spartan dame—or a Roman matron: and the courage and understanding she displays are such as, if rightly used, if guided by the spirit of virtue and religion, might have elevated her to the dignity of a great historical heroine. None can rationally hope to bear up by philosophy and strength of intellect alone, against the consciousness of sin, if Lady Macbeth, in those rude times, could not.
Here, then, we have successful guilt. Painted by a historian, perhaps she might have excited the envy of the lowly. We should have seen her surrounded by splendor and luxury. The glittering crown upon her brow—a circle of courtiers bending around her—as she presided at state councils or gay banquets. The historian would have shown her situation, and we might have exclaimed, “see how guilt triumphs.” But Shakspeare gives us a view into her heart—her secret thoughts—her midnight dreams. If any thing could heighten the picture as he had previously drawn it, it would be these few words, “Here’s the smell of the blood still.” The smell of the blood! How deeply imbued is her imagination with the ideal! The heart sickens at it. Great as has been the crime, we are compelled to acknowledge that the poet has at a glimpse shown us the process of a penalty as great, and, with a sweetness of art peculiar to him and nature, has mingled, with our abhorrence which would be too violent by itself, a certain touch of sympathy and when that beautiful and heart-rending exclamation falls with almost the last life-drops from her utterly subdued and crushed heart—
All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! oh! oh!
We pity and utter a prayer for mercy which the guilty lips of the sufferer dare not form themselves.
The remark of the gentlewoman is as applicable to a class of characters as that of Lady Macbeth.
I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body.
This is the voice of innocence—lowly, self-congratulating innocence. The humble dependant of the royal household is made to feel the immeasurable advantage a peaceful conscience affords over all the passing and hollow gauds of the world. She sees what a mockery are rank, wealth, power, fame—when bought by the sacrifice of that greatest of all treasures—a quiet heart. She will go gladly, after this—that honest lady, on her obscure path, turning to her God with a deeper reverence and love. She will pour out her heart to him in gratitude that she has escaped the temptations of life thus far, and humbly implored him to watch continually over her steps, to strengthen her good resolutions, to teach her to subdue her passions, and to lead her safely through the pit-falls of her mortal pilgrimage.
It seems almost impossible to carry the scene farther, but the poet does so.
The mind of the reader, stretched to a too strong tension, is relieved by the few, broken yet calm expressions of the two watchers whose health and hearts’ ease also afford a contrast which sets off more strikingly the state of the wretched lady thus floating by us like a rudderless wreck sweeping onward with a resistless current to the brink of some vast cataract or yawning and unfathomless Maelstrom.
The doctor’s “Well, well, well,—” shows embarrassment the result of amazement. He scarcely knows what to do. He, also, has now become the possessor of an astounding and dangerous secret, and he might well be supposed to hesitate as to the proper course to pursue. He does not seem decided to acknowledge the full extent of his conviction, yet he cannot deny that the patient is not to be cured by his medicine. He does not seem inclined to enter upon any confidential interchanges of opinions with the gentlewoman. He is, in all things, the man of the world—the professional man and the courtier. The very air he breathes he may imagine full of eyes and ears. He may be no more inclined to trust the gentlewoman than she had been to trust him. Guilt, gloom, and danger preside over the blood-stained castle, and envelope the principal inmates—while suspicions, fear and silent watchfulness are hugged to the anxious bosom of each distrustful servant. The doctor’s “Well, well, well”—is a kind of mask to hide what is passing in his mind: and the gentlewoman with less art, equal prudence and more piety, ventures only upon the awe-struck prayer,
Pray God, it be, sir!
The doctor then confesses,
This disease is beyond my practice!
But instantly avoids even the appearance of committing himself by the cautious reserve—
Yet I have known those which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in their beds.
What a picture of a tyrant’s castle. These trembling slaves dare neither of them express an opinion or confess they have seen what they are seeing—even to each other in the silence and solitude of the night.
The dream of the haunted lady now quickens its flow. She is back again at the murder scene whose successful completion has gratified all her worldly hopes and ambition, and at the same time blasted her mind and soul.
Hear her nervous, convulsed reiteration of the minutest incident of that too well remembered hour.
Wash your hands, put on your night-gown;
Then the dream shifts once more.
I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out of his grave.
Then back to the night of the murder.
To bed—to bed. There’s knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come. Give me your hand, what’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.
Exit Lady Macbeth.
And thus, as from the new commission of a frightful crime, she returns to her bed, there to tremble—and writhe and dream—and act over again and again the bloody drama.
Doctor. Will she now go to bed?
Gent. Directly.
Then the doctor, apparently excited out of his usual reserve, utters the thoughts which are passing in his mind.
Doct. Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds
To their deaf pillows, will discharge their secrets.
More needs she the divine, than the physician.—
And then, profoundly impressed and shocked with what he has witnessed and discovered, he adds:
God, God, forgive us all!
This prayer, bursting involuntarily from the heart of a worldly man in the mere exercise of his profession, is very expressive of the effect the scene has had upon him. He immediately returns, however, to the business which keeps him in the castle, viz: the treatment of his patient, and he gives this sagacious advice to the gentlewoman: supposing very properly that a conscience so desperately diseased might attempt self-destruction.
Look after her;
Remove from her the means of all annoyance,
And still keep eyes upon her;—so, good-night:
My mind she has mated,[[1]] and amaz’d my sight:
I think, but dare not speak.
Gent. Good-night,—good doctor.
Notwithstanding these injunctions, however, she succeeds in committing suicide. After her exit from this scene she appears no more. She could not, indeed, again come before our eyes without injuring the impression it has left. Her death is told in a way to harmonize with this impression and to leave the excited imagination at leisure to fill up the details to the last moment. Macbeth, desperate like a baited bull, is roaring a defiance of heaven and earth, for guilt has brutalized him perceptibly, when he is interrupted by “a cry within, of women.”
Macbeth. What is that noise?
Seyton. It is the cry of woman, my good lord.
Mac. I have almost forgot the taste of fears:
The time has been, my senses would have cool’d
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse, and stir
As life were in’t: I have supp’d full with horrors;
Direness, familiar to my slaught’rous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.—Wherefore was that cry?
Sey. The queen, my lord, is dead.
The signification of Lady Macbeth’s sleep-walking scene is heightened by the contrast it affords to her proud overbearing demeanor in the earlier scenes of the play. There she is as bold as if, indeed, there were no God to supervise human affairs. When Macbeth, his dripping hands at length burthened with a now irreparable murder, finds himself appalled and feels that, among the other disadvantages of the crime, he has “murdered sleep,” “Macbeth shall sleep no more,” “The innocent sleep,” etc., etc., his lady is scarcely able to find words for her cool contempt of such weakness.
Why, worthy thane
You do unbend your noble strength, to think
So brain-sickly of things:—go, get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.—
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there. Go. Carry them; and smear
The sleepy grooms with blood.
Mac. I’ll go no more;
I am afraid to think on what I have done.
Look out again I dare not.
Lady. Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers:
The sleeping and the dead are but as portions:
’Tis the eye of childhood, that fears a painted devil.
If he does bleed I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withall
For it must seem their guilt.
Thus, braving heaven, denying God, laughing to derision the idea of conscience, and impiously promising that the blood may be washed from their hands with a little water, glorying in the butchery of the good old king, and accumulating murder upon murder, she rushes on her fate, and, like all who oppose the Creator and Judge of the Universe, is dashed to pieces.
| [1] | “My mind she has mated.” This expression is supposed to be taken from chess playing. She has confounded my mind. |
THE GLAD RETREAT.
———
BY E. G. SQUIRES.
———
Beneath an elm, a green old elm,
I raised a rustic seat,
The boughs low bending o’er my head,
The green grass at my feet.
A little streamlet dancing by,
With voice so clear and sweet;
The air-spirit’s low and mournful sigh—
Oh, ’twas a glad retreat!
And often at the dewy morn,
Just when the earliest ray,
That from the chariot of the sun,
Betokened coming day—
I’d hie me to my glad retreat,
To that old elm I’d stray,
And by that rude and rustic seat,
I’d kneel me down and pray.
And at the sultry hour of noon,
I’d seek the cooling shade,
And listen to the murmuring sound
That little streamlet made.
And watched the bright birds glancing through
The branches, old and young—
And wondered as they gaily flew,
What was the song they sung.
But time has passed, those days are gone,
Ay, more, long years have fled—
And lying o’er that little brook,
A withered trunk and dead.
But memory often wanders back,
On Fancy’s pinions free—
I’ll ne’er forget the rustic seat
Beneath the old elm tree!
THE REEFER OF ’76.
———
BY THE “AUTHOR OF CRUIZING IN THE LAST WAR.”
———