The remainder of the story, from the psychological point of view, can best be told in Dr. Bucknill’s words.[154:3] “Macbeth,” he says, “saved himself from actual insanity by rushing from the maddening horrors of meditation into a course of decisive resolute action. From henceforth
he gave himself no time to reflect; he made the firstlings of his heart the firstlings of his hand; he became a fearful tyrant to his country; but he escaped madness. This change in him, however, effected a change in his relation to his wife, which in her had the opposite result. . . . Her attention, heretofore directed to her husband and to outward occurrences, was forced inwards upon that wreck of all-content which her meditation supplied.” She becomes mad; no medicine can minister to her mind, diseased by crime and remorse, and her madness is fatal. But Macbeth never becomes insane. “Some say he’s mad,” it is true, yet
“Others, that lesser hate him,
Do call it valiant fury.”[155:1]
He has saved his own mental life, but he has flung away the “eternal jewel” of his soul.
Lady Macbeth, at every point in the play, is strongly contrasted with her husband. She is frankly distressed at the developments of Macbeth’s criminal career. He bids her be “innocent of the knowledge” till she applaud his deeds. She thus drifts farther away from him and leaves him to pursue his bloody course alone. Her meditation breeds madness. She lacks, even as her husband had done,
“the season of all natures, sleep,”
being
“Troubled with thick-coming fancies
That keep her from her rest.”[155:2]