Presently the disguised duke comes in, and asks of the Provost,—
“Have you no countermand for Claudio yet,
But he must die to-morrow?
Prov. None, sir; none.”
One may wonder whether Macbeth, brooding on the vague and vasty gloom of that word, bethought him of the fatal first use of it in his incipient designs against his sovran. The gracious Duncan, he tells his wife, on reaching home, is to become his guest to-night:
“Lady M. And when goes hence?
Macb. To-morrow,—as he purposes.
Lady M. O, never
Shall sun that morrow see!”
Reason good, or rather, in a bad sense, reason of the worst, had Macbeth to brood in after-days, when the morrow that never came to Duncan, had come blood-stained to him,—on the far-reaching capacities of so memorable a phrase. But from Shakspeare turn to other sources of illustration.