it is too much, and 'tis plain she is not needed. "Help me hence, ho!" her sex cries. It is the revulsion of nature in a feminine soul. Love has exhaled all its hardihood into the deed which is just now discovered. She, too, has only now really discovered it. The nerves part at the overstrain of seeing what the deed is like, and drop her helpless into a swoon.
She recovers, but her mind wakes to the necessity of playing a part, to the harassing assumption of royal demeanor to hide a slavish dread, to the cruel demands of courtesy, to the effort to sustain her husband's state, to the counterfeit composure of the banquet:—
"Better be with the dead,
Whom we, to gain our place, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy."
She does not say this; but Macbeth avows it for her, since they are partners
"In the affliction of these terrible dreams
That shake us nightly."
Banquo would have been safe enough from her; for the scheming love has been too rudely handled. But he is not safe from Macbeth, who does not reflect that, while Malcolm is out of his reach, 'tis a superfluity of naughtiness to slay Banquo and Fleance. His wife might have counselled better, but he did not dare to confide his temper of murder to her. Henceforth, murder is become a necessary of their daily life. But her feeling that nought is had and all is spent does not involve a threat of Banquo's person. She broods in spiritless reaction, and tells Macbeth that "what's done is done." He broods in dangerous recklessness, feeling that it is not yet done:—
"Thou know'st that Banquo and his Fleance live."
She does not perceive what he is darkly hinting, and merely replies that they cannot live for ever. He judges hastily that they must die at once; and "there's comfort yet." But he does not venture to be explicit with her, because, if she cannot detect the murder in his words,—
"There shall be done
A deed of dreadful note,"—
it is because there is murder no longer in her heart. He does not dare to risk his resolutions openly with her returning womanhood. So, when she unconsciously asks, "What's to be done?" he cannot muster courage to expose his thought:—