Afterwards, in act iii., she is represented as muttering to herself,
Nought's had, all's spent,
When our desire is got without content;
yet immediately addresses her moody and conscience-stricken husband—
How now, my lord? why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making?
Using those thoughts, which should indeed have died
With them they think on? Things without remedy,
Should be without regard; what's done, is done.
But she is nowhere represented as urging him on to new crimes, so far from it, that when Macbeth darkly hints his purposed assassination of Banquo, and she inquires his meaning, he replies,
Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou approve the deed.
The same may be said of the destruction of Macduff's family. Every one must perceive how our detestation of the woman had been increased, if she had been placed before us as suggesting and abetting those additional cruelties into which Macbeth is hurried by his mental cowardice.
If my feeling of Lady Macbeth's character be just to the conception of the poet, then she is one who could steel herself to the commission of a crime from necessity and expediency, and be daringly wicked for a great end, but not likely to perpetrate gratuitous murders from any vague or selfish fears. I do not mean to say that the perfect confidence existing between herself and Macbeth could possibly leave her in ignorance of his actions or designs: that heart-broken and shuddering allusion to the murder of Lady Macduff (in the sleeping scene) proves the contrary:—
The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?
But she is nowhere brought before us in immediate connection with these horrors, and we are spared any flagrant proof of her participation in them. This may not strike us at first, but most undoubtedly has an effect on the general bearing of the character, considered as a whole.