MACBETH.
My dearest love,
Duncan comes here to-night.
LADY MACBETH.
And when goes hence?
MACBETH.
To-morrow,—as he purposes.
LADY MACBETH.
O never
Shall sun that morrow see!
Thy face, my thane, is as a book, where men
May read strange matters;—to beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye
Your tongue, your hand; look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under it.
What would not the firmness, the self-command, the enthusiasm, the intellect, the ardent affections of this woman have performed, if properly directed? but the object being unworthy of the effort, the end is disappointment, despair, and death.
The power of religion could alone have controlled such a mind; but it is the misery of a very proud, strong, and gifted spirit, without sense of religion, that instead of looking upward to find a superior, looks round and sees all things as subject to itself. Lady Macbeth is placed in a dark, ignorant, iron age; her powerful intellect is slightly tinged with its credulity and superstition, but she has no religious feeling to restrain the force of will. She is a stern fatalist in principle and action—"what is done, is done," and would be done over again under the same circumstances; her remorse is without repentance, or any reference to an offended Deity; it arises from the pang of a wounded conscience, the recoil of the violated feelings of nature: it is the horror of the past, not the terror of the future; the torture of self-condemnation, not the fear of judgment; it is strong as her soul, deep as her guilt, fatal as her resolve, and terrible as her crime.