At last the end comes. The final stage, like the first, is brought to the two personages separately. Lady Macbeth has faced every crisis by sheer force of nerve; v. i.the nemesis comes upon her fitly in madness, the brain giving way under the strain of contest which her will has forced upon it. In the delirium of her last appearance before us we can trace three distinct tones of thought working into one another as if in some weird harmony. There is first the mere reproduction of the horrible scenes she has passed through.
One: two: why then 'tis time to do 't.... Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.... The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?
Again there is an inner thought contending with the first, the struggle to keep her husband from betraying himself by his irresolution.
No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with this starting.... Wash your hands, put on your night-gown; look not so pale.... Fie! a soldier and afear'd?
And there is an inmost thought of all: the uprising of her feminine nature against the foulness of the violent deed.
Out, damned spot!... Here's the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand—
and the 'sorely charged heart' vents itself in a sigh which the attendants shudder to hear. On Macbeth Nemesis heaps itself in double form. The purely practical man, without resources in himself, finds nemesis in an old age that receives no honour from others.
v. iii. 22.
My way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf;