NORTH.
I have often thought of the words—and Shakspeare himself has so adjusted the action of the Play as that, since the encounter with the Weirds, no opportunity had occurred to Macbeth for the "making of time and place." Therefore it must, as you say, have been before it. Buller, what say you now?
BULLER.
Gagged.
NORTH.
True, she speaks of his being "full of the milk of human kindness." The words have become favourites with us, who are an affectionate and domestic people—and are lovingly applied to the loving; but Lady Macbeth attached no such profound sense to them as we do; and meant merely that she thought her husband would, after all, much prefer greatness unbought by blood; and, at the time she referred to, it is probable he would; but that she meant no more than that, is plain from the continuation of her praise, in which her ideas get not a little confused; and her words, interpret them as you will, leave nothing "milky" in Macbeth at all. Milk of human kindness, indeed!
TALBOYS.
"What thou would'st highly,
That would'st thou holily; would'st not play false,
And yet would'st wrongly win: thou'dst have great Glamis,
That which cries, 'Thus thou must do, if thou have it;
And that which rather thou dost fear to do
Than wishest should be undone.'"
That is her Ladyship's notion of the "milk of human kindness"! "I wish somebody would murder Duncan—as for murdering him myself, I am much too tender-hearted and humane for perpetrating such cruelty with my own hand!"
BULLER.