Won't you believe a Wife to be a good judge of her Husband's disposition?
NORTH.
Not Lady Macbeth. For does not she herself tell us, at the same time, that he had formerly schemed how to commit Murder?
BULLER.
Gagged again.
NORTH.
I see no reason for doubting that she was attached to her husband; and Shakspeare loved to put into the lips of women beautiful expressions of love—but he did not intend that we should be deceived thereby in our moral judgements.
SEWARD.
Did this ever occur to you, sir? Macbeth, when hiring the murderers who are to look after Banquo and Fleance, cites a conversation in which he had demonstrated to them that the oppression under which they had long suffered, and which they had supposed to proceed from Macbeth, proceeded really from Banquo? My firm belief is that it proceeded from Macbeth—that their suspicion was right—that Macbeth is misleading them—and that Shakspeare means you to apprehend this. But why should Macbeth have oppressed his inferiors, unless he had been—long since—of a tyrannical nature? He oppresses his inferiors—they are sickened and angered with the world—by his oppression—he tells them 'twas not he but another who had oppressed them—and that other—at his instigation—they willingly murder. An ugly affair altogether.