NORTH.
Seward, we are ready to hear you.
SEWARD.
She has been about a business that must have somewhat shook her nerves—granting them to be of iron. She would herself have murdered Duncan had he not resembled her Father as he slept; and on sudden discernment of that dreadful resemblance, her soul must have shuddered, if her body served her to stagger away from parricide. On the deed being done, she is terrified after a different manner from the doer of the deed; but her terror is as great; and though she says—
"The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures—'tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted Devil—"
believe me that her face was like ashes, as she returned to the chamber to gild the faces of the grooms with the dead man's blood. That knocking, too, alarmed the Lady—believe me—as much as her husband; and to keep cool and collected before him, so as to be able to support him at that moment with her advice, must have tried the utmost strength of her nature. Call her Fiend—she was Woman. Down stairs she comes—and stands among them all, at first like one alarmed only—astounded by what she hears—and striving to simulate the ignorance of the innocent—"What, in our house?" "Too cruel anywhere!" What she must have suffered then, Shakspeare lets us conceive for ourselves; and what on her husband's elaborate description of his inconsiderate additional murders. "The whole is too much for her"—she "is perplexed in the extreme"—and the sinner swoons.
NORTH.
Seward suggests a bold, strong, deep, tragical turn of the scene—that she faints actually. Well—so be it. I shall say, first, that I think it a weakness in my favourite; but I will go so far as to add that I can let it pass for a not unpardonable weakness—the occasion given. But I must deal otherwise with her biographer. Him I shall hold to a strict rendering of account. I will know of him what he is about, and what she is about. If she faints really, and against her will, having forcible reasons for holding her will clear, she must be shown fighting to the last effort of will, against the assault of womanly nature, and drop, vanquished, as one dead, without a sound. But the Thaness calls out lustily—she remembers, "as we shall make our griefs and clamours roar upon his death." She makes noise enough—takes good care to attract everybody's attention to her performance—for which I commend her. Calculate as nicely as you will—she distracts or diverts speculation, and makes an interesting and agreeable break in the conversation.—I think that the obvious meaning is the right meaning—and that she faints on purpose.
NORTH.
Decided in favour of Feint.