BULLER.
You might have had the good manners to ask for my opinion.
NORTH.
I beg a thousand pardons, Buller.
BULLER.
A hundred will do, North. In Davies' Anecdotes of the Stage, I remember reading that Garrick would not trust Mrs Pritchard with the Swoon—and that Macklin thought Mrs Porter alone could have been endured by the audience. Therefore, by the Great Manager, Lady Macbeth was not allowed in the Scene to appear at all. His belief was, that with her Ladyship it was a feint—and that the Gods, aware of that, unless restrained by profound respect for the actress, would have laughed—as at something rather comic. If the Gods, in Shakspeare's days, were as the Gods in Garrick's, William, methinks, would not, on any account, have exposed the Lady to derision at such a time. But I suspect the Gods of the Globe would not have laughed, whatever they might have thought of her sincerity, and that she did appear before them in a Scene from which nothing could account for her absence. She was not, I verily believe, given to fainting—perhaps this was the first time she had ever fainted since she was a girl. Now I believe she did. She would have stood by her husband at all hazards, had she been able, both on his account and her own; she would not have so deserted him at such a critical juncture; her character was of boldness rather than duplicity; her business now—her duty—was to brazen it out; but she grew sick—qualms of conscience, however terrible, can be borne by sinners standing upright at the mouth of hell—but the flesh of man is weak, in its utmost strength, when moulded to woman's form—other qualms assail suddenly the earthly tenement—the breath is choked—the "distracted globe" grows dizzy—they that look out of the windows know not what they see—the body reels, lapses, sinks, and at full length smites the floor.
SEWARD.
Well said—Chairman of the Quarter-sessions.
BULLER.
Nor, with all submission, my dear Sir, can I think you treat your favourite murderess, on this trying occasion, with your usual fairness and candour. All she says, is, "Help me hence, ho!" Macduff says, "Look to the Lady"—and Banquo says, "Look to the Lady"—and she is "carried off." Some critic or other—I think Malone—says that Macbeth shows he knows "'tis a feint" by not going to her assistance. Perhaps he was mistaken—know it he could not. And nothing more likely to make a woman faint than that revelling and wallowing of his in that bloody description.