Gent. Good-night, good doctor. (Exeunt.
There is not a single word of this scene which can be spared—not one which is not impregnated with blood and horror. You feel the very silence of the sick, midnight apartment. Ye see the pale ashy countenance of the terror-stricken gentlewoman, and sympathize with her in having her lot cast in such an abode of guilt and danger. You see that she has called up all her energy and presence of mind, as in a great crisis, to enable her to conduct herself wisely, and to escape with safety from this den of royal murderers. You can see her cautious step—as if she started even at the creaking of her own shoe—the rustling of her own robe, or the sighing of the wind around the distant turrets of the castle. You have here a most admirable character, and, except that she is but so short a time on the stage, almost as worthy the genius of Mrs. Siddons as that of Lady Macbeth herself. Were I a young actress, desirous of making my appearance before the public, I should choose to study thoroughly and represent well this character first,—a very great effect might be given to it.
The doctor is also done to the life. He is, in all respects, not only the medical man, but the medical man of coolness and experience. The few words he utters are full of curiosity, but not of the unbridled horror of his companion. He has doubtless, before, witnessed scenes enough of pain and anguish, and he is at first disposed to consider the gentlewoman as an exaggerator of the mysteries she professes to have beheld, and to treat the whole thing physically as a disease, till the truth becomes too apparent, and even his cool mind is convinced.
Lady Macbeth herself is the very ne plus ultra of the tragic. She has more terror in her step and eye, than a mere mortal ever had before. Waking remorse would not have been, by any means, so appalling. The fact of her being asleep is a great accessory. That pale face—those fixed, staring, dead eyes—the countenance emaciated by disease, and the long consuming fire of conscience—the step, solemn, slow, measured and unearthly—and the dark, dim and shifting imagery of the past, which floats to and fro through her imagination, form altogether a spectacle shocking and almost insupportable.
Let us take this extraordinary scene to pieces, and examine a little into its mechanism. One of the wonders of it is that there is no resort to style—no description—no bursts of eloquence—no lava-like eruption of passions. There are indeed but very few words said at all. The sick lady has, at first, no terrors for the doctor, and the gentlewoman has often beheld the same thing before. There is no stage effect—no management—no melo-dramatic cunning. The doctor even shows his coolness and incredulity, and makes a careless general remark. The transcendant genius of the poet felt, intuitively, that the situation of his characters here was so complete as to absorb the reader, and render unnecessary any but the simplest language. The whole scene is quiet, hushed and professional. Even the blank verse of the rest of the tragedy is laid aside, and the characters speak in common-place perfectly natural prose. Let us see what this almost supernatural terror consists in.
The doctor first says, we may suppose with a certain half unintentional degree of disappointment, that he has been already watching two nights to see something which the waiting-woman has reported to him respecting the queen, and yet he has seen nothing.
“I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive no truth in your report.”
A little impatient, a little incredulous, perhaps, he adds:
“When was it she last walked?”
This is a stroke of nature and probability at the very outset. It takes from the scene the air of a fiction. It sends the mind of the spectator back to the two past long nights, when the doctor, tolerably tired out, has been watching in vain. This is just as things happen in life. We have to watch and watch for every thing—even for the most true—before it appears. We feel also, even with the first apparently unimportant word spoken, a certain tremor at the intimation given of the domestic gloom which must reign in the royal household—an attack immediately expected from a powerful and inexorable foe—the queen sick—mysterious things, we know not what, hinted with pale face and trembling lips—and the guilty being, who had sold her eternal soul for her present position,—we see her in that position, all the promised triumphs and pleasures neutralized by disease and remorse, and she herself watched by her servants, night after night, when she little dreams herself the subject of such a combined inquisition.