To catch the nearest way: Thou wouldst be great;
Art not without ambition; but without
The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly
Thou wouldst holily: wouldst not play false,
And yet wouldst wrongly win, etc. etc.
This is the sarcastic despiser of all that would impede her “from the golden round.” This is the bloody tigress who with a deep, low joy, triumphed over the unsuspecting visit of her royal guest, king, and victim:
The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
This is the cool, sagacious, strong-minded counsellor who urged on, advised, and superintended with a fatal firmness the dire and sacrilegious murder. This is she who, when her bad, weak husband shrank from the dangerous and horrible task imposed upon him, heaped him with contemptuous reproaches—scorching ridicule, and infidel remonstrances. This is the haughty insulter of heaven—the self-confident derider of things holy—(the scorner of God, the sneerer at virtue.) Where are now her high bearing—her bitter taunts—her bold conception, her daring courage—the strong nerve that neither earth nor heaven could shake? Where is the hand that drugged the “possets” of the “surfeited grooms”—that “laid the daggers ready”—that, scorning the childish fear of a dead face, took itself the bloody weapons back to their places? Where is the fearless tongue that hooted and laughed at the terrors of Macbeth; and that, on returning from placing back the daggers and from smearing the faces of the grooms, (triumphantly showing the hands dripping with gore) sternly said—