“Had I but died an hour before this chance,
I had liv’d a blessed time; for, from this instant,
There’s nothing serious in mortality:
All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of.”
“What is amiss?” says Donalbain. And Macbeth cries, “You are, and do not know’t. The spring, the head, the fountain of your blood is stopp’d; the very source of it is stopp’d.”
This is Macbeth’s rant and fustian. He has no feeling, and, as usual, he makes the pretense of poetry serve him. The head, the spring, the fountain, the source is stopped, is stopped.
And this stuff he recites coolly, although he has but a moment before wantonly killed the two grooms; nay, he does not mention it until afterwards, on their being spoken of by Lenox, when this hypocritical villain cries:—
“O, yet I do repent me of my fury,
That I did kill them.
Macd. Wherefore did you so?
Macb. Who can be wise, amaz’d, temperate and furious,
Loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man:
The expedition of my violent love
Outrun the pauser, reason.—Here lay Duncan,
His silver skin lac’d with his golden blood;
And his gash’d stabs look’d like a breach in nature,
For ruin’s wasteful entrance: there, the murderers,
Steep’d in the colors of their trade, their daggers
Unmannerly breech’d with gore: who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make’s love known?”
During this amazing speech, in which he poetizes so elaborately, and with such curious artifice coldly paints the picture of the man and friend he had just murdered, Lady Macbeth has been looking and listening in silence. Suddenly, for the first time, she sees what her husband really is; she sees that he has neither heart nor conscience; for no man possessing either could have acted or talked as he has since the murder of Duncan. So far from having any feeling of shame or remorse, he, without provocation, wantonly, and with no sufficient object, has added two other murders to it; and, with a cold-blooded artificial hypocrisy, he paints in his stilted way the scene of Duncan’s death, and has command enough of himself to seek out elaborate and high-flown phrases. But Lady Macbeth, whose courage, stimulated by excitement, has carried her through the murder, now suddenly breaks down. This new revelation of her husband’s character, and the ghastly picture which he summons up before her of the scene of the murder, are too much for her. She swoons, loses all consciousness, and is carried out. In her violent excitement, while there was something practical to busy her mind and her body with, she could carry back the daggers and smear the grooms with blood; but she could not bear the vivid remembrance of it when there was nothing to do, and when the excitement was over: as women will go through extreme dangers, stand at the surgeon’s table during terrible operations, be great and strong in a great crisis, and then suddenly faint and fall when the work is over, unable to bear the remembrance of what they have gone through.
This swooning of Lady Macbeth is the crisis of her nature. From this time forward she is no more what she has appeared; we hear no more urging of Macbeth to strengthen his throne by other crimes; no more taunts by her that he is infirm of purpose; no more allusions to his amiable weaknesses of character. She has begun to know him and to fear him. She only endeavors to tranquilize him and content him with what he has got. But still she does not know him; for his nature, before hidden, like secret writing, comes out little by little before the fire of his heated ambition and superstitious fears.
At this swooning-point the two characters of Lady Macbeth and her husband cross each other. She has thus far only made the running for Macbeth, and he now takes up the race and passes her; she not only does not follow, but withdraws. Henceforth he rushes to his goal alone; alone he arranges the death of Banquo and Fleance.