This it is that tortures him, and this only.
“But in them nature’s copy’s not eterne,”
says she; meaning, as she has throughout this scene, solely to console him and draw his thoughts away. They may die; a thousand accidents may happen to them; you may outlive them; don’t torture yourself with vain fears. “There’s comfort yet,” he cries, “they are assailable;” and now, after his old fashion, he breaks into poetry:
“Then be thou jocund: ere the bat hath flown
His cloister’d flight; ere, to black Hecate’s summons,
The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums,
Hath rung night’s yawning peal, there shall be done
A deed of dreadful note.”
“What’s to be done?” she cries; for having completely misunderstood him through all the previous part of this interview, she completely fails to see what he now means. But he has no longer confidence in her; and so, with caressing words, and probably with some caressing act, he answers her:
“Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou applaud the deed.”
How could she suspect his real meaning? This murdering hypocrite had just told her that Banquo was coming to the feast that night, and bade her be jovial, and said to her,—
“Let your remembrance apply to Banquo;
Present him eminence, both with eye and tongue.”
And this he proposes to her after having just left the murderers whom he has hired to waylay and kill Banquo, and entertaining no real doubt in his mind that Banquo will never reach the supper—certainly never reach it unless his plot miscarries. Well might she “marvel at his words.” What follows is full of poetry and wickedness; but it is plain that he was a mystery to her now, a riddle which she could not read.