Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 409, November 1849

"The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures – 'tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted Devil – "

believe me that her face was like ashes, as she returned to the chamber to gild the faces of the grooms with the dead man's blood. That knocking, too, alarmed the Lady – believe me – as much as her husband; and to keep cool and collected before him, so as to be able to support him at that moment with her advice, must have tried the utmost strength of her nature. Call her Fiend – she was Woman. Down stairs she comes – and stands among them all, at first like one alarmed only – astounded by what she hears – and striving to simulate the ignorance of the innocent – "What, in our house?" "Too cruel anywhere!" What she must have suffered then, Shakspeare lets us conceive for ourselves; and what on her husband's elaborate description of his inconsiderate additional murders. "The whole is too much for her" – she "is perplexed in the extreme" – and the sinner swoons.

NORTH.

Seward suggests a bold, strong, deep, tragical turn of the scene – that she faints actually. Well – so be it. I shall say, first, that I think it a weakness in my favourite; but I will go so far as to add that I can let it pass for a not unpardonable weakness – the occasion given. But I must deal otherwise with her biographer. Him I shall hold to a strict rendering of account. I will know of him what he is about, and what she is about. If she faints really, and against her will, having forcible reasons for holding her will clear, she must be shown fighting to the last effort of will, against the assault of womanly nature, and drop, vanquished, as one dead, without a sound. But the Thaness calls out lustily – she remembers, "as we shall make our griefs and clamours roar upon his death." She makes noise enough – takes good care to attract everybody's attention to her performance – for which I commend her. Calculate as nicely as you will – she distracts or diverts speculation, and makes an interesting and agreeable break in the conversation. – I think that the obvious meaning is the right meaning – and that she faints on purpose.

NORTH.

Decided in favour of Feint.

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.

NORTH.

By the Casting Vote of the President —Feint.

TALBOYS.

Let's to Lunch.

NORTH.

Go. You will find me sitting here when you come back.

Scene II

Scene —The Pavilion. Time —after Lunch

North – Talboys – Buller – Seward

NORTH.

Claudius, the Uncle-king in Hamlet, is perhaps the most odious character in all Shakspeare. But he does no unnecessary murders. He has killed the Father, and will the Son, all in regular order. But Macbeth plunges himself, like a drunken man, into unnecessary and injurious cruelties. He throws like a reckless gamester. If I am to own the truth, I don't know why he is so cruel. I don't think that he takes any pleasure in mere cruelty, like Nero —

BULLER.

What do we know of Nero? Was he mad?

NORTH.

I don't think that he takes any pleasure in mere cruelty, like Nero; but he seems to be under some infatuation that drags or drives him along. To kill is, in every difficulty, the ready resource that occurs to him – as if to go on murdering were, by some law of the Universe, the penalty which you must pay for having once murdered.

SEWARD.

I think, Sir, that without contradicting anything we said before Lunch about his Lordship or his Kingship, we may conceive in the natural Macbeth considerable force of Moral Intuition.

NORTH.

We may.

SEWARD.

Of Moral Intelligence?

NORTH.

Yes.

SEWARD.

Of Moral Obedience?

NORTH.

No.

SEWARD.

Moral Intuition, and Moral Intelligence breaking out, from time to time, all through – we understand how there is engendered in him strong self-dissatisfaction – thence perpetual goadings on – and desperate attempts to lose conscience in more and more crime.

NORTH.

Ay – Seward – even so. He tells you that he stakes soul and body upon the throw for a Crown. He has got the Crown – and paid for it. He must keep it – else he has bartered soul and body – for nothing! To make his first crime good– he strides gigantically along the road of which it opened the gate.

TALBOYS.

An almost morbid impressibility of imagination is energetically stamped, and universally recognised in the Thane, and I think, sir, that it warrants, to a certain extent, a sincerity of the mental movements. He really sees a fantastical dagger – he really hears fantastical voices – perhaps he really sees a fantastical Ghost. All this in him is Nature – not artifice – and a nature deeply, terribly, tempestuously commoved by the near contact of a murder imminent – doing – done. It is more like a murderer a-making than a murderer made.