Sleep Walking and Moon Walking Part 8

It seems to me significant that Kleist freely introduced into his drama the complete condemnation to death as well as night wandering and moon walking. In the first point he had turned tradition quite to its opposite. In the original the great Friedrich relates that on the triumphant battle field the elector has already forgiven the prince that he had so lightly risked the welfare of the whole state: "If I had judged you according to the stern martial law, you would have forfeited your life. But G.o.d forbid that I should sully the brightness of this day by shedding the blood of a prince, who was once the foremost instrument of my victory." Personal reasons, and, as we know from psychoa.n.a.lysis, these are always infantile reasons, must have been involved when Kleist incorporated this directly into his poetry and yet in so striking a fas.h.i.+on. Some of these reasons I have been able to set forth above.

It is now clear that the apparently as.e.xual desire for fame does not lack its erotic foundation. The desire for fame is so greatly exaggerated in Heinrich von Kleist that he will do no less than tear the laurel from Goethe's forehead, because in his infantile att.i.tude he hopes through an unheard of poetic activity to supplant the father with the mother. After the s.h.i.+pwreck of his masterpiece, the Guiskard material, he longed for death because life had no more value for him, but he finds later in the "Prinz von Homburg" a happier solution. For not only does the mother herself now crown him but does it with the father's affectionate blessing. And the old theme of night wandering and moon walking, that is climbing into bed with the loved one, finds its place here although in an opposite form and under a certain s.e.xual repression. The child does not come to the mother but she to him and places the longed for crown upon his head even with the concurrence of the father. Also the fact that the prince transgresses the elector's commands as the result of his moon walking, to which the prince is subject, must somehow, at least by a.n.a.logy, have been created from the poet's own breast. Nothing is said about this in regard to Kleist, of whose inner life we know so little. Yet his very great interest in noctambulism and similar "night sides of the human soul," as well as his exceptional understanding of the same, show that he at least must have possessed a disposition toward it. It should be emphasized once more in conclusion that the moon walking in the "Prinz von Homburg" does not lack the infantile s.e.xual root, nor is the corresponding erotic purpose wanting, which we have always found, heretofore, to come to the loved one without being held responsible.

"DAS SuNDKIND," by Ludwig Anzengruber.

"Das Sundkind" ("The Sin Child") by Anzengruber (in the first volume of his "Dorfgange") tells of an apparently non-s.e.xually colored wandering by moonlight. There a 45-year-old pitch worker, the mother of twelve children, who had all died except the narrator, and for three years a widow, had become pregnant with a "sin child" whose father no one would acknowledge himself. She had always been a discreet woman, and was almost equal to her son in her work, although he at thirty years old was at the height of his manly strength. She had always been as exemplary in love as in her work, a combination, as we know, not rare to find. Having matured early she was with her first child at the age of fifteen and when she was a widow "the people could not wonder enough how long it would be before she showed her age." Not rarely "love" suddenly overcame her and even toward her grown son she could occasionally make quite "G.o.d forbidden" eyes. One might almost draw the conclusion from the following circ.u.mstance that he also was more deeply dependent on the mother than he might acknowledge to himself. Left alone with her during her confinement, he was not able to look at her but drummed on the window pane and became more and more confused although "G.o.d knows, there was no call for it." Then he turned around with his face burning red and said, "You ought to be ashamed, Mother, you ought to be ashamed!" Soon however not only remorse seized him but he began to curse at the folk, who see in the infant not his brother but only the "child of sin." "Do you think for a moment that I would bear a grudge against the little innocent worm? Curse you, anyone who would separate the children of one mother from each other!" After he had lost the love of his youth in earlier years, he had no more interest in women but dwelt with his mother alone on the land which belonged to the family. Later Martin toiled early and late for the illegitimate child Poldl, as if he were its true father, for whom moreover he never might make inquiry.

When Poldl was perhaps sixteen years old, his mother's health began to fail and with her anxiety at approaching death she began to be concerned for her soul, which she, according to human custom, expressed as care for her illegitimate child. He should dedicate himself to the Lord, should become a clergyman, by which he would remain spotless. Martin, with keen insight, thought thus, "That is indeed the easiest way to get rid of one's own sin, to let some one else atone for it" and feared it might go hard with Poldl, hot blooded by inheritance, but he had no effect upon the mother, who was supported by the boy's guardian. Poldl also did not permit himself simply to be talked of by her, but applied himself ever more deeply to his future sacred calling, especially since all the people of the place already paid court to him as if he were even now an ordained clergyman. "Soon he had no other thought than of his future holy office and he might stay or go where he would, for nothing was for him too good or too bad to remind him of it." "He strolled about one entire summer," Martin tells us, "and did not condescend to the least bit of work but when I was out with the farm hands making hay in the meadows or reaping in the field, it very often happened that he rushed unexpectedly out of the bushes and began preaching to them. This seemed quite right to the lazy folk, they would let their work lie and would stand gathered about him and listen devoutly to him and I could not take ill their so excessive piety. The mother thought as they did and found that his absurd preaching there went straight to her heart."

We will stop here a moment. What drove Poldl so to the priestly calling, what made him so intent upon it? We might mention in pa.s.sing the vanity and the high sense of importance, which is created by the desire in the sixteen year old boy after the most reverend calling. Yet, though I would in no way undervalue his ambition or the satisfaction of a so pleasantly tickled vanity, yet decisive and determining these can scarcely be. Strong motives must govern in order to explain more completely such an impulsion. When Poldl strode over the fields and began to preach, "At that time the Lord Jesus spoke to the disciples ...,"

then he was indeed not far from conceiving himself as the Holy One and his mother as the Virgin Mary. Jesus had offered himself for the sins of man, as he now for the sin of his mother. According to this it is nothing else than his love to the mother which drives him to the sacred office, in which it is not to be forgotten that such a love, which leads to a thought obsession, is in the light of experience never without the erotic.

This mingling of sensuality and love to the mother, and to an older woman who could be his mother, shows itself still more clearly two years later, when he has a holiday from the seminary for a few days. He finds at home a buxom picture of a woman, a relative on a visit, almost twice as old as he, the very essence of cheeriness and health. "The boy clung closest to her. In spite of his eighteen years he still seemed childish enough and this he turned to account, and 'played the calf with her,'"

to use the excellent word of the writer.

Six years later Poldl was appointed to a.s.sist an invalid vicar, in whose home a regular vicar's cook kept house with her sixteen year old girl, whom she had from the old vicar. In the same year Poldl's mother was laid to rest and her son appeared at her funeral, where the robust peasant girls and maidens pressed themselves upon him. But he "withdrew shyly from every one of them and gave his hand to no one, as he obligingly might have done. He has always before this appeared like milk and blood," thought Martin, the anxious one, "now he has an unhealthy look, no color, sunken cheeks, and his eyes are deep within, he stares at the ground and cannot bear to have a stranger look at him. It does not please me."

All this is clear and transparent to the physician. In the young man now twenty-four years old the inherited blood began to make itself felt, and at the same time the cook and her daughter let no stimulus be wanting.

He suffered under his self restraint, grew pale and hollow and because only his actions remained chaste but not his thought, he could no more look freely upon a woman. When he now preached in the pulpit, he spoke of the devil as the tempter and of all his evil suggestions. He could declare what evil thoughts come to a man and in closing he threatened his flock most earnestly that the devil would carry them all away together. We know well that no sins are more condemned than those which one holds himself capable of committing or which one would himself most gladly commit if only one dared.

The young priest owed it to a great love which he felt for the miller's daughter that he kept himself pure at least in body. So much the more was the vicar's cook intent upon bringing about his downfall through her girl. Then they could again rule at the vicarage, since the old vicar's days were numbered, when Poldl came into the fat living left vacant. It was at the burial of the old priest that Poldl delivered at the grave the funeral oration for the dead, and endeavored to lay the good example which the old man had given upon the hearts of his flock. As he lifted his eyes once and caught those of the miller's Marie-Liese, who was listening so devoutly, not taking her eyes from him, he suddenly remained stuck in the midst of his speech and could find his place in the text again only with difficulty. Was he not able to maintain before her pure glance the fiction of a n.o.ble priest, did it come to his consciousness that he was wandering in the same paths on which the other had been most severely wounded? Something of this the miller's daughter seems to have had in mind, for as she later begged his pardon for having confused him by staring at him, at the same time she advised him not to have anything to do with those at the vicarage. The vicar's daughter, who had stolen up un.o.bserved, shook her fist at them both, while her mother drew Poldl later into a corner to give vent to her feelings, "You cannot have the miller's daughter and do not for a moment believe that she would be willing to have you."

On his death bed in the lesser parish, which he held later, he complained to Martin, "I should never have been a priest"--with his inherited pa.s.sionate blood, in spite of his mother's urging and his love to her. "Martin, you have no idea how hard it is to run caught in a sack; it costs a deal of trouble to keep oneself upright. If one does not twist about one falls into it. The cowl was such a sack for me....

Brother, I have unwittingly fallen into disgrace as a wild beast into a trap, and I am more ashamed of it perhaps than the worst sinner of that which he has done deliberately and maliciously. I would not have stayed in the trap, could everything at first only have remained secret, so that no one would have been afraid to extend a clean hand to me, by which I might have found myself and might again belong to the world and everything. But that the others knew right well and they wanted me for themselves and therefore they have behaved without fear or shame so that soon everything was free and open to all Rodenstein from the forest house at one end to the mill at the other. From that time on I have seen no friendly eye, and the blue, yes, the blue eyes (of the miller's daughter) were always turned defiantly away from me. And because she was unkind to me she became all at once kind to some one whom she formerly could not bear. The folk shook their heads and prophesied little good for her. So the time came when I must come here to this parish. There lay upon me what can soon crush one to the ground, for peace and honor were squandered and those who had won them from me hung like chains upon me and the bit of suns.h.i.+ne that I had had in life I had to leave behind in Rodenstein. When however there was added to this concern for her to whom I owed the bit of happiness, I broke under it and then they took me and brought me here and I let myself be brought."

So had he truly become a child of sin with the feeling of lost purity and a great consciousness of guilt upon his soul. And that he had not merely squandered his own honor and peace but had also dragged the beloved to harm, so that she must have doubts of her purity, this does the rest for him and makes him the willing play ball of the parish folk.

From the first day when he took over his new charge, he began to wander in the full moonlight up to the ghostly hour of midnight. At the stroke of twelve he went to the pulpit, over which a bright moonbeam lay, which also lighted up his face as bright as day. With closed eyes he knelt in the pulpit, "his folded hands before him on the upholstered border, the head bowed upon it as if in quiet prayer to collect himself as usual before the sermon. All at once he raised himself, bent forward a little as if the pews were full of people and he wished first to look them over, then he threw his arms to either side and stood there like one who would say, 'Strike me dead, if I have offended you, but I cannot do otherwise!' He did not say this but in a voice as of one speaking in a dream he uttered the words, 'I know of nothing!' And then once more--his hands extended toward heaven and spread open, as if he would show everything to all within or about the church--'I know of nothing!'

Afterward he turned and went."

In this cla.s.sic picture of the brother are some features of a new sort.

Above all, s.e.xuality appears only incidentally to play a part, in so far as it awakens the latent tendency to moon walking. Poldl begins to wander at midnight after the miller's daughter is lost to him and he is tortured by anxiety for her future. Otherwise he does what so frequently is done by the moon walker, he carries out the apparently harmless activity of the day as he prays in the church before an imaginary audience. At least he truly imitates the formalities with which prayer begins, though the conclusion does not accord with the beginning. It sounds like a justification before the folk of Rodenstein, who have taken offence at his action, that he stands there in Luther's place as one who cannot do otherwise though one strike him dead. At the same time the repeated outcry at the end, "I know of nothing, I know of nothing!"

smacks not only of a denial that he did not know perhaps why Marie had fallen into distress, but suggests the directly infantile. Thus a child insists, when it is reproached, that it has done nothing.

Let us take up again the threads of our narrative. Poldl faded day by day under the pressure of his heavy burden of soul. At last there remained nothing else for him but to let them write to his brother that he lay sick and wished to see him. As Martin entered the sickroom Poldl stretched his lean arms toward him, breathed a heartfelt cry and began to weep aloud like a child. "You are like a father to me, Martin, you are like a father to me!" And from time to time he added, "Forgive me!"

Then he stroked Martin's rough hands, "the hands which had toiled for his daily bread when he was a boy." And now he poured forth his confession. He should not have become a priest, then the people of the parish would have remained strangers to him and he perhaps would have succeeded to the Rodenstein mill. His entire concern centered itself about this, that he had not only lost Marie-Liese but was also to blame for the overthrow of her happiness. He related to his brother how the parish folk had apprehended him, so that he was covered with shame, how they all hung about the great bell of Rodenstein until finally the miller's daughter turned from him and to another. After the confession was made Poldl fell asleep contentedly, yet only to wander that very midnight. The invalid was very ill, when Martin talked with him again the next day. And suddenly he began to speak of the days of his childhood and it was remarkable to the brother "how he had remembered the most trivial thing in regard to it and it seemed to me as if he himself often wondered at it in the midst of his speech. Bit by bit thus he took up his life and we talked together of the time when he ran about the sitting-room and the court in his little child's frock, until the time when he went to school, to the seminary, to Rodenstein.... The sun had set when with our prattle we had come to the place where we were, at Weissenhofen. 'That's the end,' I said, 'and there remains nothing else to tell.'--'Yes, yes,' said my brother reflectively, 'that's the end, and there remains nothing more to tell.'" Soon he noticed how truly Martin had spoken in every respect, for the end had come for him now physically. With a blessing on his lips for the newly won brother of his heart, he laid himself down to sleep. "It had become still as a mouse in the room. After perhaps a quarter of an hour I heard him say, 'Yes, yes, were we now together, only you must not hold me so tightly to your breast.' With this he threw himself suddenly over to the right, drew a deep breath, and it was over."

Let us consider once more the circ.u.mstances of the moon walking which accompanied this. He begins with this after his removal from Rodenstein and from his heart's beloved. There had preceded the grief over his wasted honor and his forfeited peace, the pain at the loss of the miller's daughter and, which is rather conclusive, the torturing regard for her future, which completely paralyzed his will power. The latter point is somewhat remarkable. For at bottom it was never said that her marriage was unhappy. The people had shaken their heads before it, only, and prophesied nothing good. When Martin fourteen years after the death of his brother meets Marie-Liese at his grave, she has become a handsome woman and has been a widow for eight years but is well poised mentally and lives for her boy. In Poldl's concern the wish must indeed have been father of the thought. If he could not have his treasure, then she should not be happy at the side of another man. Yet apparently this does not refer alone to the miller's daughter. Psychoa.n.a.lytic experience teaches that where the reaction manifests itself all too strongly this happens because it is not merely a reaction to a present, but above all to a long past experience, which stands behind the other and offers first the original actual tonal background. Only apparently is the effect too strong, if we measure it merely by the actual cause, in truth however the action corresponds to all the causes, that is the new added to the old.

We can say further, if we apply this experience to the poet's narrative, Poldl had not merely lost the miller's daughter forever by entangling himself with the vicar's daughter, but far more another, the one for whom he had entered orders. The mother had said to Martin, "There is only one way, one single way by which my boy can be saved from ruin and I can obtain peace and forgiveness from my sin." This task, to atone for the mother by a holy life, had not prevented him from a pa.s.sionate love for Marie-Liese or from an intrigue with the pastor's daughter, yet, since he had on the latter's account lost his purity, something else was also laid waste thereby, that which had given peace to him and a purpose to his muddled life, the love for his mother. As he tarried already half in the other world, his last words were, "Yes, yes, were we now together, only you must not hold me so tightly to your breast." This had the mother in her tenderness done to her little boy. We see here the regression to the infantile, to a primitive child libido.

The matter can be followed still further. The walking by moonlight itself did not begin, in spite of every predisposing cause, until Poldl was connected with the new parish and no longer shared the same locality with his beloved. It is not revealed whether the pulpit of the Weissenhofen church looked perhaps in the direction of Rodenstein or not. It seems to me significant that the pastor's daughter crept after Poldl all night long, not perhaps merely the first time, as if she suspected his hidden erotic or feared even that he might go out toward Rodenstein. He must also every midnight establish the fact that, in spite of his sins of the flesh, he considered himself still worthy to be a priest. For the same reason he himself read the ma.s.s every day until near the end. Indeed he read this not merely in the daytime but also at midnight when other priests sought rest. And by his behavior in sleep walking it was as if he wished each time anew to justify himself before his Rodenstein parish, and especially before his beloved. The Luther att.i.tude referred to the former, "Though you slay me, I cannot do otherwise!" the outspoken infantile expression, the only words which he actually speaks, "I know of nothing!" is for the latter. Thus a small boy protests his innocence when any one faces him with a misdeed. It was as if he wanted to go back to his beloved, to Marie-Liese, as if to his own mother.

Again we find libidinous and infantile causes as the starting point of moonlight walking and sleep walking. Only the erotic no longer appears so openly as with the other poets but receives a certain disguise. Yet brother Martin, the philosopher of life, recognizes clearly the kernel of the matter: "So I had also to witness the end with him, as with so many of my brothers and sisters. But I still think today this need not have happened, if the mother had permitted him his life as it would have been lived out freely by himself. First she should not have counted it so great as sin, for otherwise there would have been no pitch worker Poldl in the world. Although she thought of it within herself that it was a sin, she should have so looked upon it that she could have settled it with the Lord G.o.d. Ah yes! he had to go about in the cowl, which had become a greater sack than a farmer's jumper and there all the sins of others enter, but if no one shall commit one in his own right, how would one find shelter for all these? If I had only at that time been obstinate about the planning of this thing, I would have foreseen the wrong of it and have known that the mother was an old woman, and with many conscience grows when reason is going to sleep. Faith, honor and peace he would never have squandered, for the farmer's position does not play with so high a stake. Still today the little fellow runs gaily about the yard under my eyes.... Ah, you poor sin child, how wantonly was the joy of living destroyed for you!"

"MACBETH," by Shakespeare.

As I now undertake the a.n.a.lysis of the case of Lady Macbeth, I stand not only before the last but the most difficult portion of my work. Here indeed everything s.e.xual and the erotic itself seem to be quite excluded; and my attempt appears to fail in both directions, in the s.e.xual as well as in the infantile, to apply to Shakespeare's heroine what my psychoa.n.a.lytically treated cases, as well as all those others from literature have furnished. The poet has devoted no more than one single scene to this entire sleep walking including the grounds for it, and he has said as little of Lady Macbeth's childhood as of her s.e.xual erotic life. Our knowledge of Shakespeare's life is above all so meager, if we turn from the case to the poet himself, that the difficulties tower in our way almost mountain high. The reader will in this case, which presents itself so unfavorably, have to expect neither that certainty nor even that high degree of probability of results, which the earlier examples gave us. Here through no fault of mine all aids to interpretation are wanting. I should consider it as something accomplished if the reader did not say at the close, "The case of Lady Macbeth contradicts all that has been heretofore discovered," as it will appear at first.

We will begin with the literary source for Macbeth, Holinshed's "History of Scotland."[33] Shakespeare confined himself so closely to this that he took over accurately, even to the dialogue, whole scenes into his tragedy. The deviations are for this reason so much the more interesting. In the chronicle Macbeth is simply the tyrant. At the very beginning it is said of him, "he would certainly have been held as the most worthy of rulers, if his nature had not had so strong a tendency to cruelty." His cruelty is frequently emphasized, both at the bier of the dead Macdowald and toward the dwellers in the western isles, who "called him a bloodthirsty tyrant and the cruel murderer of those to whom the king's grace had granted their lives." Finally also in the camp of the Danes when they were overcome "he wrought such havoc upon all sides without the least resistance that it was terrible to look upon." A change seems however to have taken place in his character when, after the murder of Duncan, he had seized the kingdom for himself. "He began to reform the laws and to root out all the irregularities and abuses in the administration." He freed the land for many years from all robbers, guarded most carefully the church and clergy, and, to put it briefly, was looked upon as the defender and s.h.i.+eld of everything blameless. He established also many good laws and ruled the kingdom for ten years with the greatest wisdom and justice.

[33] I cite this according to "Die Quellen des Shakespeare," by Karl Simrock, 2d edition, 1870.

"This apparent equity and zeal for all that is best was however merely hypocrisy; he wished only to win the favor of the people. Tyrants are always distrustful, they are always afraid that others will rob them of their power by the same unrighteous means by which they themselves have succeeded. As soon as Macbeth discovered any plans against himself, he no longer concealed his intentions but practised and permitted every kind of cruelty." At first the words of the three sisters of fate lay always in his thoughts. In order to attain to what they had prophesied he was willing to have Banquo and his son murdered. Yet the murderers hired for the purpose killed only the former while Fleance succeeded in escaping. "Luck seems to have deserted Macbeth after the murder of Banquo. None of his undertakings were successful, every one feared for his life and scarcely dared appear before the king. He feared every one and every one feared him, so that he was always seeking opportunity for the execution of suspected persons. His distrust and his cruelty increased day by day, his bloodthirstiness was not to be appeased.... He gave himself over recklessly to his natural ferocity, oppressed his subjects even to the poorest and permitted himself every shameful deed."

Shakespeare has represented the rest fairly truly according to Holinshed, only that in actuality this lasted for seven years, until Macbeth fell at the hands of Macduff.

It is also worthy of note what Holinshed has made the ground of the murder of Duncan. There preceded in the chronicle the promise of the three witches, further Malcolm's appointment as prince of c.u.mberland and, as a result of this, succession to the kingdom. Now Malcolm could "ascend the throne directly after his father's death, while in the old laws it was provided that the nearest relative would be placed upon the throne, if, at the death of his predecessor, the prince who was called to the succession was not yet capable of ruling." This latter had happened to Macbeth, Duncan's cousin. "Then began Macbeth, from whom by this arrangement of the king all hope of the throne was taken, to consider the means whereby he could seize the crown by force for himself. For he believed that Duncan had done him a great wrong, when he named his infant son as successor to his throne and had so annulled all other claims. Moreover the words of the witches encouraged him to his purpose. But foremost of all his wife, a proud and haughty woman, who longed with most burning desire after the name of queen, would not desist until she had strengthened him to the uttermost in his intention." This last sentence is the chronicler's only notice of Lady Macbeth.

We can now measure what Shakespeare has contributed himself to her character as well as to that of her husband. At first the absolute cruelty, which with Holinshed was the chief trait of his character, is wanting in Macbeth, and therefore ambition is mentioned first. Macbeth becomes the tyrant wading in blood first after the murder of Duncan and then more from a necessity to defend himself. His own wife characterizes best the earlier hero:

"Yet I do fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness, To catch the nearest way; Thou would'st be great; Art not without ambition; but without The illness should attend it. What thou would'st highly That would'st thou holily, would'st not play false, And yet would'st wrongly win: thou'd'st have, great Glamis, That which cries, _Thus thou must do, if thou have it_; And that which rather thou dost fear to do, Than wishest should be undone."

Yet Macbeth at bottom dared not murder the king, he only toyed with the thought. He must be instigated from without, if the deed is not to be put off until the Greek calends. Lady Macbeth from the very beginning feels it her task to strengthen her laggard and doubting husband in his ambition. This Shakespeare had already found in Holinshed. As the chronicle has pictured it: "Still more did his wife urge him on to attack the king, for she was exorbitantly ambitious and burned with an inextinguishable desire to bear the name of queen."[34] While she thus incited her husband, she fulfilled yet more the longing of her own heart:

"Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear; And chastise with the valour of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round."

[34] The words of Holinshed's chronicle.

She summons herself also to the task, calls the evil spirits of the air to her aid and will become a man, since her husband is no man:

"Come, come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, uns.e.x me here; And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood, Stop up the access and pa.s.sage to remorse; That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it! Come to my woman's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers!"

When Macbeth announces, "Duncan comes here to-night," she asks sinisterly, "And when goes hence?"--Macbeth: "To-morrow--as he purposes."--Lady Macbeth:

"O, never Shall sun that morrow see!

. . . . . He that's coming Must be provided for; and you shall put This night's great business into my despatch; Which shall to all our nights and days to come Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom."

It may be seen that the really cruel one is here first Lady Macbeth and not her husband. He on the contrary must always torture himself with scruples and doubts. He constantly holds before himself the outward results of his deed, brings everything together which should protect Duncan from his dagger and can only say in regard to the opposite course:

"I have no spur To p.r.i.c.k the sides of my intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'er-leaps itself, And falls on the other."

And he explains to his wife, "We will proceed no further in this business." Then must Lady Macbeth rebuke him as a coward, no longer trust his love, if he, when time and place so wait upon him, retract from his purpose. She lays on the strongest accent, yes, uses the "word of fury":

"I have given suck; and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me; I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums, And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn, as you Have done to this."--

and finally develops the entire plan and promises her a.s.sistance, before she can persuade her husband to the murder.

She has stupefied the two chamberlains, upon whom the guilt shall be rolled, with spiced wine and drunk herself full of courage for the deed, as so many criminals.

"That which hath made them drunk, hath made me bold; What hath quenched them, hath given me fire."

Then she hears Macbeth within at his gruesome work uttering a terrified question, and continues:

"Alack! I am afraid they have awaked, And 'tis not done:--the attempt, and not the deed, Confounds us;--Hark!--I laid their daggers ready, He could not miss them.--Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done't."

Then her husband appears with the daggers. As he looks at his b.l.o.o.d.y hands a cry is wrung from him, "This is a sorry sight." Yet the Lady repulses him harshly, "A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight."