Duncan
Under my battlements.

On the moment of Macbeth's rejoining her, after braving infinite dangers
and winning infinite praise, without a syllable on these subjects or a
word of affection, she goes straight to her purpose and permits him to
speak of nothing else. She takes the superior position and assumes the
direction of affairs,--appears to assume it even more than she really
can, that she may spur him on. She animates him by picturing the deed as
heroic, 'this night's _great_ business,' or 'our _great_ quell,' while
she ignores its cruelty and faithlessness. She bears down his faint
resistance by presenting him with a prepared scheme which may remove
from him the terror and danger of deliberation. She rouses him with a
taunt no man can bear, and least of all a soldier,--the word 'coward.'
She appeals even to his love for her:

from this time
Such I account thy love;

--such, that is, as the protestations of a drunkard. Her reasonings are
mere sophisms; they could persuade no man. It is not by them, it is by
personal appeals, through the admiration she extorts from him, and
through sheer force of will, that she impels him to the deed. Her eyes
are fixed upon the crown and the means to it; she does not attend to the
consequences. Her plan of laying the guilt upon the chamberlains is
invented on the spur of the moment, and simply to satisfy her husband.
Her true mind is heard in the ringing cry with which she answers his
question, 'Will it not be received ... that they have done it?'

Who _dares_ receive it other?

And this is repeated in the sleep-walking scene: 'What need we fear who
knows it, when none can call our power to account?' Her passionate
courage sweeps him off his feet. His decision is taken in a moment of
enthusiasm:

Bring forth men-children only;
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males.

And even when passion has quite died away her will remains supreme. In
presence of overwhelming horror and danger, in the murder scene and the
banquet scene, her self-control is perfect. When the truth of what she
has done dawns on her, no word of complaint, scarcely a word of her own
suffering, not a single word of her own as apart from his, escapes her
when others are by. She helps him, but never asks his help. She leans on
nothing but herself. And from the beginning to the end--though she makes
once or twice a slip in acting her