Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it; what thou wouldst highly,
That wouldst thou holily,

one sees that 'ambition' and 'great' and 'highly' and even 'illness' are
to her simply terms of praise, and 'holily' and 'human kindness' simply
terms of blame. Moral distinctions do not in this exaltation exist for
her; or rather they are inverted: 'good' means to her the crown and
whatever is required to obtain it, 'evil' whatever stands in the way of
its attainment. This attitude of mind is evident even when she is alone,
though it becomes still more pronounced when she has to work upon her
husband. And it persists until her end is attained. But, without being
exactly forced, it betrays a strain which could not long endure.

Besides this, in these earlier scenes the traces of feminine weakness
and human feeling, which account for her later failure, are not absent.
Her will, it is clear, was exerted to overpower not only her husband's
resistance but some resistance in herself. Imagine Goneril uttering the
famous words,

Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done 't.

They are spoken, I think, without any sentiment--impatiently, as though
she regretted her weakness: but it was there. And in reality, quite
apart from this recollection of her father, she could never have done
the murder if her husband had failed. She had to nerve herself with wine
to give her 'boldness' enough to go through her minor part. That
appalling invocation to the spirits of evil, to unsex her and fill her
from the crown to the toe topfull of direst cruelty, tells the same tale
of determination to crush the inward protest. Goneril had no need of
such a prayer. In the utterance of the frightful lines,

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 pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this,

her voice should doubtless rise until it reaches, in 'dash'd the brains
out,' an almost hysterical scream.[227] These lines show unmistakably
that strained exaltation which, as soon as the end is reached, vanishes,
never to return.

The greatness of Lady Macbeth lies almost wholly in courage and force of
will. It is an error to regard her as remarkable on the intellectual
side. In acting a part she sho