ws immense self-control, but not much
skill. Whatever may be thought of the plan of attributing the murder of
Duncan to the chamberlains, to lay their bloody daggers on their
pillows, as if they were determined to advertise their guilt, was a
mistake which can be accounted for only by the excitement of the moment.
But the limitations of her mind appear most in the point where she is
most strongly contrasted with Macbeth,--in her comparative dulness of
imagination. I say 'comparative,' for she sometimes uses highly poetic
language, as indeed does everyone in Shakespeare who has any greatness
of soul. Nor is she perhaps less imaginative than the majority of his
heroines. But as compared with her husband she has little imagination.
It is not _simply_ that she suppresses what she has. To her, things
remain at the most terrible moment precisely what they were at the
calmest, plain facts which stand in a given relation to a certain deed,
not visions which tremble and flicker in the light of other worlds. The
probability that the old king will sleep soundly after his long journey
to Inverness is to her simply a fortunate circumstance; but one can
fancy the shoot of horror across Macbeth's face as she mentions it. She
uses familiar and prosaic illustrations, like

Letting 'I dare not' wait upon 'I would,'
Like the poor cat i' the adage,

(the cat who wanted fish but did not like to wet her feet); or,

We fail?
But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we'll not fail;[228]

or,

Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely?

The Witches are practically nothing to her. She feels no sympathy in
Nature with her guilty purpose, and would never bid the earth not hear
her steps, which way they walk. The noises before the murder, and during
it, are heard by her as simple facts, and are referred to their true
sources. The knocking has no mystery for her: it comes from 'the south
entry.' She calculates on the drunkenness of the grooms, compares the
different effects of wine on herself and on them, and listens to their
snoring. To her the blood upon her husband's hands suggests only the
taunt,

My hands are of your colour, but I shame
To wear a heart so white;

and the blood to her is merely 'this filthy witness,'--wor