ance
impressions coming from without (as sometimes with Lear), or of ideas
emerging from its unconscious depths and pursuing one another across its
passive surface. The somnambulism of Lady Macbeth is such a condition.
There is no rational connection in the sequence of images and ideas. The
sight of blood on her hand, the sound of the clock striking the hour for
Duncan's murder, the hesitation of her husband before that hour came,
the vision of the old man in his blood, the idea of the murdered wife of
Macduff, the sight of the hand again, Macbeth's 'flaws and starts' at
the sight of Banquo's ghost, the smell on her hand, the washing of hands
after Duncan's murder again, her husband's fear of the buried Banquo,
the sound of the knocking at the gate--these possess her, one after
another, in this chance order. It is not much less accidental than the
order of Ophelia's ideas; the great difference is that with Ophelia
total insanity has effaced or greatly weakened the emotional force of
the ideas, whereas to Lady Macbeth each new image or perception comes
laden with anguish. There is, again, scarcely a sign of the exaltation
of disordered imagination; we are conscious rather of an intense
suffering which forces its way into light against resistance, and speaks
a language for the most part strikingly bare in its diction and simple
in its construction. This language stands in strong contrast with that
of Macbeth in the surrounding scenes, full of a feverish and almost
furious excitement, and seems to express a far more desolating misery.

The effect is extraordinarily impressive. The soaring pride and power of
Lady Macbeth's first speeches return on our memory, and the change is
felt with a breathless awe. Any attempt, even by Shakespeare, to draw
out the moral enfolded in this awe, would but weaken it. For the moment,
too, all the language of poetry--even of Macbeth's poetry--seems to be
touched with unreality, and these brief toneless sentences seem the only
voice of truth.[249]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 227: So Mrs. Siddons is said to have given the passage.]

[Footnote 228: Surely the usual interpretation of 'We fail?' as a
question of contemptuous astonishment, is right. 'We fail!' gives
practically the same sense, but alters the punctuation of the first two
Folios. In either case, 'But,' I think, means 'Only.' On the other hand
the proposal to read 'We fail.' with a full stop, as expressive of
sublime acceptance of the