en in
her passionate contempt at his hesitation, and her passionate eagerness
to overcome it, she might easily accuse him, doubtless with
exaggeration, and probably with conscious exaggeration, of having
actually proposed the murder. And Macbeth, knowing that when he wrote
the letter he really had been thinking of murder, and indifferent to
anything except the question whether murder should be done, would easily
let her statement pass unchallenged.

This interpretation still seems to me not unnatural. The alternative
(unless we adopt the idea of an agreement prior to the action of the
play) is to suppose that Lady Macbeth refers throughout the passage to
some interview subsequent to her husband's return, and that, in making
her do so, Shakespeare simply forgot her speeches on welcoming Macbeth
home, and also forgot that at any such interview 'time' and 'place' did
'adhere.' It is easy to understand such forgetfulness in a spectator and
even in a reader; but it is less easy to imagine it in a poet whose
conception of the two characters throughout these scenes was evidently
so burningly vivid.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 291: The 'swearing' _might_ of course, on this view, occur off
the stage within the play; but there is no occasion to suppose this if
we are obliged to put the proposal outside the play.]

[Footnote 292: To this it might be answered that the effect of the
prediction was to make him feel, 'Then I shall succeed if I carry out
the plan of murder,' and so make him yield to the idea over again. To
which I can only reply, anticipating the next argument, 'How is it that
Shakespeare wrote the speech in such a way that practically everybody
supposes the idea of murder to be occurring to Macbeth for the first
time?']

[Footnote 293: It might be answered here again that the actor,
instructed by Shakespeare, could act the start of fear so as to convey
quite clearly the idea of definite guilt. And this is true; but we ought
to do our best to interpret the text before we have recourse to this
kind of suggestion.]

NOTE DD.

DID LADY MACBETH REALLY FAINT?

In the scene of confusion where the murder of Duncan is discovered,
Macbeth and Lennox return from the royal chamber; Lennox describes the
grooms who, as it seemed, had done the deed:

Their hands and faces were all badged with blood;
So were their daggers, which unwiped we found
Upon their pillows: