en me, with these hangman's hands.
Listening their fear, I could not say, _Amen!_
When they did say, _God bless us!_

LADY MACBETH.

Consider it not so deeply!

MACBETH.

But wherefore could not I pronounce, amen?
I had most need of blessing, and amen
Stuck in my throat.

LADY MACBETH.

These deeds must not be thought
After these ways: so, it will make us mad.

MACBETH.

Methought I heard a voice cry,
"Sleep no more," &c. &c.

LADY MACBETH.

What do you mean? who was it that thus cried?
Why, worthy Thane,
You do unbend your noble strength, to think
So brainsickly of things.--Go, get some water, &c. &c.

Afterwards, in act iii., she is represented as muttering to herself,

Nought's had, all's spent,
When our desire is got without content;

yet immediately addresses her moody and conscience-stricken husband--

How now, my lord? why do you keep alone,
Of sorriest fancies your companions making?
Using those thoughts, which should indeed have died
With them they think on? Things without remedy,
Should be without regard; what's done, is done.

But she is nowhere represented as urging him on to new crimes, so far
from it, that when Macbeth darkly hints his purposed assassination of
Banquo, and she inquires his meaning, he replies,

Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,
Till thou approve the deed.

The same may be said of the destruction of Macduff's family. Every one
must perceive how our detestation of the woman had been increased, if
she had been placed before us as suggesting and abetting those
additional cruelties into which Macbeth is hurried by his mental
cowardice.

If my feeling of Lady Macbeth's character be just to the conception of
the poet, then she is one who could steel herself to the commission of a
crime from necessity and expediency, and be daringly wicked for a great
end, but not likely to perpetrate gratuitous murders from any vague or
selfish fears. I do not mean to say that the perfect confidence existing
between herself and Macbeth could possibly leave her in ignorance of his
actions or designs: that heart-broken and shuddering allusion to the
murder of Lady Macduff (in the sleep