uld well become
A woman's story, at a winter's fire,
Authoriz'd by her grandam! Shame itself!
Why do you make such faces? When all's done
You look but on a stool.
What! quite unmann'd in folly?

Yet when the guests are dismissed, and they are left alone, she says no
more, and not a syllable of reproach or scorn escapes her: a few words
in submissive reply to his questions, and an entreaty to seek repose,
are all she permits herself to utter. There is a touch of pathos and of
tenderness in this silence which has always affected me beyond
expression: it is one of the most masterly and most beautiful traits of
character in the whole play.

Lastly, it is clear that in a mind constituted like that of Lady
Macbeth, and not utterly depraved and hardened by the habit of crime,
conscience must wake some time or other, and bring with it remorse
closed by despair, and despair by death. This great moral retribution
was to be displayed to us--but how? Lady Macbeth is not a woman to start
at shadows; she mocks at air-drawn daggers; she sees no imagined
spectres rise from the tomb to appall or accuse her.[115] The towering
bravery of _her_ mind disdains the visionary terrors which haunt her
weaker husband. We know, or rather we feel, that she who could give a
voice to the most direful intent, and call on the spirits that wait on
mortal thoughts to "unsex her," and "stop up all access and passage of
remorse"--to that remorse would have given nor tongue nor sound; and
that rather than have uttered a complaint, she would have held her
breath and died. To have given her a confidant, though in the partner of
her guilt, would have been a degrading resource, and have disappointed
and enfeebled all our previous impressions of her character; yet justice
is to be done, and we are to be made acquainted with that which the
woman herself would have suffered a thousand deaths of torture rather
than have betrayed. In the sleeping scene we have a glimpse into the
depths of that inward hell: the seared brain and broken heart are laid
bare before us in the helplessness of slumber. By a judgment the most
sublime ever imagined, yet the most unforced, natural, and inevitable,
the sleep of her who murdered sleep is no longer repose, but a
condensation of resistless horrors which the prostrate intellect and
powerless will can neither baffle nor repel. We shudder and are
satisfied; yet our human sympathies are again touc