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(Continued from Vol. VII, page 70)
Yet, although he shrinks back no longer from any sort of evil deed, he does so before the horrible pictures of his phantasies, the hallucinations of his unconscious. Here is where Shakespeare's genius enters. The Macbeth of the Chronicle commits throughout all his acts of horror apparently in cold blood. At least nothing to the contrary is reported. With Shakespeare on the other hand Macbeth, who is represented in the beginning as more ambitious than cruel, is pathologically tainted. From his youth on he suffered from frequent visions, which, for example, caused him to see before Duncan's murder an imaginary dagger. This “strange infirmity, which is nothing To those that know me,” comes to light most vividly on the appearance of Banquo's ghost at the banquet. Lady Macbeth must use all her presence of mind to save at least the outward appearance. With friendly exhortation, yet with grim reproof and scornful word, she attempts to bring her husband to himself. In this last scene, when she interposes in Macbeth's behavior, she stands completely at the height. Not until the guests have departed does she grow slack in her replies. In truth neither her husband's resolution to wade on in blood nor his word that strange things haunt his brain can draw from her more than the response, “You lack the season of all natures, sleep.” It seems as if she had collapsed exhausted after her tremendous psychical effort.
Shakespeare has in strange fashion told us nothing more of what goes on further in her soul, though he overmotivates everything else, even devotes whole scenes to this one purpose. We first see her again in the last act in the famous sleep walking scene. She