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Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth.
2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1905.
PAGE 361
MACBETH

mind that the thought of the dead man will not haunt him, like the memory of Duncan, if the deed is done by other hands.1 The deed is done: but, instead of peace descending on him, from the depths of his nature his half-murdered conscience rises; his deed confronts him in the apparition of Banquo's Ghost, and the horror of the night of his first murder returns. But, alas, it has less power, and he has more will. Agonized and trembling, he still faces this rebel image, and it yields:

                  Why, so: being gone,
I am a man again.

     Yes, but his secret is in the hands of the assembled lords. And, worse, this deed is as futile as the first. For, though Banquo is dead and even his Ghost is conquered, that inner torture is unassuaged. But he will not bear it. His guests have hardly left him when he turns roughly to his wife:

How say'st thou, that Macduff denies his person
At our great bidding?

Macduff it is that spoils his sleep. He shall perish -- he and aught else that bars the road to peace.

                           For mine own good
All causes shall give way: I am in blood
Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er:
Strange things I have in head that will to hand,
Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.

She answers, sick at heart,

You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

No doubt: but he has found the way to it now:

Come, we'll to sleep. My strange and self abuse
Is the initiate fear that wants hard use:
We are yet but young in deed.

What a change from the man who thought of Duncan's virtues, and of pity like a naked new-born

   1 See his first words to the Ghost: 'Thou canst not say I did it.'

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