Seward suggests a bold, strong, deep, tragical turn of the scene--that she faints actually. Well--so be it. I shall say, first, that I think it a weakness in my favourite; but I will go so far as to add that I can let it pass for a not unpardonable weakness--the occasion given. But I must deal otherwise with her biographer. Him I shall hold to a strict rendering of account. I will know of him what he is about, and what she is about. If she faints really, and against her will, having forcible reasons for holding her will clear, she must be shown fighting to the last effort of will, against the assault of womanly nature, and drop, vanquished, as one dead, without a sound. But the Thaness calls out lustily--she remembers, "as we shall make our griefs and clamours roar upon his death." She makes noise enough--takes good care to attract everybody's attention to her performance--for which I commend her. Calculate as nicely as you will--she distracts or diverts speculation, and makes an interesting and agreeable break in the conversation.--I think that the obvious meaning is the right meaning--and _that she faints on purpose_. NORTH. Decided in favour of Feint. BULLER. You might have had the good manners to ask for _my_ opinion. NORTH. I beg a thousand pardons, Buller. BULLER. A hundred will do, North. In Davies' _Anecdotes of the Stage_, I remember reading that Garrick would not trust Mrs Pritchard with the Swoon--and that Macklin thought Mrs Porter alone could have been endured by the audience. Therefore, by the Great Manager, Lady Macbeth was not allowed in the Scene to appear at all. His belief was, that with her Ladyship it was a feint--and that the Gods, aware of that, unless restrained by profound respect for the actress, would have _laughed_--as at something rather comic. If the Gods, in Shakspeare's days, were as the Gods in Garrick's, William, methinks, would not, on any account, have exposed the Lady to derision at such a time. But I suspect the Gods of the Globe would not have laughed, whatever they might have thought of her sincerity, and that she did appear before them in a Scene from which nothing could account for her absence. She was not, I verily believe, given to fainting--perhaps this was the first time she had ever fainted since she was a girl. _Now_ I believe she did. She would have stood by her husband at all hazards, had she been able, both on his account and her own; she would not have so deserted him at such a critical juncture; her character was of boldness rather than duplicity; her business now--her duty--was to brazen it out; but she grew sick--qualms of conscience, however terrible, can be borne by sinners standing upright at the mouth of hell--but the flesh of man is weak, in its utmost strength, when moulded to woman's form--other qualms assail suddenly the earthly tenement--the breath is choked--the "distracted globe" grows dizzy--they that look out of the