A bold, bad woman--not a Fiend. I ask--Did she, or did she not, "with violent hand foredo her life?" They mention it as a rumour. The Doctor desires that all means of self-harm may be kept out of her way. Yet the impression on us, as the thing proceeds, is, that she dies of pure remorse--which I believe. She is _visibly dying_. The cry of women, announcing her death, is rather as of those who stood around the bed watching, and when the heart at the touch of the invisible finger stops, shriek--than of one after the other coming in and finding the self-slain--a confused, informal, perplexing, and perplexed proceeding--but the Cry of Women is formal, regular for the stated occasion. You may say, indeed, that she poisoned herself--and so died in bed--watched. Under the precautions, that is unlikely--too refined. The manner of Seyton, "The Queen, my Lord, is dead," shows to me that it was hourly expected. How these few words would _seek_ into you, did you first read the Play in mature age! She died a natural death--of remorse. Take my word for it--the rumour to the contrary was natural to the lip and ear of Hate. TALBOYS. A question of primary import is--What is the relation of feeling between him and her? The natural impression, I think, is, that the confiding affection--the intimate confidence--is "there"--of a husband and wife who love one another--to whom all interests are in common, and are consulted in common. Without this belief, the Magic of the Tragedy perishes--vanishes to me. "My dearest love, Duncan comes here to-night." "Be innocent of the knowledge, _dearest Chuck_"--a marvellous phrase for Melpomene. It is the full union--for ill purposes--that we know habitually for good purposes--that to me tempers the Murder Tragedy. NORTH. Yet believe me, my dear Talboys--that of all the murders Macbeth may have committed, she knew beforehand but of ONE--Duncan's. The haunted somnambulist speaks the truth--the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. TALBOYS. "The Thane of Fife had a Wife." Does not that imply that she was privy to _that_ Murder? NORTH. No. Except that she takes upon herself _all_ the murders that are the offspring, legitimate or illegitimate, of that First Murder. But we _know_ that Macbeth, in a sudden fit of fury, ordered the Macduffs to be massacred when on leaving the Cave Lenox told him of the Thane's flight. TALBOYS. That is decisive. NORTH. A woman, she feels for a murdered woman. That is all--a touch of nature--from Shakspeare's profound and pitiful heart. TALBOYS. "The Queen, my lord, is dead." "She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word"--Often have I meditated on the meaning of these words--yet even now I do not fully feel or understand them. NORTH. Nor I. This seems to look from them--"so pressed by outward besiegings, I have not capacity to entertain the blow as it requires to be entertained. With a free soul I could have measured it. Now I cannot." TALBOYS.