By these tender redeeming touches we are impressed with a feeling that Lady Macbeth's influence over the affections of her husband, as a wife and a woman, is at least equal to her power over him as a superior mind. Another thing has always struck me. During the supper scene, in which Macbeth is haunted by the spectre of the murdered Banquo, and his reason appears unsettled by the extremity of his horror and dismay, her indignant rebuke, her low whispered remonstrance, the sarcastic emphasis with which she combats his sick fancies, and endeavors to recall him to himself, have an intenseness, a severity, a bitterness, which makes the blood creep. LADY MACBETH. Are you a man? MACBETH. Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that Which might appall the devil. LADY MACBETH. O proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear: This is the air-drawn dagger, which, you said, Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts (Impostors to true fear) would 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.