Still, when the time approaches, Lady Macbeth needs all her courage, and she stimulates it with wine, lest it should break down:— “That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold.” She preserves her courage, however, to the end, never loses her self-possession, and takes care that the plan is carried out fully in all its details. But that accomplished, she utterly breaks down. She has over-calculated her strength; she was not utterly wicked, and her remorses are terrible. From this time forward we have no such scenes between her and her husband; he performs all his other murders alone, without her connivance or knowledge. And here the main feature of this play must be kept in mind. Lady Macbeth dies of remorse for this her crime; she cannot forget it; it haunts her in her sleep; the damned spot cannot be washed from her conscience or her hand. What a fearful cry of remorse and agony is that of hers in her dream!— “Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this _little_ hand! Oh! oh! oh!” There is no poetizing here, no sentimental and figurative personifications; it is the cry of a wounded heart and conscience. It is written too in prose, not in verse. It is real, and not fantastic like the rant and poetry of Macbeth. That terrible night remains with her, and haunts her and tears her like a demon, and at last she dies of it. How is it with Macbeth? Does the memory of that night torture him? Never for a moment. He plots new murders. He has tasted blood, and cannot live without it. On, on he goes, deeper and deeper into blood, till he is slain; and never, to the last, one cry of conscience. Yet it is thought that Lady Macbeth urged on this amiable man, so infirm of purpose, so filled with the milk of human kindness, and was the mainspring of his crimes. Suffice it to say, in answer to this view, that after Duncan is killed he keeps her in complete ignorance of all he does, and his murders are thenceforward more terrible and pitiless, and with no faint shadow of excuse or apology. This cold-hearted villain stops at nothing; even her death does not awaken a throb in his heart. Is it not preposterous to suppose that the so-called fiend of the play, she who instigates and drives an unwilling victim to crime, should die of remorse for that crime; while the amiable accomplice, far from sharing any such feeling, only plunges deeper into crime when she does not instigate him, and develops at every step an increasing brutality and savageness of nature?