"Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red." Lady Macbeth (returning): "My hands are of your colour; but I shame To wear a heart so white . . . . . . . . . . . . retire we to our chamber: A little water clears us of this deed; How easy is it then! Your constancy Hath left you unattended." But the horrid deed has not brought the expected good fortune. After Duncan's murder Macbeth finds no rest and no sleep: "To be thus, is nothing; But to be safely thus." So he first considers removing Banquo and his son. But Lady Macbeth is little content: "Nought's had, all's spent, Where our desire is got without content; 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy, Than, by destruction, dwell in doubtful joy." Then comes her husband. All night he has been so shaken with terrible dreams that he would rather be in Duncan's place, "Than on the torture of the mind to lie, In restless ecstasy." Lady Macbeth tries here to comfort him with the only tender impulse in the drama: "Come on; Gentle my lord, sleek o'er your rugged looks; Be bright and jovial 'mong your guests to-night."[35] Macbeth promises to do as she asks and charges her to treat Banquo especially with distinction. Nor does he conceal from her what now tortures him most, "Dear wife, Thou knowest that Banquo, and his Fleance, lives." And immediately the Lady is her old self: "But in them nature's copy's not eterne." Though Lady Macbeth is represented as at once prepared for a second murder, Macbeth has now no more need of her: "Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till thou applaud the deed." [35] One notes the emptiness of this passage. She could scarcely have said much less, if she wished to comfort him. And yet this passage is always quoted by those authors who accept love on the part of Lady Macbeth for her husband as the driving motive for her action. Indeed, Friedrich Theodor Vischer himself does not shrink from an interpolation and translates the passage: Lady Macbeth ("caressingly")--"Come, come, my noble lord, remove thy wrinkles, smooth thy gloomy brow, be jovial this evening, well-disposed toward thy guests." And although the original English text contains no word for "caressingly," yet Vischer gives this commentary: "His wife's answer to him must be spoken on the stage with an altogether tender accent. She embraces him and strokes his forehead." (Shakespeare-Vorträge, Vol. 2, pp. 36, 102.)