Having hidden nothing from the "partner of his greatness" he would scarcely conceal the promise of the witches, which increased his confidence to the uttermost. Besides it cannot be fear and anxiety which brings on her night wandering. Another current explanation also seems to me to have little ground. As Brandes has recently interpreted it, "The sleep walking scene shows in the most remarkable fashion how the pricking of an evil conscience, when it is dulled by day, is more keen at night and robs the guilty one of sleep and health." Now severe pangs of conscience may well disturb sleep, but they would hardly create sleep walking. Criminals are hardly noctambulists. Macbeth himself is an example how far stings of conscience and remorse can lead a sensitive man. He has no more rest after he has murdered the king and Banquo, yet he does not become a sleep walker. There must be another cause here which precipitates Lady Macbeth's sleep walking. We will first examine the relation of husband and wife to one another in order to trace out this mystery. The character of Lady Macbeth has caused many a one in Germany to rack his brains since the time of Tieck. Up till that time she passed simply as Megaera, as an "arch witch," as Goethe calls her. This opinion prevailed not only in Germany but in the English motherland too. But this view went against the grain with the German spirit. Therefore Ludwig Tieck first looked upon Lady Macbeth as a tender, loving wife. From this time on there arose critics and even poets, who in the same way wished to wash her clean. I will cite the two most important, Friedrich Theodor Vischer and Rudolf Hans Bartsch. The former, of whom I explained earlier, that he did not hesitate to make an interpolation to prove his point, sums up his judgment in the following sentences: "It is not ambition alone that moves her, but love which would see her lord become great" (p. 78). And in a second place, "She loved her husband and had sacrificed her conscience more for him than for herself" (p. 124). R. H. Bartsch goes much further in his romance, "Elisabeth Kött." Wigram says to the heroine, "Do you not feel how she (Lady Macbeth) before everything that she says cannot hitch horses enough to carry her slow and immovable lord along?" In the sleep walking scene "the utter crushing of this poor, overburdened heart burst forth in the torture of the dream wandering." At the close he pronounces his opinion: "If there is a poor weak woman upon earth, so it is this arch enchantress, who loves her husband so much that she has in admirable fashion studied all his faults and weaknesses that she may cover over the deficiencies with her trembling body. Seek the wife in her rôle!"