Читать книгу The Essential Works of Robert G. Ingersoll - Robert Green Ingersoll - Страница 134

"Methought I heard a voice cry: Sleep no more,

Macbeth does murder sleep; the innocent sleep;

Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,

The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course,

Chief nourisher in life's feast." …

"Still it cried: Sleep no more, to all the house,

Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor

Shall sleep no more—Macbeth shall sleep no more."

She exclaims:

"Who was it that thus cried?

Why, worthy Thane, you do unbend your noble strength

To think so brain-sickly of things; get some water,

And wash this filthy witness from your hand.

Why did you bring the daggers from the place?"

Macbeth was so overcome with horror at his own deed, that he not only mistook his thoughts for the words of others, but was so carried away and beyond himself that he brought with him the daggers—the evidence of his guilt—the daggers that he should have left with the dead. This is dramatic.

In the same play, the difference of feeling before and after the commission of a crime is illustrated to perfection. When Macbeth is on his way to assassinate the king, the bell strikes, and he says, or whispers:

"Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell."

Afterward, when the deed has been committed, and a knocking is heard at the gate, he cries:

"Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst."

Let me give one more instance of dramatic action. When Antony speaks above the body of Cæsar he says:

"You all do know this mantle:

I remember The first time ever Cæsar put it on—

'Twas on a summer's evening, in his tent,

That day he overcame the Nervii:

Look! In this place ran Cassius' dagger through:

See what a rent the envious Casca made!

Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed,

And as he plucked his cursed steel away,

Mark how the blood of Cæsar followed it."