Yet do I fear thy nature: 
     It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness
     To catch the nearest way:  thou wouldst be great;
     Art not without ambition, but without
     The illness should attend it; what thou wouldst highly,
     That wouldst thou holily,

one sees that ‘ambition’ and ‘great’ and ‘highly’ and even ‘illness’ are to her simply terms of praise, and ‘holily’ and ‘human kindness’ simply terms of blame.  Moral distinctions do not in this exaltation exist for her; or rather they are inverted:  ‘good’ means to her the crown and whatever is required to obtain it, ‘evil’ whatever stands in the way of its attainment.  This attitude of mind is evident even when she is alone, though it becomes still more pronounced when she has to work upon her husband.  And it persists until her end is attained.  But, without being exactly forced, it betrays a strain which could not long endure.

Besides this, in these earlier scenes the traces of feminine weakness and human feeling, which account for her later failure, are not absent.  Her will, it is clear, was exerted to overpower not only her husband’s resistance but some resistance in herself.  Imagine Goneril uttering the famous words,

                 Had he not resembled
     My father as he slept, I had done ’t.

They are spoken, I think, without any sentiment—­impatiently, as though she regretted her weakness:  but it was there.  And in reality, quite apart from this recollection of her father, she could never have done the murder if her husband had failed.  She had to nerve herself with wine to give her ‘boldness’ enough to go through her minor part.  That appalling invocation to the spirits of evil, to unsex her and fill her from the crown to the toe topfull of direst cruelty, tells the same tale of determination to crush the inward protest.  Goneril had no need of such a prayer.  In the utterance of the frightful lines,

                I have given suck, and know
     How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me: 
     I would, while it was smiling in my face,
     Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,
     And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you
     Have done to this,

her voice should doubtless rise until it reaches, in ’dash’d the brains out,’ an almost hysterical scream.[227] These lines show unmistakably that strained exaltation which, as soon as the end is reached, vanishes, never to return.

The greatness of Lady Macbeth lies almost wholly in courage and force of will.  It is an error to regard her as remarkable on the intellectual side.  In acting a part she shows immense self-control, but not much skill.  Whatever may be thought of the plan of attributing the murder of Duncan to the chamberlains, to lay their bloody daggers on their pillows, as if they were determined to advertise their guilt, was a mistake which can be accounted for only by the excitement