Hence the development of her character—­perhaps it would be more strictly accurate to say, the change in her state of mind—­is both inevitable, and the opposite of the development we traced in Macbeth.  When the murder has been done, the discovery of its hideousness, first reflected in the faces of her guests, comes to Lady Macbeth with the shock of a sudden disclosure, and at once her nature begins to sink.  The first intimation of the change is given when, in the scene of the discovery, she faints.[229] When next we see her, Queen of Scotland, the glory of her dream has faded.  She enters, disillusioned, and weary with want of sleep:  she has thrown away everything and gained nothing: 

               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.

Henceforth she has no initiative:  the stem of her being seems to be cut through.  Her husband, physically the stronger, maddened by pangs he had foreseen, but still flaming with life, comes into the foreground, and she retires.  Her will remains, and she does her best to help him; but he rarely needs her help.  Her chief anxiety appears to be that he should not betray his misery.  He plans the murder of Banquo without her knowledge (not in order to spare her, I think, for he never shows love of this quality, but merely because he does not need her now); and even when she is told vaguely of his intention she appears but little interested.  In the sudden emergency of the banquet scene she makes a prodigious and magnificent effort; her strength, and with it her ascendancy, returns, and she saves her husband at least from an open disclosure.  But after this she takes no part whatever in the action.  We only know from her shuddering words in the sleep-walking scene, ’The Thane of Fife had a wife:  where is she now?’ that she has even learned of her husband’s worst crime; and in all the horrors of his tyranny over Scotland she has, so far as we hear, no part.  Disillusionment and despair prey upon her more and more.  That she should seek any relief in speech, or should ask for sympathy, would seem to her mere weakness, and would be to Macbeth’s defiant fury an irritation.  Thinking of the change in him, we imagine the bond between them slackened, and Lady Macbeth left much alone.  She sinks slowly downward.  She cannot bear darkness, and has light by her continually:  ’tis her command.  At last her nature, not her will, gives way.  The secrets of the past find vent in a disorder of sleep, the beginning perhaps of madness.  What the doctor fears is clear.  He reports to her husband no great physical mischief, but bids her attendant to remove from her all means by which she could harm herself, and to keep eyes on her constantly.  It is in vain.  Her death is announced by a cry from her women so sudden and direful that it would thrill her husband with horror if he were any longer capable of fear.  In the last words of the play Malcolm tells us it is believed in the hostile army that she died by her own hand.  And (not to speak of the indications just referred to) it is in accordance with her character that even in her weakest hour she should cut short by one determined stroke the agony of her life.