The idea underlying this custom of Shakespeare’s evidently is that the regular rhythm of verse would be inappropriate where the mind is supposed to have lost its balance and to be at the mercy of chance impressions coming from without (as sometimes with Lear), or of ideas emerging from its unconscious depths and pursuing one another across its passive surface.  The somnambulism of Lady Macbeth is such a condition.  There is no rational connection in the sequence of images and ideas.  The sight of blood on her hand, the sound of the clock striking the hour for Duncan’s murder, the hesitation of her husband before that hour came, the vision of the old man in his blood, the idea of the murdered wife of Macduff, the sight of the hand again, Macbeth’s ‘flaws and starts’ at the sight of Banquo’s ghost, the smell on her hand, the washing of hands after Duncan’s murder again, her husband’s fear of the buried Banquo, the sound of the knocking at the gate—­these possess her, one after another, in this chance order.  It is not much less accidental than the order of Ophelia’s ideas; the great difference is that with Ophelia total insanity has effaced or greatly weakened the emotional force of the ideas, whereas to Lady Macbeth each new image or perception comes laden with anguish.  There is, again, scarcely a sign of the exaltation of disordered imagination; we are conscious rather of an intense suffering which forces its way into light against resistance, and speaks a language for the most part strikingly bare in its diction and simple in its construction.  This language stands in strong contrast with that of Macbeth in the surrounding scenes, full of a feverish and almost furious excitement, and seems to express a far more desolating misery.

The effect is extraordinarily impressive.  The soaring pride and power of Lady Macbeth’s first speeches return on our memory, and the change is felt with a breathless awe.  Any attempt, even by Shakespeare, to draw out the moral enfolded in this awe, would but weaken it.  For the moment, too, all the language of poetry—­even of Macbeth’s poetry—­seems to be touched with unreality, and these brief toneless sentences seem the only voice of truth.[249]

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 227:  So Mrs. Siddons is said to have given the passage.]

[Footnote 228:  Surely the usual interpretation of ‘We fail?’ as a question of contemptuous astonishment, is right.  ‘We fail!’ gives practically the same sense, but alters the punctuation of the first two Folios.  In either case, ‘But,’ I think, means ‘Only.’  On the other hand the proposal to read ‘We fail.’ with a full stop, as expressive of sublime acceptance of the possibility, seems to me, however attractive at first sight, quite out of harmony with Lady Macbeth’s mood throughout these scenes.]

[Footnote 229:  See Note DD.]

[Footnote 230:  It is not new.]