" All this is pure Hamlet; one
might better say, pure Shakespeare.
We are next led into the field with Malcolm and Macduff, and immediately
back to the castle again. While the women break into cries, Macbeth
soliloquizes in the very spirit of bookish Hamlet:
"I have almost forgot the taste of fears.
The time has been, my senses would have cooled
To hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in 't."
The whole passage, and especially the "dismal treatise," recalls the
Wittenberg student with a magic of representment.
The death of the Queen is announced, and wrings from Macbeth a speech
full of despairing pessimism, a bitterer mood than ever Hamlet knew; a
speech, moreover, that shows the student as well as the incomparable
lyric poet:
"She should have died hereafter:
There would have been a time for such a word.--
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
Pages:
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68