and she applies this motive with the confident assurance that the love was there to give it force. Moreover, the effect of
remorse upon her own health proves the preponderance of nerve in her organization. Could the Lady Macbeth of Mr. Maclise, and of others who have painted this lady, have shewn the fire and metal of her fierce character in the com
mission of her crimes, the remembrance of them would
scarcely have disturbed the quiet of her after years. We figure Lady Macbeth to have been a blonde Rachel, with more beauty, with grey and cruel eyes, but with the same slight dry configuration and constitution, instinct with determined nerve power.” The scene with the doctor at the English court has several points of interest, besides that of antiquarian medicine. It fixes the date of Macbeth's history as that of Edward the Confessor's time. It was doubtless introduced as a compli ment to James the First, who assumed the power of curing scrofula, the king's evil, by means of the king's touch. Another passage indicates that it was written in this reign, and thus that it was one of the later productions of the poet. James was descended from Banquo, and in the last witch scene Mac beth thus refers to the lineage of his rival: “And some I see
“That two-fold balls and treble sceptres carry.” The cure of the king's evil is thus described : “Doct.
There are a crew of wretched souls,
That stay his cure : their malady convinces The great assay of art; but, at his touch, Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand, They presently amend. Macd. What's the disease he means ?
- Since the above was written, we have been informed that Mrs. Siddons
herself entertained an opinion of Lady Macbeth's physique similar to our own; and that in Mrs. Jamieson's critique on this character, which we have not had the opportunity of consulting, the same opinion is expressed.
