Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 21, 1896 - Miscellanies, Volume IV

CRITICISMS
horrible on Salvini's lips — * Bring forth men-children
only!'
The murder scene, as was to be expected, pleased
the audience best. Macbeth 's voice, in the talk
with his wife, was a thing not to be forgotten ; and
when he spoke of his hangman's hands he seemed
to have blood in his utterance. Never for a
moment, even in the very article of the murder,
does he possess his own soul. He is a man on
wires. From first to last it is an exhibition of
hideous cowardice. For, after all, it is not here,
but in broad daylight, with the exhilaration of
conflict, where he can assure himself at every blow
he has the longest sword and the heaviest hand,
that this man's physical bravery can keep him up ;
he is an unwieldy ship, and needs plenty of way
on before he will steer.
In the banquet scene, while the first murderer
gives account of what he has done, there comes
a flash of truculent joy at the * twenty trenched
gashes' on Banquo's head. Thus Macbeth makes
welcome to his imagination those very details of
physical horror which are so soon to turn sour in
him. As he runs out to embrace these cruel cir-
cumstances, as he seeks to realise to his mind's eye
the reassuring spectacle of his dead enemy, he is
dressing out the phantom to terrify himself; and
his imagination, playing the part of justice, is to
'commend to his own lips the ingredients of his
poisoned chalice. ' With the recollection of Hamlet
and his father's spirit still fresh upon him, and the
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