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

CRITICISMS
the man before you is a type you know well already.
He arrives with Banquo on the heath, fair and
red-bearded, sparing of gesture, full of pride and
the sense of animal wellbeing, and satisfied after
the battle like a beast who has eaten his fill. But
in the fifth act there is a change. This is still the
big, burly, fleshly, handsome-looking Thane ; here
is still the same face which in the earlier acts could
be superficially good-humoured and sometimes
royally courteous. But now the atmosphere of
blood, which pervades the whole tragedy, has
entered into the man and subdued him to its own
nature ; and an indescribable degradation, a slack-
ness and pufnness, has overtaken his features. He
has breathed the air of carnage, and supped full of
horrors. Lady Macbeth complains of the smell
of blood on her hand : Macbeth makes no complaint
— he has ceased to notice it now ; but the same
smell is in his nostrils. A contained fury and
disgust possesses him. He taunts the messenger
and the doctor as people would taunt their mortal
enemies. And, indeed, as he knows right well,
every one is his enemy now, except his wife.
About her he questions the doctor with something
like a last human anxiety ; and, in tones of grisly
mystery, asks him if he can ' minister to a mind
diseased.' When the news of her death is brought
him, he is staggered and falls into a seat; but
somehow it is not anything we can call grief that
he displays. There had been two of them against
God and man ; and now, when there is only one, it
250