"Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor! Greater than both by the all-hail hereafter!"
His letters transported her not only beyond the "ignorant present," but beyond him, away beyond the familiar circle of his arms, to which she had so often committed soul and body,--away so far that she does not feel him. "The future in the instant" is embracing her; and it is against that splendor that her heart-beats break.
The first exclamation which follows the reading of his letter betrays this passionate attachment: "_and shalt be_ what thou art promis'd." There runs through the tone a vibration from her own desire, no doubt; but it is dominated by exulting love, and bursts into a chord. The time has come: he shall, he must be, what he has always longed to be. The weird sisters are in luck when they promised so fairly to a man who is so profoundly loved. 'Tis the good will of Nature that I love him.
Yet she knows him thoroughly. So close is her appraisement of him that she instinctively postpones love to the immediate exigency,--that is, to pour her spirits in his ear, to beat down every thing that might intercept him when putting forth that one decisive hand-grasp toward the crown. She fears his nature, because scruples hamper his unscrupulous ambition. They are not entirely, as she conceives them, the results of inborn mildness. He has a politic disposition which grows all the more considerate as he sees the widening of his popularity. He will proceed no farther against Duncan, because
"He hath honored me of late; and I have bought Golden opinions from all sorts of people, Which would be worn now in their newest gloss, Not cast aside so soon."
He discusses the project of murdering Banquo in the same way:--
"Though I could With bare-fac'd power sweep him from my sight, And bid my will avouch it, yet I must not, For certain friends that are both his and mine, Whose loves I may not drop, but wail his fall, Whom I myself struck down."
His wife must needs have sore dealings with such a non-committal spirit:--
"Thou'd'st have, great Glamis, That which cries, 'Thus thou must do, if thou have it; And that which rather thou dost fear to do, Thou wishest should be undone.'"
He wants to win a game to which his hand does not entitle him; and the desire to win is as great as the dread of cheating.