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 circumstances, 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 holy awe with
which that good man encountered things not dreamt of in his philosophy,
it was not possible to avoid looking for resemblances between the two
apparitions and the two men haunted. But there are none to be found.
Macbeth has a purely physical dislike for Banquo's spirit and the
"twenty trenched gashes." He is afraid of he knows not what. He is
abject, and again blustering. In the end he so far forgets himself, his
terror, and the nature of what is before him, that he rushes upon it as
he would upon a man. When his wife tells him he needs repose, there is
something really childish in the way he looks about the room, and,
seeing nothing, with an expression of almost sensual relief, plucks up
heart enough to go to bed. And what is the upshot of the visitation? It
is written in Shakespeare, but should be read with the commentary of
Salvini's voice and expression:--"_O! siam nell' opra ancor
fanciulli_,"--"We are yet but young in deed." Circle below circle. He is
looking with horrible satisfaction into the mouth of hell. There may
still be a prick to-day; but to-morrow conscience will be dead, and he
may move untroubled in this element of blood.

In the fifth act we see this lowest circle reached; and it is Salvini's
finest moment throughout the play. From the first he was admirably made
up, and looked Macbeth to the full as perfectly as ever he looked
Othello. From the first moment he steps upon the stage you can see this
character is a creation to the fullest meaning of the phrase; for 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 sti