Hamlet, too, has no spur to prick the sides of his intent, and Hamlet,
too, would be sure to see how apt ambition is to overleap itself, and so
would blunt the sting of the desire. This monologue alone should have
been sufficient to reveal to all critics the essential identity of
Hamlet and Macbeth. Lady Macbeth, too, tells us that Macbeth left the
supper table where he was entertaining the King, in order to indulge
himself in this long monologue, and when he hears that his absence has
excited comment, that he has been asked for even by the King, he does
not attempt to excuse his strange conduct, he merely says, "We will
proceed no further in this business," showing in true Hamlet fashion how
resolution has been "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." In
fact, as his wife says to him, he lets "'I dare not' wait upon 'I would'
like the poor cat i' the adage." Even when whipped to action by Lady
Macbeth's preternatural eagerness, he asks:

"If we should fail?"

whereupon she tells him to screw his courage to the sticking place, and
describes the deed itself. Infected by her masculine resolution, Macbeth
at length consents to what he calls the "terrible feat." The word
"terrible" here is surely more characteristic of the humane
poet-thinker than of the chieftain-murderer. Even at this crisis, too,
of his fate Macbeth cannot cheat himself; like Hamlet he is compelled to
see himself as he is:

"False face must hide what the false heart doth know."

I have now considered nearly every word used by Macbeth in this first
act: I have neither picked passages nor omitted anything that might make