The ruling spirit of the hour, she bends all to her will. There is no wavering, no hesitation. The Furies have entered into her-nay, she herself is a Fury, with no touch of pity or of fear to link her to humanity. Leading Agamemnon up the palace steps, with one hand concealed beneath her robe she grasps the dagger destined for his breast. Conqueror of Priam's sons, avenger of Helen's rape, he is to meet his death in this, the moment of triumph, ensnared, butchered by his faithless wife. In vain Cassandra, left without, pictures the impending murder. her despairing cry, as when its warning echoed through the Ilian halls. "What will be, will come," and she too rushes into the palace to meet her fate. A moment's delay; then a cry within; a hushed silence; another cry; and the foul deed is accomplished.

Now the murderess appears; and as she stands, her hands red with blood, beside the two lifeless witnesses of her awful crime, surely there must be a reaction, shame be written on that cold, white brow, horror look from those fierce, flashing eyes. But no! Every inch a queen, she is every inch a demon. She pictures the murder: gloats over each incident: glories in the deed. Symmons holds that the broken line here used would indicate horror; but it is more consistently referred to mere animal excitement. She answers the censure of the chorus with haughty scorn; justifies her deed by the death of Iphigenia; points to the corpse of Cassandra as witness of her husband's faithlessness; disowns her guilt, asserting that the "evil genius of the house of Atreus," not she, had done the murder. And so critics, using her own words, have plead for her; and had there been no Ægisthus their position might be tenable. His part in the drama, however, shows the hollowness of her words. The murder was not the hasty act of outraged affection; but, by her own confession, the result of a long cherished plan; her hatred of Agamemnon had grown not out of sorrow for Iphigenia, but out of guilty love for Ægisthus. Critics have also urged, that after the murder she shows forbearance, that when Ægisthus appears and blustering would be avenged on all who condemn the murder, it is she that stays his hand. And

so it is; but even a tiger may know satiety, and this forbearance seems prompted of expediency rather than of mercy.

With this scene, the play ends, to be taken up however, in the "Choephori," the second member of the trilogy. Here although still the center of interest, Clytemnestra actually appears but once. Ægisthus now sits on Agamemnon's throne, beside his royal accomplice. Orestes, Clytemnestra's son, is exiled. Electra, her daughter, is held in doubtful tolerance. The situation is strangely similar to Shakespeare's "Hamlet," though Clytemnestra herself is in such marked contrast to the weak, misguided Gertrude of the English drama. One hint there is, however, though only one, which indicates that even Clytemnestra has some faint consciousness of guilt. She has dreamed a dream portending retribution: a vision of the son rising up to avenge the father; and so, when in disguise Orestes does appear, and falsely tells her that that son is dead, she, who critics aver was goaded on to murder by a daughter's death, now strives in vain to conceal her joy at hearing that her only son had ceased to live.

But her joy is short. Having slain Ægisthus, Orestes throws off his disguise, and turns upon her. And now for the first time, that haughty head bows, and the cold voice tries to soften; for she is pleading for her life and pleading to her son. But it is vain. But it is vain. Like Shakespeare's Dane, Orestes' soul is bent on vengeance. The uplifted hand falls, and Clytemnestra and Ægisthus, partners in guilt, have paid the penalty of their crime. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, blood for blood," so reads the old Mosaic law; so runs the lesson of Eschylus.

Clytemnestra is dead; yet her part in the tragedy is not yet complete. Ere her spirit crosses the fateful Acheron, it is to exert its fiend nature in one last act of hate. In the "Eumenides," the last of the trilogy, Orestes is seen at the Delphian temple supplicating Apollo's aid. The Furies, from whose toils he seeks escape, are for the moment sleeping. Commanded by the God he departs for Athens. But scarcely has he left the stage ere the ghost of Clytemnestra appears. Unconquered even in death, the malignant hate

that prompted a husband's murder now seeks vengeance on the son. Calling on the Furies, she chides their slothfulness, bids them be up and on their victim's track. Her soul can know no rest, till his blood atone for hers. It is a fearful picture, the acme of tragical terror, and fitly closes Eschylus' delineation of the most sublimely terrible character in liter

ature.

In comparing the Lady Macbeth of Shakespeare with the Clytemnestra of Eschylus, one is struck by the contrasts rather than the similarities. Indeed it were strange if this were not so. Separated by more than twenty centuries, the Hellenic Eschylus and the Teutonic Shakespeare could have little in common save genius. Great Pan was dead; and the questions that agitated the souls of the Greek tragedians had long since found their answer at Bethlehem and Calvary. Dramatic characters no longer represented abstract ideas. The stage had ceased to be the pulpit. The interest of the age had centered in humanity; and the drama was its mirror.

Known to the whole English speaking world, through Shakespeare's creation, as Clytemnestra was to the Greek, through that of Eschylus and his predecessors, Lady Macbeth's story needs not to be detailed. Maglise, in his picture of the banquet scene, has painted her tall, brawny, masculine; a virago, an Amazon; but surely he is not right. Hearts do not break in such setting. "Fair, feminine, and perhaps even fragile," was Mrs. Siddons' conception. Bucknill has gone still farther, holding that she must have been "small, delicate, beautiful * * * a tawny or brown blonde Rachel." Beautiful she must have been,-Macbeth's constant love attests it; the unexpressed homage of all about her bespeak it,-beautiful, but unlike Clytemnestra, essentially feminine; feminine to give full force to her appeal to Macbeth's love, to her taunt of cowardice, when urging on the murder. That she was small is also probable, for it is in the smaller type of woman that nervous force most often dominates; while the fact that she was fragile, or at least not physically strong, is evinced in the gradual wasting away, in the final snapping of her life's thread, strained beyond its strength.

She is first seen as she enters, reading Macbeth's letter in which he tells her of the witches' prophecies and of their partial confirmation. Many critics hold that it is this letter. that first suggests Duncan's murder, and that the plot originated with Lady Macbeth. This interpretation, however, is not warranted by the text. Before she appears, or her name is mentioned, Macbeth in his meeting with the witches, has so betrayed his guilty conscience, that it needs only her words,

"What beast was't then

That made you break this enterprise to me?”

to brand him as its originator. In its fulfillment, 'tis true, she takes the lead, but this is less from her greater proneness to evil than from her stronger will and superior intellect.

Instantly grasping the purport of the letter, for the thought is not entirely new, her practical mind sees in the herald's announcement of the king's approach opportunity for the speedy consummation of her desires. Her soul is set on fire, but the suddenness of it all makes her feel her womanhood. Before, the murder had been "but fantastic

it is real and imminent; and her woman's soul recoils. With one mighty effort, however, she renounces her weakness; calls on the spirits to "unsex" her, to fill her "from crown to toe topful of direst cruelty." The struggle is short, and the will conquers. Yet "the still, small voice is not completely silenced. Unlike Clytemnestra, crime is not a congenial element. For the moment she can trample down her woman's nature; but it will rise again to accuse her. Beneath the cold exterior good and evil still struggle on, and in this struggle lies the secret of her apparent inconsistency.

It is while she is intoxicated in this first burst of passion, that Macbeth appears. Critics, notably Coleridge, have urged that her words of greeting

"Great Glamis! worthy Cawdor!

Greater than both, by the All-hail hereafter !"

show a lack of wifely joy. But is this true? Do they not, on the contrary, show far greater sympathy between wife

and husband than would softer expressions of love? Are they not in more perfect harmony with the scene?

She at once touches upon the murder. A few significant words; and the two understand each other. The king appears. Lady Macbeth receives him with feigned loyalty, worthy of Clytemnestra; but without Clytemnestra's over-profusion. Macbeth begins to waver. With consummate art, and with an utter abandon that draws from him the exclamation

"Bring forth men children only,

For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Noth ng but males,"

she urges him on. The strong conquers the weak; and when the morrow's sun arises, Duncan will be no more.

It is the dead of night. All are sleeping save the two conspirators; for them there is no more sleep. While Macbeth enters the king's chambers, Lady Macbeth waits without. In her wild frenzy she seems a fiend incarnate; yet even she is startled by an owl's shriek sounding out through the night air. It is a moment of fearful suspense; with quick breath and dilated eye she listens. She seems steeled against every emotion; yet there is a touch of almost compassion in her words,

"Had he not resembled

My father as he slept, I had done 't."

The deed accomplished, the murderer appears, helpless in terror. She commands him to return, and complete his task, but he refuses.

she cries; and entering the chamber, with her woman's hand she smears the sleeping grooms with blood. · It is not that the sight is less terrible to her,

These deeds must not be thought

After these ways; so it will make us mad,"

she says; but she is hurled along by the impetuosity of her passion and her will is paramount.

Yet on the morrow when Macbeth pictures this same scene, suddenly her nerves give way; and she is carried