"
But even more striking is the following instance from Macbeth:--
"The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal enterance of Duncan
Under your battlements."
Here Shakespeare, with his wonted tact, makes use of a vulgar
superstition, of a type in which mortal presentiment is already embodied,
to make a common ground on which the hearer and Lady Macbeth may meet.
After this prelude we are prepared to be possessed by her emotion more
fully, to feel in her ears the dull tramp of the blood that seems to make
the raven's croak yet hoarser than it is, and to betray the stealthy
advance of the mind to its fell purpose. For Lady Macbeth hears not so
much the voice of the bodeful bird as of her own premeditated murder, and
we are thus made her shuddering accomplices before the fact. Every image
receives the color of the mind, every word throbs with the pulse of one
controlling passion. The epithet _fatal_ makes us feel the implacable
resolve of the speaker, and shows us that she is tampering with her
conscience by putting off the crime upon the prophecy of the Weird
Sisters to which she alludes. In the word _battlements_, too, not only is
the fancy led up to the perch of the raven, but a hostile image takes the
place of a hospitable; for men commonly speak of receiving a guest under
their roof or within their doors.
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