This effect is strengthened by a multitude of small touches, which at
the moment may be little noticed but still leave their mark on the
imagination. We may approach the consideration of the characters and the
action by distinguishing some of the ingredients of this general effect.
Darkness, we may even say blackness, broods over this tragedy. It is
remarkable that almost all the scenes which at once recur to memory take
place either at night or in some dark spot. The vision of the dagger,
the murder of Duncan, the murder of Banquo, the sleep-walking of Lady
Macbeth, all come in night-scenes. The Witches dance in the thick air of
a storm, or, 'black and midnight hags,' receive Macbeth in a cavern. The
blackness of night is to the hero a thing of fear, even of horror; and
that which he feels becomes the spirit of the play. The faint
glimmerings of the western sky at twilight are here menacing: it is the
hour when the traveller hastens to reach safety in his inn, and when
Banquo rides homeward to meet his assassins; the hour when 'light
thickens,' when 'night's black agents to their prey do rouse,' when the
wolf begins to howl, and the owl to scream, and withered murder steals
forth to his work. Macbeth bids the stars hide their fires that his
'black' desires may be concealed; Lady Macbeth calls on thick night to
come, palled in the dunnest smoke of hell.
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