Note 292 — NOTE CC.
Reading edition
To this it might be answered that the effect of the prediction was to make him feel, 'Then I shall succeed if I carry out the plan of murder,' and so make him yield to the idea over again. To which I can only reply, anticipating the next argument, 'How is it that Shakespeare wrote the speech in such a way that practically everybody supposes the idea of murder to be occurring to Macbeth for the first time?'