Response to Shakespeare's Macbeth

Response to Shakespeare's Macbeth

In act five, scene one the audience sees one of the many facets of

Lady Macbeth's complex character as she is seen to be sleepwalking,

while being carefully observed by her waiting gentlewoman and a doctor

of physic. Her gentlewoman introduces this deranged behaviour, when

she says, "Lo you, here she comes. This is her guise and, upon my

life, fast asleep." There are many possibilities to be explored that

could be found to be the impetus bringing Lady Macbeth to sleepwalk.

The first being that in Shakespeare's time a person found to be

sleepwalking meant that evil spirits and demons possessed them.

Lady Macbeth played a forceful role in the scheming, leading up to the

murder of Duncan and was heavily involved in the event itself. In act

two, scene two; exasperated with Macbeth, Lady Macbeth takes the

daggers to smear Duncan's blood on his servants' faces. The sight of

Duncan's blood has had a profound effect on her and in act five, scene

one this becomes apparent when she says in her sleep, " Yet who would

have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him." In saying

this line she is remembering and reflecting on the moment of when she

placed the bloody daggers next to the guards. She is thinking about

how much Duncan bled. The image of Duncan's blood on the daggers and

on her hands has stuck in her mind and is plaguing her thoughts, so

much so that she is desperate to be cleansed. The crime is lying very

heavily on her conscience and her heart and she longs to be cleansed

of the blood, which is symbolic of her guilt at the deeds she has

committed. While in a frantic, frenzy she says, "Out...

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painted devil. If he do bleed, I'll gild the faces of the grooms

withal, for it must seem their guilt."

From this point onwards Lady Macbeth and Macbeth's relationship starts

to change as they drift apart emotionally and physically. Their

personas are dramatically reversed as Lady Macbeth who was once an

iron willed, passionate, ambitious woman becomes extremely deranged

and depressed. Her character develops and changes throughout the play

as she is transformed from an ambitious, powerful woman to someone is

full of regret and with a heart full of foreboding, which lies very

heavily on her conscience. Paradoxically, Macbeth's characteristics,

his strong sense of morals and fairplay and a clear conscience are

replaced with a tyrant personality and where little or no remorse at

the taking of other people's lives.