Shakespeare's Macbeth
Act 5, scene 1
It is night in Macbeth's castle of Dunsinane. A doctor and a gentlewoman wait. The gentlewoman called the doctor because she has seen Lady Macbeth sleepwalking the last few nights, but she refuses to say what Lady Macbeth says or does.
Lady Macbeth enters, holding a candle, but asleep. Lady Macbeth keeps rubbing her hands as if to wash them while saying, "out damned spot" (line 30). Then Lady Macbeth seems to relive her attempt to convince Macbeth to kill Duncan, concluding with the words: "Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him" (lines 33­34).
The horrified doctor and gentlewoman watch as Lady Macbeth then relives conversations with Macbeth after the murder of Banquo and hears an imaginary knocking and rushes off to bed. The doctor says the disease is beyond his power to cure and that "unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles" (lines 61­62). He also says he dare not speak about what he just witnessed.
1
Shakespeare's Macbeth
Act 5, scene 1
Lady Macbeth ­ Sleepwalking
washing her hands
She told Macbeth to wash his hands after Duncan's murder.
sleep and handwashing
Act II, Scene ii, lines34–41, “Macbeth does murder sleep,” and lines 57–61, “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood/Clean from my hand?”
­guilt
­fear
­not as tough and ruthless as she thought she was
­her conscience is torturing her
2