An analysis of Act2 Scene2 (II.2) from Macbeth
An analysis of Act2 Scene2 (II.2) from Macbeth
Plot
With her nerves on edge, Lady Macbeth waits for her husband to return after committing the murder of King Duncan. She waits anxiously and is startled by any noise she hears. She is convinced that the alcohol she has drunk has made her bold, yet the drugged alcohol she has given to the porters has made them drunk. Lady Macbeth hears her husband enter the chamber of the king and hopes that everything has gone according to plan. She then reassures herself that nothing could have gone wrong because her plan was foolproof. Lady Macbeth then reveals that her plea to the evil powers to rid her of her womanhood were not answered as she shows her femininity by admitting that she could not have done the deed because the king looked too much like her own father as he slept.
Macbeth then enters. He is already very scared about what he has done. He is very conscious that he made too much noise while committing the murder. Lady Macbeth says that she heard only the things that you would usually hear in the middle of the night. Macbeth fears that he heard someone stir in the second chamber. His imagination takes over as he talks about how Malcolm and Donalbain prayed and how he could not pronounce "Amen". Lady Macbeth tells her husband that they should not dwell on the matter because it will make them mad. Macbeth's imagination takes over again as he believes by murdering King Duncan, he has also murdered sleep. He reels off seven different ways in which he has murdered sleep. He thinks that the rocks and stones with which the castle is built will "cry out 'sleep no more' to all the house'' and tell everyone about the murder. Lady Macbeth tells him to calm down and wash the blood from his hands. She then notices that Macbeth has brought the daggers back with him. She tells him to go back and smear the porters' clothes with the blood but he refuses. She accuses Macbeth of being weak minded and childish in his thoughts and Lady Macbeth goes herself to return the daggers.
Macbeth hears knocking. He is so paranoid that every noise appals him. He starts to wash his hands but instead of the water clearing away the blood, the blood turns the water red. Lady Macbeth enters. Her hands are now also covered in blood. She then hears more knocking. She tells Macbeth to get on his nightgown so as to appear to have been asleep all night. Macbeth is still deeply saddened by what he has done and at the end of the scene displays strong feelings of regret.
Characters
In this scene of the ...
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Macbeth hears knocking. He is so paranoid that every noise appals him. He starts to wash his hands but instead of the water clearing away the blood, the blood turns the water red. Lady Macbeth enters. Her hands are now also covered in blood. She then hears more knocking. She tells Macbeth to get on his nightgown so as to appear to have been asleep all night. Macbeth is still deeply saddened by what he has done and at the end of the scene displays strong feelings of regret.
Characters
In this scene of the play, only two characters are used. Here is a brief outline of the characters throughout the play and then more specifically during Act 2 Scene 2.
Macbeth: He is the title role and is therefore the most important character in the play. The play focuses on everything he does. He is a warrior, a lord of great importance, a loyal subject of the king who in the first scene of the play puts down a revolt headed by the then Thane of Cawdor. He is physically very strong but mentally he is weak. This is shown most strongly when his wife drives his own ambition to be king too far. Macbeth does have great ambitions but they are always forced through by Lady Macbeth or the prophecy of the witches. Even though he is very vulnerable to persuasion, his conscience is strong and is not easily won over by evil. It is only Lady Macbeth, who fuels Macbeth's ambitions, that makes him go ahead with it. Even though he may initially find it difficult to carry out a deed, for instance, the murder of King Duncan, once he has decided to do something, he will not change his mind and will follow it through to the end. This is shown later in the play when, to keep his crown, he murders his friend Banquo. He uses his experience as a violent warrior to excecute his plan.
Unfortunately, Macbeth's active imagination gets the better of him. This is shown strongly in two parts of the play. Firstly when he is going to kill King Duncan he says " Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? ". It is his imagination that forms this vivid spectacle for him and his conscience losing the battle against his ambition. The other example of this is at the banquet, immediately after he has hired murderers to kill Banquo and Fleance. He does this because the witches had prophesised that Banquo would be the head of a line of kings. Macbeth's imagination sees the ghost of Banquo and his mental strength is again shown to be weak as his imagination overpowers his sense.
In Act 2 Scene 2, Macbeth has just murdered King Duncan. He meets Lady Macbeth with his conscience heavily in his thoughts. He refuses to go back to the scene of the crime to put the daggers back. He does not want to see what he has done. He is obviously terrified of being caught. His imagination stirs again in this scene when he talks of how people cried murder in their sleep and how by killing the king, he has murdered sleep and therefore no-one will ever sleep easy again. He completely ignores Lady Macbeth when she tries to instil common sense into him and he continues his obsession with sleep. Then when Lady Macbeth leaves, he realises his hands are covered in blood. He tries to disown them by saying, " What hands are here? ". He does not want to be part of what has happened and so he tries to convince himself that he is separate from his hands. He is paranoid that his hands will not come clean but sees only the water he is using to wash them turn red. The knocking he hears reinforces his fears of being caught. After Lady Macbeth tries to calm him down, he refuses to acknowledge that he actually committed the deed. His final two lines sum up his regret for his actions. " To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself / Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst."
Lady Macbeth: She has a very important role in the story. She fuels Macbeth's own deeply rooted ambition to be King. However it must be noted that she does not do this alone. The witches compliment Lady Macbeth's way of thinking and through their prophecies, they also influence Macbeth. The first time she appears in the play she summons the evil spirits into her body and asks them to rid her of her womanhood. She wants to be able to kill cold bloodedly and not feel any remorse for anything she does. Her mind is practical and she meticulously plans out the murder of King Duncan. She seems strong mentally and is able to deal with doing things that seem repulsive. Shakespeare uses Lady Macbeth and Macbeth's feelings to counter each other. This is shown as when Macbeth is broken down and almost reduced to tears, Lady Macbeth is practical and unemotional, but when Macbeth is King and has no trouble with murdering people, Lady Macbeth is emotionally scarred and proves her own words, "These deeds must not be thought / After these ways; so, it will make us mad.'' to be true as the murder of King Duncan comes back to haunt her in her sleep as she sleepwalks and talks. This emotional breakdown occurs because Macbeth is too occupied with himself that he gives no support to her. In the end, this emotional unbalance drives her to take her own life.
In Act 2 Scene 2 Lady Macbeth begins very strong and knowing that her husband is going to be hysterical when he enters. She is confident that everything will go to plan as she planned the murder to the last detail. When she hears someone speaking, she is very worried that someone has woken up. She then shows that her call to the evil spirits has not been answered, as she still is 'too full of the milk of human kindness' which she accused Macbeth of having in an earlier scene. However, when Macbeth enters, she can see his anxiety because of what he has done. She is very good at putting on a false front she answers his questions as if she didn't care. Even though Macbeth is very paranoid, she manages to take control of the situation by giving practical solutions to his problems. A prime example of this is when she says, "a little water clears us of this deed''.
Language and Style
The style of medium mostly used in this scene and in fact the whole play is blank verse. Blank verse is flexible and it can change to reflect whatever emotions Shakespeare wants to portray in a character or scene. He does this effectively by using contrasting words. An example in Act 2 Scene 2 is Macbeth's speech when he is washing his hands: "No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine / Making the green one red" Here Shakespeare uses long words like multitudinous and incarnadine which contrast well with short monosyllabic words used like 'the green one red'.
There is very little use of prose in this scene. The main use of it is in Macbeth's speech about sleep when Shakespeare uses half rhymes with 'Cawdor' and 'more'.
Imagery
In this scene, Macbeth shows his active imagination in the form of imagery. He says about how he killed Duncan in his sleep. In his mind, he feels he has killed sleep itself by murdering sleep. Macbeth believes that sleep represents both innocence and peace and that by murdering the king he has thus murdered all innocence and peace in Scotland. He shows his guilt by reciting everything that sleep is good for, its healing and soothing. He thinks that all of Scotland has lost that, and most importantly he has lost that. He imagines that the rocks and stones will gang up against him and tell everyone that he murdered the king. "Still it cried 'sleep no more!' to all the house. / Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor / Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more.''
Themes
There are many themes that run right the way through the play. Just some of them are: deceit, imagination, ambition, witchcraft, and conscience. In this scene, imagination, witchcraft, ambition and conscience all come to the fore. Macbeth's ambition to be king, which was fuelled by the witches, was so great that he was able to kill the king. After he had done the deed however, his conscience and imagination started to affect him. He was deeply ashamed of what he had done and his imagination made him see and hear things, which were not really there.
Danny Fisher 4:33
