This is an excerpt from act 2 scene 2. Macbeth and his wife are outside the king's chamber. Macbeth has just killed Duncan. After having committed the deed, Macbeth leaves the room, but the intervention of a voice saying

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Act 2, scene 2 a little water clears us of this deed

Intro :

This is an excerpt from act 2 scene 2. Macbeth and his wife are outside the king’s chamber. Macbeth has just killed Duncan. After having committed the deed, Macbeth leaves the room, but the intervention of a voice saying « Macbeth shall sleep no more » confuses him to the point that he takes the  2 daggers with him when he should have left them in the room. Once again, Lady Macbeth has to take matters into her hands so as to wash away all suspicion. This passage offers a new chance for the audience to witness the confrontation between the 2 main characters of the play, and see how little alike they are. Indeed, if it is easy for Lady Macbeth to see the reality of the murder it is painful for Macbeth to open his eyes on the deed . In a first part we shall sudy the themes of vision and appeances in this excerpt and in a second step we shall see how, after the crime,  the two characters try to clear their conscience in their own different ways.

Dev :

Once again, Lady Macbeth is confronted to a shaking and doubting Macbeth and therefore has to take things into her hands. Lady Macbeth is a master in manipulating false appeareances and she has already warned Macbeth that he should learn to be false « your face is a book where men may read strange matters...to beguile the time, look like time » (Act 1, sc5 L63/64). And here again she is teaching him the same lesson for, to look innocent, they must incriminate the 2 grooms « smear the sleepy grooms with blood »(L5). Macbeth is reluctant to do it , so Lady Macbeth concludes that she « gild the faces of the groom for they must seem guilty ». Lady Macbeth is associated to the lexical field of appearances and disguise « smear » « pictures » « painted devil » « guild the faces ». Lady Macbeth’ s reaction to the sight of blood on the her husband’s hands is immediate « wash this filthy witness from your hands », and when her husband shakes at the very idea of seeing what he has done « look’nt again I dare not », she accuses him of being « a child » Indeed, Lady Macbeth does not fear to set her eyes on a dead person for, to her eyes, a dead person is not more frightening than a « picture » or a « sleeping person », or a « painted devil ». In other words it is only because she has the power to turn reality into illusion, a dead body into the representation of one,  a mere « picture », that she can go finish the job.

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Macbeth does not have the power of changing reality, for Macbeth, vision presents a different problem. Indeed, on L7 he tells us that he does not dare to look at what he has done because it reminds him of the deed « I am afraid to think what I have done ; look on’t again I dare not » L7/8. In other other words, sight conforts him with his conscience, and horrible sights make him face moral questions that he might otherwise avoid. Macbeth, therefore does not have the same ability as his wife to contemplate the atrocity of his deed « what ...

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