Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done’t
Lady Macbeth is obviously aware of the gravity of committing murder. As the play proceeds, we see her increasingly ‘de-natured’ and accepting of the fact that if she is to realise her ambitions (through her husband’s becoming king) she must come to terms with the ‘un-natural’ crime of regicide.
Act V, scene i. displays the price she has had to pay for inspiring the murder, and implies what she will have to pay – i.e. complete mental breakdown.
Throughout the first scene of Act V the Gentlewoman is presented to us as being terrified of saying anything about Lady Macbeth to the doctor. We are told:
DOCTOR: …what at any time have you heard her say?
GENTLEWOMAN: That sir, which I will not report after her.
DOCTOR: You may to me, and ‘tis most meet you should.
GENTLEWOMAN: Neither to you nor any one, having no
witness to confirm my speech.
Is this the gentlewoman’s caution, or to prepare the audience for the speech from a sleepwalker? And it also suggests that whatever Lady Macbeth has done or said, must be hugely worrying for the gentlewoman. But we do not yet know exactly what they are, so this is creating even more suspense. Also, in Elizabethan times sleepwalking would have been associated with demonic possession (reinforcing previous hints), and to an audience of this era would have been deeply disturbing.
We are told that Lady Macbeth has ordered for light to be with her at all times. And when she enters the scene, she is carrying a taper. Her, carrying a taper on stage, would emphasise the darkness around her (which she appears to be trying to escape), and make the scene seem more ominous to the audience. The darkness could be interpreted as her guilt and the madness that she is surrounded by. And the taper, a single flickering flame, which could go out at any moment, could be seen as her last grasp on sanity and life.
Whilst in her somnambulant state, Lady Macbeth goes through a complex set of actions. The gentlewoman tells us:
“I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her nightgown
her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon’t,
read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this
in a most fast sleep.”
This, when written in this style gives us a sense of tension and suspense. This is because of the way it is structured- i.e. short snappy phrasing, whilst conveying to us this strange set of actions. This makes us curious at what she is doing and why, because we do not yet understand what her actions are caused by, or what she is really doing. If we look closer at what the sentence says, it tells us more of Lady Macbeth. We can see she is being very secretive, even when ‘in a most fast sleep‘, and told that she folds her piece of paper. This may be so she can close it quickly if intruders appear. Which suggests that she is writing something of great secrecy, and performing it in a very paranoid and scared way.
Is this because she is writing a confession? This makes us think even more that she is becoming mad. We also know that she has much to feel guilty about, and what makes this scene so horrific is Lady Macbeth’s realisation that she has become mad - and that she is past restoring herself to her previous state. Her madness resembles that of a murderer and as Macbeth had suggested earlier, her guilt has returned to plague the inventor of the crime.
Lady Macbeth also repeatedly washes her hands in this scene. Although she has persuaded her husband to commit the murder, she cannot escape having Duncan’s blood on her own hands. Metaphorically, at least – a director might interpret this literally.
Who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him…
She cannot – can never – make herself clean again nor undo what she has inspired.
“Out damned spot, out I say!”
Washing hands excessively was a familiar action for murderers – a well-known indication of guilt - in Classical drama. A ‘damned spot’ in this era could be interpreted as the Devils mark - a mark thought to have been given to witches by Satan, who was of course a real and horrific being for Shakespeare’s audience.
These actions contrast her earlier belief that-
A little water clears us of this deed.
How easy it is then!
Later in the scene she reveals her fear for the consequence of her actions; no less than eternal damnation:
Hell is murky.
She is looking over the mental abyss, into Hell. This would stir the audience, since Hell was a real and vivid place, usually associated with fire, not ‘murk’. Somehow ‘murky’ makes it more real. An Elizabethan audience believed that the afterlife continued in one of two places: Heaven or Hell. And by this stage in the play, the audience would be sure Lady Macbeth would be going to the latter. The horror is that she is beginning to understand this herself.
Near the end of the scene the doctor exclaims that nothing can cure her state, and that ‘all means of annoyance’ should be removed from her. This would suggest that the doctor has concluded that she will possibly try to kill herself and that the gentlewoman should try to keep her from snapping completely. In this era, suicide would be a horrific thought, even more so than it is today, and would be thought of as the final push, which would put her firmly in hell. This would make the audience not only horrified, but in full of ominous thoughts.
Finally, at the end of the scene the doctor says:
“God, God forgive us all.”
In the Globe Theatre, the doctor would be watching Lady Macbeth from the edge of the stage, beside the audience. When he says this line, he may well be speaking for the audience as well as himself and the Gentlewoman, who are terrified of Lady Macbeth, but also pity her.