The Murder Of Duncan In Shakespeare's Macbeth

When doctor visited Lady Macbeth because she is sleepwalking. Doctor ask how is condition of Lady Macbeth to Gentlewoman who is taking care of Lady Macbeth. Gentlewoman said that Lady Macbeth often rubs her hand as if she is washing something. Lady Macbeth is talking to herself and trying to get spot off her hand. Lady Macbeth says, “What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him” (V.i.27-30). Lady Macbeth calculated that Macbeth will not kill anyone after he becomes king. She never thought Macbeth will become bloodthirsty and keep killing people.All the killings Macbeth did leads Lady Macbeth to be guilty of her provoking Macbeth to kill the king at beginning. Lady Macbeth also says to doctor “The thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now?—What, will these hands ne'er be clean?—No more o' that, my lord, no more o' that. You mar all with this starting” (V.i.30-33). Lady Macbeth is also guilty because Macbeth killed Macduff’s family. Macbeth does not listen to her like he used to. She was the one who initiated Macbeth to kill someone at beginning which is why Macbeth started killing people. Lady Macbeth did not want any more blood on her hands. All the guilt driven her to insanity which eventually leads her to suicide. Lady Macbeth is portrayed as weak person at the end of the play because she isn’t strong enough to make her husband listen to her like she used and loses into insanity due to

Once guilt begins to overtake Lady Macbeth, she looses control of her emotions and actions, sending her onto the fast track to death. In a way, Shakespeare has Macbeth and Lady Macbeth change roles. In the beginning it seems as if Macbeth is more emotionally affected by the killing of Duncan. However, once Banquo is killed Macbeth is perfectly fine with it, and Lady Macbeth becomes vulnerable and lets the guilt overrule her. She begins to repeatedly pretend to was her hands and sleep walk. “Here’s the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of/ Arabia will not sweeten/ this little hand”

While the doctor and Gentlewoman are observing Lady Macbeth she says,” Wash your hands; put on your nightgown;/ look not so pale! I tell you yet again, Banquo’s/ buried. He cannot come out on’s grave.” (Shakespeare 5.1 60-62). In this quote, Lady Macbeth is talking in her sleep again and she is basically saying not to look suspicious because she has helped kill Duncan and now her husband has killed Banquo. The guilt is haunting her even in her sleep. We see lady Macbeth become scared and frantic and has now just confessed in front of the doctor and Gentlewoman. Lady Macbeth says her hands are stained which we know symbolizing all the bad she has done. She says she wants to clean her hands, but it is too late she has already committed the crime. Lady Macbeth even goes on to say,” To bed, to bed! There’s knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come, give me your hand! What’s done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed!” (Shakespeare 5.1 64-66). This is the last time we see hand used in Act V and Lady Macbeth is paranoid that people are knocking on the castle doors and they know what she and her husband have done. Lady Macbeth is haunted by the idea of her hands being stained with the blood of her

Her guilt is seen through the blood on her hands and is proven through her horrible mental state at the conclusion of the play. Lady Macbeth has arguably one of the most tragic downfalls in the play. From a strong, independent woman who believed that she was on top of the world, to a shell of the woman she once was. Her actions were so dreadful, that her consequences were that much worse. Dawning from an overflowing feeling of guilt, Lady Macbeth’s demise is a painful one. Blood is seen when her collapse is at its climax. She begins to sleepwalk and hallucinate without stop. During these hallucinations, she pretends to vigorously wash her hands to clean Duncan’s blood from them but to no avail. The blood on her hands represents guilt, but the actions she was trying to wash from her own soul could not be erased. Lady Macbeth says, “Out damned spot! Out, I say!-One, two. Why, then,/’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky!” (V.I. 25-26). Lady Macbeth proclaiming, “Out damned spot!” reffers to the guilt she cannot wipe from her moral slate. The bloody guilt that is engraved in her conscience, unable to be erased. Ultimately her downfall leads to suicide, showing how difficult it is to clean the guilt from your conscience and wash away the actions that have already been

Lady Macbeth obsess over her own hands and becomes disgusted by them, and it states in Act V Scene 1 lines 28 “how she rubs her hands” (V.1.28) that the gentle women is noticing how weird Lady Macbeth is acting and this is showing she is now feeling guit. “Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. O,O,O!”

Lady Macbeth while in sleep is not in her right mind and reveals information better left hidden. While, Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking she relives the murder of Duncan . She mentions saying “a soldier,/and afeard? What need we fear who knows it,/ When none can call our power to account? Yet who would/have thought the old man to have so much blood in him”(1.5 32-36)? Lady Macbeth reliving such a violent moment such as the murder of Duncan makes us see what kind of burden violence can leave on you. She cannot escape what she has done so instead she relives it in her sleep in a kind of nightmare to help her make sense of it all. Her shock to the blood of Duncan being in such great numbers reveals the overwhelming guilt on her conscience. She is surprised about how killing a human feels and haunts you so she relates that to her surprise of Duncan’s vast amount of blood. Also, Macbeth's guilt is further outlined through her various episodes while in her trance like sleepwalking. During Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking episode, she becomes angry at the “smell of blood”(5.1 44) she imagines in her hand, she says “all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”(5.1 44-45).Lady Macbeth imagining a stain that is not on her hand reveals the madness in her mind. She cannot tell what is real and what is not. She imagines to help her explain what she is going through. The blood staining her hand is signifying the guilt that stained her heart. This guilt is not being washed or hidden away even with all the work she does to try and make it. Lady Macbeth referring her hand as “little” signifies the innocence that she had which now corrupt and stained with guilt due to the violence she has committed. As a result, the guilt due to Lady Macbeth’s previous actions reveals itself in its strongest way

In the first Act, Lady Macbeth forms a pact with the evil spirits to take away her tender, womanly qualities ‘and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty’. This is to ensure that she will have the strength to carry out whatever deed are necessary for her husband to ascend the throne. By the end of the play, however, the repercussions of her evil acts are clear and she is incapable of ignoring her guilty conscience. She grows fully aware of her actions and knows that ‘all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand’ and descends into babbling

She begins to sleepwalk, and the gentlewoman who catches her overhears her confessions of the terrible deeds she has done. In Act 5, Scene 1, Lady Macbeth says, “What, will these hands ne’er be clean?” referring to the guilt and evidence she has been trying to wash away. Later she claims to still smell Duncan’s blood. However, even in her stupor she tries to deny her fear and justify her guilty thoughts by stating in Act 5, Scene 1, “What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?” and then later in Act 5, Scene 1, “What’s done cannot be undone.” Her previous confidence in her dark plot has diminished and left her restless at night as a

She wanted to ensure that she and Macbeth would gain more power than they already had, and would let nothing get in her way of accomplishing this task. Lady Macbeth went so far as to advise Macbeth that if he did not agree with her and move forward with the plan, that he would forever live the life of a coward. After the murder Lady Macbeth became overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and misery, which were punishment for her terrible and cruel act of selfishness, not only for the murder of King Duncan but also for Banquo. Evidence of this is indicated while her doctor and servant witness and overhear her speaking about blood on her hands. This “blood” which Lady Macbeth speaks of, is non-existent and merely a figment of what they believe to be her disturbed mind.

She tells him,” … bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t” (1.5.69-71). Like the Nazi soldiers under Hitler’s command, Macbeth took his wife’s orders and kills an innocent man.

In Scene I of Act V in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth constantly washes her hands in her sleep because she tries to get rid of her hidden guilt and self-blame of Duncan’s murder. At first, Lady Macbeth thinks nothing of the murder, but as time goes on she starts to feel more guilty about the horrible deed she helped commit. Contrary to the play’s motif of night and darkness, Lady Macbeth has started to draw closer to light, and her servant notes that Lady Macbeth has told her to “[keep] light by her continually” (Shakespeare, V.1.24-25). However, Lady Macbeth does not completely show her self-blame to the rest of the world, because her only defining actions happen while she is still “in a most fast sleep” (V.1.8-9). This is a sign that

His guilt causes him to hear the crying which is just his own illusion and makes him shake at every noise. And the blood symbolizes the murder and water cannot wipe the blood is meaning his guilt that he realizes that he can’t get out of this crime. The entire passage exemplifies hyperbole and demonstrates the extent of Macbeth's guilt, a guilt which he no longer feels after the murders of Banquo and Macduff's family. Apparently, both of these instances also show his guilt prevents him from fully enjoying his ill gotten gains and they reflects that Macbeth good quality is still remaining even when he turns to evil. However, Macbeth's guilt is not enough to discourage him from murder which indicates his lack of morality.

She needs only her husband's letter about the weyard sisters' prophecy to precipitate her resolve to kill Duncan. Within an instant she is inviting murderous spirits to unsex her, fill her with cruelty, thicken her blood, convert her mother's milk to gall, and darken the world "That my keen knife see not the wound it makes" (1.5.50). Macbeth, in contrast, vacillates. The images of the deed that possess him simultaneously repel him (1.3.130, 1.7.1) When she proposes Duncan's murder, he temporizes: "We will speak further" (1.5.69). (189)

In this we get a sense that Macbeth is going a little crazy, and that it will be hard for Macbeth to remove this murderous act, a permanent blood stain, from his mind. Macbeth is akin to blood in this scene; Lady Macbeth, to water. When Macbeth cannot replace the daggers, Lady Macbeth takes charge commanding Macbeth to “give [her] the dagger” (II. 2. 57), so she can do it herself. In this she is clearing up the evidence that ties them to the murder, just like water washes away blood. Lady Macbeth is also similar to water in the way that the murder is easily washed away from her mind, unlike the stains it leaves on Macbeth’s. At the end of this scene Lady Macbeth states that “A little water clears us of this deed. / How easy it is then!” (II. 2. 70-71). This shows us how unbothered Lady Macbeth is by the murder; we can almost see her laughing about how easily they will get away with it when they just wash off the blood. If the Macbeth’s relationship stays comparable to that of blood and water, Macbeth will probably start to be even more affected by his actions, while Lady Macbeth will be stuck cleaning up after

Her poisonous nature brought upon her own downfall including others around her. She lost her mental sanity after convincing Macbeth to kill Duncan because of all the things that happened afterwards in order to keep their cover. She was with him almost every step of the way, urging him on until he didn't need her anymore, and that is when the sleepwalking started. Macbeth was off to war and she was left to her own devices, which did not bode well for her. Like pale people rely upon fake tans to hide their true nature, Lady Macbeth leans on Macbeth in a way to keep herself sane. And when he leaves to fight in battle, she seems to not quite know what to do with herself, hence the sleepwalking. What she has convinced Macbeth to do has finally caught up with her. Her hand maid noticed this newly developed behavior and takes concern, bringing a doctor into the equation. The doctor and the maid waited one night for Lady Macbeth to begin her nightly roaming and they noticed that she always rubbed her hands together when she walked around, she also said this while doing so, “What, will these hands ne'er be clean?” (V.i.48). This is when her true colors begin to show to others around her, just like a fake tan fades away after a certain amount of time, the truth of the terrible treachery committed has been revealed