Hark! she speaks: I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly. After he has killed Duncan, Macbeth looks at his hands and pronounces them ‘a sorry sight’ and ‘hangman’s hands’ Lady Macbeth, seeing the blood on her husband’s hands, commands him to go and ‘wash this filthy witness from your hand.’Īnd then Macbeth rhetorically asks, ‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood / Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas in incarnadine, / Making the green one red.’ And later still, after Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking and handwashing scene, Angus will say of Macbeth: ‘Now does he feel / His secret murders sticking on his hands’. Lady Macbeth’s hand-washing recalls another recurring trope in the play: hands. ![]() ![]() It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands: I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour. What is it she does now? Look, how she rubs her hands. That is to say: Lady Macbeth’s eyes may be open but she cannot ‘sense’ or see the Doctor and Gentlewoman as they watch her. The woman who was once so fearless in her ambitions is now fearful. In other words, Lady Macbeth is now afraid of the dark, and must have a light nearby at all times at night. Why, it stood by her: she has light by her continually ’tis her command. Observe her stand close.Īnd sure enough, in comes Lady Macbeth at this point, with a candle. Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise and, upon my life, fast asleep. She seems to be aware of her place in the pecking order and doesn’t want to say anything that might incriminate herself it would be better for the Doctor to observe Lady Macbeth directly. Without a witness there to confirm what she said to him, the Doctor may twist her account. There is possibly a legal reason for her reluctance: if the Doctor repeated what she said to him in confidence, and the Macbeths found out what she had said, she might be tried for treason against the King and Queen (as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth now are, of course). The Gentlewoman refuses to tell the Doctor what she has heard Lady Macbeth say during her nightly sleepwalking. Neither to you nor any one having no witness to confirm my speech. You may to me: and ’tis most meet you should. That, sir, which I will not report after her. Is Macbeth really in control of what he does, or is he acting under the influence and direction of the Witches or Weird Sisters, and his own wife? Now, Lady Macbeth – who seemed to be more in control of her own fate – is under the sway of her own conscience. Last but not the least, the illustrations enhance the knowledge of the readers and make the book a wonderful academic, and leisurely read, as well as a read for performers and directors.So, sleepwalking is a very neat device for Shakespeare to use here, as it taps perfectly into the question of agency that hangs over the whole play. The references don't just list the works which have been cited, but also list other quality works which students can resort to (hence, I have not written 'Works Cited' but 'References'). Besides giving annotations - which not only provide explanations of lines, but also offer character trait discussion and discussion of other issues, so that students will find lots of matter for academic needs - the book also provides background information on the playwright and the times, about his works in general, and then explores some topics related to the text, covered under Textual Analysis section. The flow of reading is not disturbed as the annotations are on the same page. A visible advantage of the book is that the annotations are on the same page as the text, so that the readers don't have to flip through pages to look at the annotations and turn back to the text. A lot of the annotations look at how the parts should be performed, and they are mentioned by placing two star/ asterisk marks before the note number in the explanations. The book is meant for students, teachers, scholars, researchers, and also for performers. ![]() Macbeth: Critically Annotated Shakespeare is the first in a series of books set to provide detailed critical explanations of the lines, along with hints on performances.
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