Act 2 Scene 2 Commentary 


Themurder ofDuncan takes place offstage. This shifts the audience’s attention away fromthe crime itself and onto Macbeth’s sense of horror and guilt. The pitiful spectacle of Macbeth holding the bloody daggers keeps the audience focused on Macbeth’s suffering.


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Shakespeare compounds the tension of the scene by making reference to the sounds of owls, crickets and knocking; this lends a spooky quality. The inclusion of nervous questions adds a further sense of uncertainty: ‘Who's there?’, ‘Did not you speak?’, ‘As I descended?’, ‘Who lies i' the second chamber?’


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Lady Macbeth’s calculating and composed behaviour lives up to the audience’s expectations. She callously chidesMacbeth for reflectingmorbidly on the horrible crime: ‘These deedsmust not be thought /After theseways; so, itwillmake usmad’and it is shewho returns the daggers to the room to ‘gild the faces of the grooms’ (i.e. smear the chamberlains’ faces with blood). As Macbeth expresses his revulsion at what he has done, Lady Macbeth asserts her role in the crime but coldly states, ‘My hands are of your colour; but I shame / To wear a heart so white’. She expresses no remorse and seems to think that there will be no consequences for what they have done: ‘A little water clears us of this deed’.


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However, LadyMacbeth is trying to suppress her humanity in this scene.Despite her composed appearance, her reluctance to murder Duncan herself suggests that she is horrified by the crime: ‘Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had done't’ illustrates that she is horrified by the crime. Despite her brave exterior Lady Macbeth is just as shaken by the idea of murder as Macbeth.


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Macbeth seems traumatised by his crime and on the verge of hysteria. He reports hearing voices proclaiming that, ‘Macbeth shall sleep no more’ and is clearly on edge: ‘How is't with me, when every noise appals me?’


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InAct 1Macbeth took pride in his daringmanliness.However, in this scene his courage seems to desert him. He tells Lady Macbeth that he will not look on the sight of Duncan’s murdered body again: ‘I'll go no more: / I am afraid to think what I have done; / Look on't again I dare not.’


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As Macbeth attempts to clean the ‘filthy witness’ from his hands, he realises the effect of his crimewill spread rather than bewashed away: ‘Will all greatNeptune's oceanwash this blood / Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine’. Macbeth’s final statement is one of regret and clearly displays the depth of his guilt: ‘Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!’


Macbeth


42


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