Scene summary
Lady Macbeth waits alone, nervous, after drugging the chamberlains and leaving their daggers in plain sight. She says she would have killed Duncan herself if he did not remind her so much of her father while he slept. Macbeth returns with the act done and his hands bloody, and calls the vision lamentable. He tells that he heard, from two men sleeping in the same room, one laugh in his sleep and the other shout murder, that the two prayed and went back to sleep, and that he could not say amen when they said God bless us. He also heard a voice announce that Macbeth has murdered Sleep. Lady Macbeth tries to treat the matter as a practical affair and tells him to wash his hands. He brought the daggers with him, which should have stayed with the chamberlains, and dares not go back to the room. She takes them, says that the sleepers and the dead are only paintings, and smears the chamberlains’ faces with blood so the guilt falls on them. Knocks sound at the door, and Macbeth, terrified of any noise, asks whether the whole ocean would wash the blood from his hands. Lady Macbeth returns with hands the color of his, says that a little water will clean them, and tells him to put on his nightgown, so that no one suspects they had been awake.
Analysis
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