What It Is
The innocent sleep that Macbeth says he murdered together with Duncan. The play treats it as the first thing the crime takes from the one who commits it, and it brings it back in four forms: the sleep refused before the crime, the sleep that does not come afterward, the king's nightmares, and the sleepwalking of Lady Macbeth.
Where It Appears
In Scene 1 of Act II, before the crime, Banquo says that a heavy drowsiness takes hold of him and that, even so, he does not want to sleep, because of the cursed thoughts that Nature lets through in rest, and he is surprised that Macbeth is still awake. Macbeth wishes him a good night's sleep and, alone, says that beneath the canopies, sinful dreams harm the sleep of those who sleep.
In Scene 2 of Act II, sleep is named and condemned: Macbeth says he heard a voice crying through the whole house that he has murdered Sleep, that Glamis has murdered Sleep, and that therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more.
Macbeth:
Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep,' the innocent sleep, / Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care, / The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, / Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, / Chief nourisher in life's feast [...] 'Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor / Shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more.'
In Scene 2 of Act III, already king, Macbeth says he would rather see the universe fall apart than keep eating in fear and sleeping through the anguish of terrible dreams that make him tremble every night. Duncan, in his grave, sleeps a good sleep.
Macbeth:
We have scorched the snake, not killed it. [...] Better be with the dead, / Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, / Than on the torture of the mind to lie / In restless ecstasy.
In Scene 4 of Act III, at the end of the banquet, Lady Macbeth tells her husband that he lacks what preserves creatures: sleep. In Scene 1 of Act IV, after the promise of the second apparition, he says he will be able to reconcile himself to sleep in spite of the thunder.
In Scene 1 of Act V, sleep is where Lady Macbeth's guilt speaks: she walks in her sleep (the Gentlewoman tells that on other nights she writes, reads, and seals a letter) and confesses in her sleep what she does not say awake. The Doctor observes that it is a great disturbance to receive the benefit of sleep and at the same time to act as if one were awake.
What It Means
Sleep is the first visible price of the crime. It appears as the first thing lost, the rest and the bath after labor that Macbeth lists in Scene 2 of Act II, and it vanishes as the crime piles up: in Scene 2 of Act III it is already nightmare, in Scene 4 of Act III it is the lack his wife points out, and in Scene 1 of Act V it is the form her guilt finds to speak.
The voice in Scene 2 of Act II says that Macbeth will sleep no more, and the play fulfills this in two ways: in him, as insomnia and nightmare, and in her, as sleep that turns into a symptom. The lack that Lady Macbeth points out in her husband in Scene 4 of Act III is the one that returns, traded for sleepwalking, in Act V.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Guilt, the Supernatural.
- Characters: Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Banquo, who does not sleep in Scene 1 of Act II.
- Related symbols: the blood on the hands, with which Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking connects in Scene 1 of Act V.