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Later in Act I, we see additional evidence of Lady Macbeth as villain. When Macbeth says he will ‘proceed no further in this business’ she uses her powers of persuasion – undermining his manliness and questioning his courage – to convince Macbeth that murder is the best course of action. It is Lady Macbeth who suggests duping the guards ‘with wine and wassail’, and she who takes the bloody daggers from Macbeth to plant them on the grooms. She shows no fear of the dead, claiming the ‘sleeping and the dead/Are but as pictures’. Overall Shakespeare uses this scene to show Macbeth’s guilt very clearly and shows how the guilt will get worse for both of them later in the play.
Later in the play Macbeth wishes he could sleep like Duncan and be at rest. He is not able to gain any sense of peace because of his actions. His guilt makes him afraid of his friend Banquo and he ends up having him killed as well. The fact that he sends murderers to find and kill Banquo suggests that Macbeth is not prepared to risk the guilt of killing another friend with his own hands.This scene comes after Macbeth has killed Duncan and he seems guilty straight away. He is hearing strange voices, which shows that he is upset. ‘Sleep no more!’ This shows that Macbeth is so guilty that he will never be able to sleep again.
She then proceeds to advise Macbeth on how best to present himself. She accuses him of being too easy to read and says he must ‘look like the innocent flower,/But be the serpent under’t.’ This shows us that she is deceitful and that the audience sees her as a scheming Machiavellian character. The only clue to her later guilt it is in her brief reflection in the extract that she would have killed Duncan herself ‘Had he not/Resembled my father as he slept’. Macbeth’s language in this extract is repetitious and unsettled. He uses the word ‘sleep’ seven times, emphasising his obsessive nature and the fixed state of his mind. This disruption of nature – all beings needing sleep to function – implies their guilt is so great that they will ‘sleep no more’. Aptly enough, as this extract shows,He is overwhelmed by guilt to the extent that his command of language is depleted. Here, sleep can be seen as a metaphor for a calm and quiet conscience, but sleep can also contain nightmares.
York Notes’ Macbeth GCSE Study Notes and Revision Guide provides all the information you need to craft exam answers that will earn high marks, and will help you to gain a thorough understanding of key elements in William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy, including the play’s plot, major characters, historical context and underlying themes. This was the medieval idea that all creatures existed in a hierarchy, starting with God, descending through angels to monarchs, their subjects and so on. In fact, Macbeth appears to desire that the plan is delayed. He says ‘We will speak further’ suggesting that he is not entirely in agreement with Lady Macbeth at this point. In this scene Macbeth is visibly disturbed and distracted. In saying, ‘Methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more!”’ he suggests some sort of figure of conscience is speaking out, reminding him of his guilt at the moment he kills Duncan.He has murdered the king while he is sleeping, which is a deceitful thing to do especially as the king is in line to God. In Shakespeare’s time people believed in the Divine Right of Kings, which meant that there was a social hierarchy with God at the top. The king was next and so to murder a king would be considered even more awful than by today’s social values. Macbeth’s punishment for this is that his own sleep is murdered. Macbeth says ‘the innocent sleep’ showing that Duncan was blameless and this makes him more guilty for killing him. The two characters contrast and as the play goes on we see this more and more. Macbeth becomes a violent king, largely as a result of his guilt and fear of being exposed. Compared to Duncan, he is unpopular and disliked to the extent that Malcolm eventually gathers an army to overthrow him.
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