Enter MACBETH
My husband!
MACBETH
I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a noise?
LADY MACBETH
I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. Did not you speak?
MACBETH
When?
LADY MACBETH
Now.
MACBETH
As I descended?
LADY MACBETH
Ay.
MACBETH
Hark! Who lies i' the second chamber?
LADY MACBETH
Donalbain.
MACBETH
This is a sorry sight.
Looking on his hands
LADY MACBETH
A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.
With Macbeth’s re-entry to the stage, both characters seem tense and on edge, and we see their interdependence clearly. Lady Macbeth’s exclamation of “my husband!” seems relieved, suggesting that she did not have as much faith in her plan as she initially implied. She again shows her agitation, startled by the smallest sounds of the “owl” and the “cricket”. The choice of verbs is interesting: “scream” and “cry” connote pain and suffering, perhaps suggesting that the natural world is pained by the murder of Duncan. There are parallels here between Duncan’s appreciation of nature when he enters Macbeth’s castle in 1.4 and then nature’s sadness when Duncan is killed. The natural order seems disrupted by Macbeth’s act of regicide, an idea that will be extended in 2.4, and even the ordinary noises of the simplest creatures now have the potential to terrify and shock. It is as though even nature knows instinctively that Macbeth will not be a just king, because he destroyed the natural order and the Great Chain of Being (a critical idea in the Jacobean era), and this is demonstrated through nature’s cruelty to Macbeth and his wife. The cumulative effect of these almost imperceptible interferences, like small noises that unsettle Lady Macbeth, are arguably what lead to Lady Macbeth’s loss of sanity. The pace of the scene is fast and furious, leaving little time for the audience to consider it. The rapid exclamations – “When?” / “Now.” / “As I descended?” / “Aye”/ “Hark!” – fire across the stage. The pressures are immediate and their agitation is obvious. The crescendo cannot be sustained and Macbeth draws our focus to his hands, the material evidence of “the deed” being “done”. The realization of the deed’s materiality seems to draw out remorse – “a sorry sight” – and it seems to be the moment when Macbeth truly sees the gravity of committing regicide (the anagnorisis of an Aristotelian tragic hero). However, he doesn’t change his behaviour: rather, he becomes detached from responsibility and pity. Instead, his line and gesture seem to tip into self-pity, implied too by Lady Macbeth’s dismissive response that it is no more than a “foolish thought” (though the image of bloody hands will go on to haunt her more than him).
- Emily
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