Close Reading Assignment 5

Throughout the entirety of act 2, scene 2, Shakespeare makes several references to sleep, utilizing metaphor to enhance the meaning wherein Macbeth yields to his ambition and follows through with the murder of Duncan.  The first reference to sleep is made by Lady Macbeth in describing how she drugged the king’s groomsmen so they would sleep through the murder.  Sleep is used here to depict the ignorance of those who are supposed to protect Duncan.  However, Macbeth’s references to sleep have a deeper meaning.  When Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are discussing the murder, Macbeth relates how he heard a voice cry out, “Sleep no more! Macbeth murders sleep! – the innocent sleep , that knits up the raveled sleeve of care, the death of each days life, sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast” (2.2.47-51).  The line ‘the innocent sleep’, is the explanation of the meaning behind these lines.  Macbeth realizes that in his guilt that he will never have another night of peaceful sleep.  Sleep, that is so important for a content and healthy life, will never again come to Macbeth.  The ‘innocent’ also relates to Duncan, as he is the innocent victim as he sleeps soundly while Macbeth terrorizes his peaceful slumber with a deathly bludgeoning. The scene depicts the moral horror that Macbeth faces for the remainder of his life.  Another reference to the sleep by the voice is, “Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more” (2.2.54-57).  Macbeth’s conscience is telling him that he has sentenced his entire realm to a sleepless future because of the threat posed by sleep.  The scene also has several references to hand washing which, for Lady Macbeth, in the lines “Go and get some water and wash this filthy witness from your hand” (2.260), means a simple cleansing of the evidence of the murder to hide their guilt.  However, for Macbeth in the lines, “With all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red” (2.2.78-81) he tells that all of the water in the ocean couldn’t wash the remorse from his hands, that the blood (his guilt) would turn the oceans red.