Macbeth Sleep Walking Scene

Sleep-Walking Scene in Macbeth
The famous sleep walking scene (ACT: V, SC: I) in ‘Macbeth’ is, ‘a stroke of creative
imagination’, there being no hint of it in Holinshed. For the first and the last time in literature
sleep walking is used with great and terrible dramatic effect. Indeed the scene is a
masterpiece of dramatic art.
It is the scene in which Lady Macbeth is found to be walking in sleep. Lady Macbeth
first asleep, is moving with a taper in hand. From the attending woman we come to know that
by her instruction a taper is always placed at her bed side for she cannot stand darkness. The
dreadful memories of the past led to a disorder of mind. While walking in sleep she speaks
incoherently of the horrible past. She rubs her hands and whispers, ‘out, dammed spot’. She
utters the words with which she led Macbeth on to the crime! “Fie, my lord Fie! A soldier,
and afraid? Then the horrible sight of Duncan lying in a pull of blood ever haunts her like a
nightmare.
The most important dramatic function of the scene lies in the fact that it shows that
the collapse of Lady Macbeth is now complete. In the earlier scene of the tragedy she appears
stronger than her husband. But they have now changed places. Her sin is ever present to her:
awake or dreaming she can think of nothing but that awful night, and the stain upon her hand
and soul. At last her over tasked brain breaks down; we witness her mental agony in the
sleep-walking scene: " Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not
sweeten this little hand: oh! oh! oh!" And then she dies, a voluntary and most wretched death.
Lady Macbeth’s complete collapse in the scene is not at all abrupt and unconvincing.
For in the earlier part of the drama there are enough indications suggesting the essential
weakness of her nature. As the action of the drama advances because of her constant prick of
her conscience. She is more and more relegated to the back ground. After the first crime her
husband no longer needs her active co-operation in the murderous deeds that follow. She has
no part in the long series of Macbeth’s subsequent assassinations. She is innocent of
Banquo’s blood, innocent of the blood of Lady Macduff and her little child. From the very
beginning unto her very end, she is essentially a woman. To overcome the weakness which
her sex is heir to, she had to invoke the aid of the murdering ministers.
“Come to my woman’s breasts,

And take to my milk for gall ….. ”
Again she cannot enter into Duncan’s chamber for the old king resembles her father:
“Had he not resembled

My father as he slept, I had done it.”
This speech shows that she has a slaughter concealed underneath her hard relentless exterior.
She has also a mother buried within her. That the mother is her is evident in the speech –
“I have given suck, and KNOW

How tender it is for love the babe that milks me.”
To suppress her essential feminine nature she has to take the help of wine. But neither
wine, nor artificial strength of mind allow one to go against one’s nature for a long time. The
voice of conscience forcibly strangled, reasserts itself and Lady Macbeth begins to sink.
When we see her as the queen of Scotland the glory of her dream has faded. She enters
disillusioned and weary with want of sleep: “Naught’s had, all’s spent”.
Hence forth, she has no initiative. She has little energy left. The fact is after the initial
crime disillusionment and despair prey upon her more and more until she sinks down
completely in the sleep walking scene.
The tragic retribution pierces the soul of Lady Macbeth herself. Sleep that is no sleep
becomes her long night agony. She walks in her slumber, and blabs to the dark, that has
listening ears, unknown by her, secrets that have blood upon them, washing her miserable
hand all murder-stained, and washing in vain. Lady Macbeth is left upon the shore alone. Her
occupation is gone, and she has neither imagination nor sympathy to enable her to fill the
blank in her life. With her passion consumed her own heart. Her proud will became sapped
by remorse: and she, with naked fancy stretched upon the rack, lived a long sleepless dream
of hell—a miserable woman, whose nerves, all flayed, were scorched forever by the hot
breath of her sin.
Thus, the sleep walking scene is dramatically most important for bringing out the
female effect of the tears growing of Lady Macbeth’s remorse on her. In this scene it is the
invisible world of moral reality which is made strongly manifest before our eyes. Lady
Macbeth completely over taken by the awful war that is raining in her breast has helplessly
broken down. Her feet, her hands, her lips conspire against her in revealing the guilty secrets
so long forcibly suppressed.

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Sleep-Walking Scene in Macbeth

“Come to my woman’s breasts,

“Had he not resembled

“I have given suck, and KNOW

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