Sleep...An Essay for Macbeth

A detailed Summary of Sleep...An Essay for Macbeth

Shakespeare uses sleep as a reward and a consequence in his plays. If a character is innocent and pure, he is allowed restful, fulfilling sleep. If the character is not, he is condemned to a lifetime of insomnia and other problems. In Macbeth, the reader can see this idea manifest itself in many different ways. From the beginning, when Macbeth hears the voice to the end of the play when Lady Macbeth sleepwalks, the reader sees many examples of this use of sleep.

Sleep is a time when our minds are at rest and the subconscious comes out to play. Sleep is often times considered the place where we are able to see into our future and perhaps figure out how to solve our problems. Sleep is also what heals and cures our minds and bodies. Without sleep we slowly begin to disintegrate. Mind and body no longer co-operate without the healing force sleep brings with it.

One first encounters the idea of sleep in Macbeth when Macbeth murders the sleeping king. After doing so, he believes that he hears a voice cry out, "Sleep no more... Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more!" At this point the reader does not really think much of this warning thinking it merely to hav

Innocence and purity in a Shakespearean play have rewards attached to them. A deep, restful, peaceful sleep is allowed if the characters are good, but if they are not, sleep is barred from them and held in front of them as a reminder of their wrong doings. Those who are perceived as good and 'innocent' are allowed sleep, those who are not, sleep not.

e been Macbeth's guilty conscience rather than anything important. Then the signs of the voice's prophecy begin to surface like the symptoms of a disease. Macbeth slowly begins to become irrational and ruthless, partially due to the, "terrible dreams, that shake [him] nightly." A symbolic reason for why Macbeth is unable to sleep might lie in the fact that in killing a sleeping king, Macbeth has murdered his own sleep.

Yet another effect of his self-inflicted insomnia is Macbeth's naivete when it comes to the witches. He seems to believe everything that the three witches tell him. These prophecies, to most, would seem very unlikely and yet Macbeth questions none of them. Any sane person would question the source when someone tells him that he cannot be harmed by any man as long as a forest does not move, and yet Macbeth does not. At this point most would probably start to question how tight Macbeth's grasp on sanity is. Macbeth's reduced sanity can be directly attributed to his lack of sleep.

Macbeth's lack of sleep has turned him into an evil tyrant; Lady Macbeth is turned not only into a fiend but, as well, a mad woman

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Approximate Word count = 1008
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels