Macbeth

A detailed Summary of Macbeth

Still it cried, "Sleep no more!" to all the house.

"Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor

Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more."

Sleep is one of the most powerful and most used words in the play Macbeth. Its use and implications span between both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Through sleep you can see the changes that go on between the two aforementioned characters. Sleep in the play is used as a way to show how the characters evolve and transform into that which is most feared by those characters.

Before the witches prophesize to Macbeth they vow to whip up a storm and destroy the ship of a sailor. Interestingly the witches do not say that they want to murder the sailor. Instead, they plan to destroy his sleep:

For the witches the inability to sleep is symbolic of a tormented soul. The man who cannot sleep lives in chaos, night is day and day is night. To the characters in Macbeth sleep is the, "chief nourisher in life's feast" (II, ii, 48) without it one becomes mad. Characters invoke the word sleep as a symbol of order. But in

And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full

Lady Macbeth's sleep is representative of the portrayal of a woman's place in the play Macbeth. As a woman her guilty conscience makes her sleep. Her madness makes her benign. Lady Macbeth is the prototype of the madwoman in the attic who lives in a state of semi-sleep, mumbling to herself, and washing her hands. She poses no threat to anyone but herself. Her madness makes her less dangerous then when she was in control of her senses. In contrast the inner chaos of Macbeth causes him to be awake. His madness makes him dangerous. His inability to sleep causes his mind to grow bloodier and his rule over Scotland more treacherous. Macbeth's madness is characteristically masculine. In his madness he achieves the thickening of his blood that Lady Macbeth wishes for. Macbeth becomes emboldened and more violent; he becomes more awake. In contrast Lady Macbeth undergoes a feminine transformation as madness makes her sleep and more docile. In her madness she becomes profoundly female even adopting stereotypical female habits like washing and fretting about spots of blood. She becomes a docile creature, which is the exact opposite of what she wished at the beginning of the play:

Lady Macbeth as she is eaten up by guilt and goes mad is robbed of the ability to control her sleeping habits. She is robbed not like Macbeth of the ability to sleep but the ability to stay awake. Lady Macbeth lives in a surreal world where she writes, washes, and walks all in a fa

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Approximate Word count = 1027
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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Macbeth

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