TEXT:
LADY MACBETH
Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy thane,
You do unbend your noble strength, to think
So brainsickly of things. Go get some water,
And wash this filthy witness from your hand.
Why did you bring these daggers from the place?
They must lie there: go carry them; and smear
The sleepy grooms with blood.
MACBETH
I'll go no more:
I am afraid to think what I have done;
Look on't again I dare not.
LADY MACBETH
Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal;
For it must seem their guilt.
Exit. Knocking within
MACBETH
Whence is that knocking?
How is't with me, when every noise appals me?
What hands are here? ha! they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas in incarnadine,
Making the green one red.
Re-enter LADY MACBETH
LADY MACBETH
My hands are of your colour; but I shame
To wear a heart so white.
Knocking within
I hear a knocking
At the south entry: retire we to our chamber;
A little water clears us of this deed:
How easy is it, then! Your constancy
Hath left you unattended.
Knocking within
Hark! more knocking.
Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us,
And show us to be watchers. Be not lost
So poorly in your thoughts.
MACBETH
To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself.
Knocking within
Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!
Exeunt
NOTES:
Asterix
Honestly, Asterix and his Gaulish friends have absolutely nothing to do with the play, but it’s one of the best Shakespeare puns I’ve ever heard. Back when I began work on Hamlet, I toyed with the idea of tracking every piece of art or literature that used a line from the play - but of course there are far too many to count! Asterix was my favourite comic when I was a child, and so I hope you’ll indulge the reference here…!
Painted Devils
Lady Macbeth chastises her husband for being afraid of things that cannot harm him. She says it is the eye of childhood that fears a painted devil; children were often scared by the threat of a bugbear, a kind of bogeyman that would frighten them into obedience. (Our modern sense of bugbear, as a pet peeve or a nuisance, has little to do with it.) A painted devil is one that has been constructed, one that is artificial. And therefore it is childish to be afraid of it.
Cruentation
One of the stranger beliefs of the medieval world, cruentation was a process by which a murderer might be identified. It was believed that the body of a murder victim would start to bleed anew in the presence of its murderer. This form of “proof” was used in Germany as late as the 18th century!
Incarnadine
Shakespeare is at his most fantastically poetic here, creating a verb for how the blood on Macbeth’s hands could turn a whole ocean red. He uses the word nowhere else.