Macbeth

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 bloodClean from my hand? No, this my hand will ratherThe multitudinous seas in incarnadine,Making the green one red.
Re-enter LADY MACBETH
LADY MACBETH
My hands are of your colour; but I shameTo wear a heart so white.
Knocking within
I hear a knockingAt the south entry: retire we to our chamber;A little water clears us of this deed:How easy is it, then! Your constancyHath left you unattended.
Knocking within
Hark! more knocking.Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us,And show us to be watchers. Be not lostSo poorly in your thoughts.

In this scene alone Lady Macbeth mentions the words hands and water and obviously blood several times. The blood that Macbeth is talking about in the beginning of this passge is a symbol of all of the guilt that he is feeling. But Lady Macbeth just keeps telling him to wash the blood off of his hands with a little water. She tries to calm him down, make him see the brighter side of things by saying this. She tries to make him see that she is a women with a “ heart so white”. She thinks she is stronger than him in a mental sense. Its ironic now how she tells him that a little water can wash away his guilt but by the end of the play when she is washing her hands continuously she realizes the guilt is something deeper than what a “little water” can clean off.






The tragedy plays are just depressing. I am a reader that likes a happier ending, or at least something that I can laugh at. Shakespeare builds the tragedy using many tactics, however the giveaway that his was probably going to be a tragedy was the amount of power that Macbeth wanted. In my opinion if Richard III wasn’t already dubbed a history I think it could also be called a tragedy. His hunger for power is what caused his downfall. The same goes for Macbeth. Of course he had his Lady at his side to keep him in check. Change for the worst is how he creates the tragedy in Macbeth. Overall, Shakespeare obviously does a good job of creating a tragedy, I am just not the type of reader to enjoy it.

This book had its ups and downs. Even though I did not like fact that Lady Macbeth was so immoral, it was nice reading about a female character in Shakespeare’s book that was not a weak and hopeless character. It was funny that she was the one keeping her husband in check to get what he wanted. It somewhat reminded me of Player Piano, when Paul’s wife would keep him in check to exactly what he should be going to get ahead. However, much like in Taming of the Shrew, she ends up a wreck. I hate that every woman I have read about in Shakespeare’s plays in the end of the story end up this way. I enjoyed doing the more artsy project as an end project for this book. Overall, I feel like with all of these books they are better understood when they are seen preformed. That is what he originally wrote them for in the fist place.