Act 5 Macbeth

Macbeth’s palace where scene 1 takes place… 5.1 What is Dunsainane?
Scene 1 -Set in Dunsinane (Macbeth’s palace) A doctor and a “Gentlewomen” – ie one of Lady Macbeth’s servants are in Lady Macbeth’s bedroom discussion her habit of sleepwalking… What happens at the beginning of Scene 1 (Act 5)?
The gentlewomen explains that Lady Macbeth has the habit of taking paper and writing upon it; sealing it and then going back to bed (all in her sleep!). She also explains that lady Macbeth has the habit of looking like she’s trying to wash her hands – all still asleep What does Lady Macbeth have a habit of doing at night in her sleep?
Suddenly while the doctor & the gentlewoman are talking, Lady Macbeth enters in a trance with a candle in her hand. What happens when the gentlewoman and doctor are talking?
Bemoaning the murders of Lady Macduff and Banquo, she seems to see blood on her hands and claims that nothing will ever wash it off. What is the significance of Lady Macbeth trying to wash her hands?
Lady MacbethOut, damned spot; out, I say. One, two,—why, then ’tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? Who said “Out damned spot?”
Lady Macbeth is completely undone by guilt and descends into madness. (It may be a reflection of her mental and emotional state that she is not speaking in verse; this is one of the few moments in the play when a major character—save for the witches, who speak in four-foot couplets—strays from iambic pentameter.) What has driven Lady Macbeth to this state of maddness?
Her inability to sleep was foreshadowed in the voice that her husband Macbeth thought he heard while killing the king—a voice crying out that “Macbeth was murdering sleep”. And her delusion that there is a bloodstain on her hand furthers the play’s use of blood as a symbol of guilt. What helped cause Lady Macbeth to be unable to sleep?
Guilt What is blood a symbol of?
Lady Macbeth “What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account?” she asks, asserting that as long as her and her husband’s power is secure, the murders they committed cannot harm them. But her guilt-racked state and her mounting madness show how hollow her words are. So, too, does the army outside her castle. “Hell is murky,” she says, implying that she already knows that darkness intimately. The pair, in their destructive power, have created their own hell, where they are tormented by guilt and insanity. Who said “What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power to account?