'Out, damned spot' is one of the nigh recognisable phrases uttered by Lady Macbeth in William Shakespeare's great tragedy. The scene mirrors Macbeth's earlier references to his ain guilt, and acts as a clear indication of how the one time-defiant and determined Lady Macbeth, one of Shakespeare's nigh fully realised female villains, has become undone by her own conscience. And she reveals all of this while she's comatose.

Let's go through the relevant passages from Act 5 Scene 1 of Macbeth, often known as the 'sleepwalking scene' featuring Lady Macbeth, offering a summary and analysis of the scene every bit we go. (We take analysedMacbethas a whole here.)

SCENE I. Dunsinane. Ante-room in the castle.

Enter a Doctor of Physic and a Waiting-Gentlewoman

DOCTOR:
I take two nights watched with you, simply can perceive no truth in your report. When was information technology she last walked?

The famous 'sleepwalking scene' takes place in a room in Dunsinane castle, now owned past the Macbeths since their killing of Duncan and Macbeth'due south claiming of the crown of Scotland. A Waiting-Gentlewoman who serves in the Macbeths' household has told the Doctor who accompanies her that Lady Macbeth has been seen sleepwalking around the castle, but although he has accompanied her for two nights now, they take, as all the same, failed to see Lady Macbeth walking effectually on her somnambulistic travels.

GENTLEWOMAN:
Since his majesty went into the field, I have seen her rising from her bed, throw her dark-gown upon her, unlock her closet, have forth paper, fold information technology, write upon't, read information technology, after seal it, and over again return to bed; withal all this while in a most fast sleep.

Equally Kenneth Muir observes in his notes to the excellent "Macbeth" (Arden Shakespeare: Second Series) edition of the play, Macbeth did not actually become 'into the field' of battle, but was besieged within the grounds of Dunsinane, where he will (later in Deed five) be vanquished and killed. (Run across 5.5.5-vii for Macbeth's spoken communication where he pretty much reveals as much.) Even Shakespeare has some plot holes!

A Waiting-Gentlewoman attended on the lady of the business firm, and spent her time in close quarters with her. Lady Macbeth has been observed getting out of bed, putting on her dark-gown, and taking a paper out of her private closet. She has written something, read it, and then sealed it upward again. But, as the Gentlewoman reveals, she has done all of this in her slumber.

What Lady Macbeth was writing (or 'sleepwriting') on these occasions is never revealed: Shakespeare keeps it a mystery. But information technology has been speculated that she is writing a letter to her (supposedly) absent-minded husband, trying to reassert her control over him even as their plans unravel and they become besieged on all sides. All the same, information technology's also possible that she is writing down her sins and confessing, having suffered a pricking of conscience (of which more than beneath). It'southward fifty-fifty been suggested that she was writing to Lady Macduff to warn her of Lady Macbeth's married man's plan to murder Lady Macduff and her children.

Of course, this ambiguity leaves the scene open to numerous interpretations, although how much scope this gives actors and theatre companies is questionable, unless they show the paper (and there's goose egg in Shakespeare's text to advise that it is retrieved from the about certainly locked closet).

Notwithstanding, the open-ended nature of that piece of paper – which is, every bit it were, bare for us to write our own cess of Lady Macbeth upon information technology – means that the conclusions we draw reveal much near how convincing nosotros find Lady Macbeth's alter of graphic symbol. Is she still defiant, despite her clearly troubled mind (and writing to Macbeth to attempt to remind him who's the real boss)? Is she feeling worried about the land of her immortal soul, and trying to make apology as a means of spiritual self-preservation (and confessing her sins on newspaper in the hope that information technology volition persuade God to become easy on her in the afterlife)? Or has she (perhaps more improbably) recalled her last traces of humanity and compassion (and, realising they accept both gone likewise far, is writing to their enemy to warn her of the danger she is in)?

DOCTOR:
A groovy perturbation in nature, to receive at once the benefit of slumber, and practise the effects of
watching! In this slumbery agitation, besides her walking and other actual performances, what, at whatsoever fourth dimension, take you heard her say?

'Sleep' is a key word in Macbeth, appearing more than thirty times in what is one of Shakespeare's shortest plays. Most of the instances of the discussion 'sleep' are found in speeches by Macbeth or, to a lesser extent, Lady Macbeth. There is something dreamlike and hazy about much of the action of the play, as if the characters are acting in a daze, non in full control of their senses, either because they are tired from lack of sleep (as Macbeth is after the killing of Duncan) or considering, even in slumber, they cannot find any residue or peace (as is the example with Lady Macbeth here).

So, sleepwalking is a very neat device for Shakespeare to apply hither, as it taps perfectly into the question of bureau that hangs over the whole play. Is Macbeth really in command of what he does, or is he acting nether the influence and direction of the Witches or Weird Sisters, and his own wife? Now, Lady Macbeth – who seemed to be more in control of her own fate – is nether the sway of her own conscience.

GENTLEWOMAN:
That, sir, which I will not report after her.

Doc:
You lot may to me: and 'tis most see y'all should.

GENTLEWOMAN:
Neither to you nor any i; having no witness to confirm my speech.

The Gentlewoman refuses to tell the Physician what she has heard Lady Macbeth say during her nightly sleepwalking. In that location is possibly a legal reason for her reluctance: if the Dr. repeated what she said to him in confidence, and the Macbeths found out what she had said, she might be tried for treason against the King and Queen (every bit Macbeth and Lady Macbeth now are, of grade). Without a witness there to ostend what she said to him, the Doctor may twist her account. She seems to be enlightened of her place in the pecking order and doesn't want to say anything that might incriminate herself; it would be amend for the Doctor to discover Lady Macbeth directly.

Enter LADY MACBETH, with a taper
Lo you, here she comes! This is her very guise; and, upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her; stand close.

And sure enough, in comes Lady Macbeth at this betoken, with a candle.

Dr.:
How came she by that light?

GENTLEWOMAN:
Why, it stood by her: she has light by her continually; 'tis her command.

In other words, Lady Macbeth is now afraid of the night, and must have a low-cal nearby at all times at night. The woman who was once so fearless in her ambitions is at present fearful.

Doc:
You see, her eyes are open up.

GENTLEWOMAN:
Ay, but their sense is shut.

That is to say: Lady Macbeth's eyes may exist open only she cannot 'sense' or see the Doctor and Gentlewoman equally they watch her.

Md:
What is it she does at present? Expect, how she rubs her hands.

GENTLEWOMAN:
It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands: I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour.

Lady Macbeth's manus-washing recalls some other recurring trope in the play: hands. Subsequently he has killed Duncan, Macbeth looks at his easily and pronounces them 'a sad sight' and 'hangman'southward hands'; Lady Macbeth, seeing the blood on her husband'south hands, commands him to go and 'launder this filthy witness from your hand.' And then Macbeth rhetorically asks, 'Will all great Neptune'south ocean launder this blood / Clean from my manus? No, this my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas in incarnadine, / Making the green one crimson.' And later all the same, after Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking and handwashing scene, Angus volition say of Macbeth: 'Now does he feel / His secret murders sticking on his easily'.

LADY MACBETH:
Nonetheless here'southward a spot.

DOCTOR:
Hark! she speaks: I volition set downward what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.

LADY MACBETH:
Out, damned spot! out, I say! – One: ii: why, then, 'tis time to do't. – Hell is murky! – Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fearfulness who knows it, when none can call our power to business relationship? – Even so who would have thought the old man to have had then much blood in him.

'Out, damned spot!': Lady Macbeth is trying to wash imaginary blood from her hands. Fifty-fifty today, we talk metaphorically of those who are guilty of some terrible law-breaking of having 'blood on their hands', and although Lady Macbeth's hands are physically clean, they are figuratively stained with her guilt. She, afterwards all, was the ane who conspired with Macbeth to impale Duncan so her married man could seize the throne.

This is quite a turnaround from Lady Macbeth's earlier conviction: after Macbeth had complained about the depths of his guilt (the 'Volition all corking Neptune's ocean' voice communication quoted to a higher place), his wife had retorted: 'My hands are of your colour; but I shame / To clothing a heart so white.'

The 'One: two' is a reference to the clock hitting 2 o'clock in the morn, as Lady Macbeth's next statement makes clear. 'Hell is murky', meanwhile, picks up on her fear of darkness. Lady Macbeth seems to address her husband in the 'soldier' references that follow, reminding him that nobody can bring a male monarch to account for his actions: he is above the law.

DOCTOR:
Practise yous mark that?

LADY MACBETH:
The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? – What, will these hands ne'er be clean? –
No more o' that, my lord, no more than o' that: yous mar all with this starting.

'The Thane of Fife' is a slice of doggerel, an old rhyme, that seems to prefigure Lady Macbeth'south own demise ('had a wife' suggesting the married woman is dead). She continues to endeavor to clean her guilt from her easily.

DOCTOR:
Become to, get to; yous have known what you lot should not.

GENTLEWOMAN:
She has spoke what she should not, I am certain of that: heaven knows what she has known.

Muir, in "Macbeth" (Arden Shakespeare: Second Series), argues definitively that the Physician's line is not addressed to the Gentlewoman, but this seems to make more sense than that he is addressing Lady Macbeth. It's possible that he is speaking to himself, telling himself that he is witness to the Queen's confession of guilt over Duncan's murder. Certainly, the Gentlewoman's response supports either reading.

LADY MACBETH:
Here's the odour of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this niggling
hand. Oh, oh, oh!

More recalling of her hubby's earlier words most 'all not bad Neptune's ocean' being unable to 'wash this claret clean from my hand'.

DOCTOR:
What a sigh is there! The eye is sorely charged.

GENTLEWOMAN:
I would not have such a eye in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body.

This seems to be double-edged from the Gentlewoman, meaning both 'I would not be then hard-hearted and callous every bit to have got myself tied up in my ain guilt every bit the Queen has' and 'I would rather die than continue myself alive with such guilt trigger-happy me upwardly inside.'

Doc:
Well, well, well –

GENTLEWOMAN:
Pray God it be, sir.

Here the Gentlewoman plays on the double pregnant of 'well': the Doctor is expressing his surprise at the revelations Lady Macbeth'due south sleepwalking have brought to his attending, but the Gentlewoman picks up on the thought of things being 'well'.

DOCTOR:
This disease is beyond my practice: notwithstanding I accept known those which accept walked in their sleep who take died holily in their beds.

LADY MACBETH:
Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look non so pale. – I tell yous yet over again, Banquo'due south buried; he cannot come out on's grave.

Md:
Fifty-fifty so?

LADY MACBETH:
To bed, to bed: there's knocking at the gate. Come, come up, come up, come, give me your hand. What's washed cannot exist undone. – To bed, to bed, to bed!

The knocking Lady Macbeth imagines she hears recalls the bodily knocking at the gate when Macduff arrived at the Macbeths' castle, just after Macbeth murdered Duncan. (Run across our analysis of the famous Porter scene for more than on this.) 'Done' is some other word that, like 'sleep' and 'hand', comes at u.s. over again and again in Macbeth. Here, Lady Macbeth's 'What'due south washed cannot be undone' echoes what she told her hubby in Act 3 Scene 2: 'What's washed is done.'

Get out

DOCTOR:
Will she become now to bed?

GENTLEWOMAN:
Directly.

DOCTOR:
Foul whisp'rings are abroad. Unnatural deeds
Exercise breed unnatural troubles: infected minds
To their deafened pillows will discharge their secrets:
More needs she the divine than the doctor.
God, God forgive usa all! Await after her;
Remove from her the ways of all badgerer,
And still go along optics upon her. So, good night:
My mind she has mated, and amazed my sight.
I retrieve, merely cartel non speak.

GENTLEWOMAN:
Good night, good doc.

Exeunt

The scene ends with the Doctor switching from prose to blank verse to conclude and sum upwards what he has discovered. Lady Macbeth needs a priest rather than a dr., for what ails her is spiritual rather than medical. 'Mated' hither means 'confounded' or 'dislocated'.