Macbeth Doth Murder Sleep
Uploaded by DidoshDaQT86 on Sep 30, 2002
Duncan's murder has a great effect on Macbeth. He is scared and cannot face what he has done. He is mad with horror, although it is not the horror of detection. He brought the bloody daggers, which should have been left on the pillows of the grooms, out with him, but he does not care for that. What he thinks of is when he heard one of the men awaked from sleep say "God bless us" and he could not say "Amen." Because his mind's eye portrayes to him the desiccation of his throat as a sudden scrutiny from Heaven, he is stumped.
Lady Macbeth hears the owl scream and the crickets cry, but what Macbeth hears is the voice that cries "Macbeth doth murder sleep," and a minute later, with a change of mood, condemned on him, as if his three titles gave him three distinctive personas to suffer in, the doom of sleeplessness:
Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more.
He keeps insisting that he heard voices saying that he will never sleep again because of this terrible deed he has committed.
Methought I heard a voice cry sleep no more!
Macbeth doth murder sleep, the innocent sleep...
The connection between sleep and death warps Macbeth so terribly that he is drawn closer and closer to insanity. The dawn following the night of Duncan's murder, all the noblemen of Scotland who are present in Macbeth's castle become surprised to see Macbeth up at that hour. This divulges the fact that Macbeth has not slept after he committed the murder. This further proves that darkness, night, sleep, and death all form a motif in the play with the way that they are corresponding with each other. The other characters find out about the murder as the sun begins its ascending on the horizon, and with dawn comes the truth.