The Transformation of Lady Macbeth (Macbeth)

Themes: Change, Classical, Dramatic, Macbeth, Shakespeare
Length: 1 Minute
Gender: Female

[Lady Macbeth, consumed by guilt and descending into madness, sleepwalks through the castle. Her voice is a mix of panic and remorse, her movements erratic as she tries to wash the imagined blood from her hands, reflecting the dramatic change from her earlier ambition and control.]

Out, 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.
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 o’ that: you mar all with
this starting.
Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!
Wash your hands, put on your nightgown; look
not so pale.—I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried;
he cannot come out on’s grave.
To bed, to bed! there’s knocking at the gate:
come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s
done cannot be undone.—To bed, to bed, to bed!