Macbeth Act 5

In Act 5, Shakespeare establishes the motifs of empathy and remorse.  In the previous acts, Lady Macbeth did not express any sort of empathy for Macbeth’s victims: Duncan, Banquo, and Macduff’s family.  Instead, she encouraged his murderous actions in an effort to attain unthreatened power and entitlement to the throne.  However, the audience witness Lady Macbeth’s apathetic facade crumble in Act 5 Scene 1.  Her obsessive hand-washing behavior exemplifies her guilt.  “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 so much blood in him?” (5.1.37-42). Lady Macbeth is fixated upon washing her hands which she believes are covered in blood. Lady Macbeth is sharing memories of the murders, occurring before “two” in the morning at “one”.  She is haunted, and her indifferent composure can no longer be sustained.  Instead, Lady Macbeth is mentally suffering of a “disease”, and can no longer behave as if she is unaffiliated with the murders. It is assumed that any person involved in murdering another person is likely to feel guilty Therefore, Lady Macbeth is characterized as expressing more humanistic emotions than in the previous acts where she showed no remorse for the brutal deaths of innocent people.  

Macbeth’s own internal suffering is further demonstrated through his pessimistic outlook on the purpose of existing.  He describes life as “a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then he is heard no more.  It is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/signifying nothing” (5.5.27-31).  Macbeth believes life is a temporary feat, and one will be forgotten after being “heard no more”.  His undermining of life is possibly a justification in killing multiple people, describing life as not being worth experiencing anyway.   However, Macbeth’s mentality demonstrates his insanity and lack of moral compass, as he does not value life the way that one would expect a King should.  As a result, both Macbeth’s and Lady Macbeth’s behavior in Act 5 reveals their struggle to accept their reality of being murderers, deflecting their insecurities upon either obsessive behaviors or depressing thoughts.