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In Act 2 Scene 2 during Lady Macbeth's last speech What does she really mean?
Wiki User
∙ 13y ago
Lady Macbeth says:
I hear a knocking
At the south entry; retire we to our chamber;
A little water clears us of this deed;
How easy is it then! Your constancy
Hath left you unattended. Hark! More knocking!
Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us,
And show us to be watchers. Be not lost
So poorly in your thoughts.
Let's go line by line:
"I hear a knocking at the south entry"--someone's knocking at the south door. We know it's Macduff and Lennox but they don't.
"Retire we to our chamber"--their chamber is their bedroom--that's where they should go
"A little water clears us of this deed; How easy is it then!"--It's easy to wash off the blood. Macbeth has asked "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood from my hand?" and answered "no". She didn't hear him (probably--it depends how you stage it, but she is off smearing the grooms' faces when he delivers this line) but her line sounds like an answer to his question. It is also an ironic foreshadowing of the last glimpse we will get of Lady M, trying desperately in her dreams to wash Duncan's blood from her hands. What a great line!
"Your constancy hath left you unattended"--and then what a stinker of a line. I think it makes more sense if you add a comma making it "Your constancy hath left you, unattended." His constancy, his faithfulness and perseverence has left him and he is now unattended. That's because Macbeth is just standing there looking at his hands.
"Hark! More knocking!"-obvious.
"Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, and show us to be watchers" She wants him to put on his nightie, and why? So if someone has to wake them up, they look like "watchers", witnesses of the crime, not the perpetrators. She wants it to look like they were sleeping through the whole thing.
"Be not lost so poorly in your thoughts"--he's lost in his thoughts--still staring at his hands.
So what does this all add up to? She wants him to stop staring at his hands (Be not lost in your thoughts, your constancy hath left you), go to the bedroom (retire we), put on his nightie (get on your nightgown), and wash his hands (a little water). Then he will look like someone who has been asleep in bed all night, not prowling around murdering the king, when whoever is knocking gets inside. She thinks that she is the strong person who has to make the arrangements to cover up the crime; she is going to find out different really really soon and is not going to like it.
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∙ 13y ago
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