Workshop.
Look at the similarities between Macbeth’s speech about blood and guilt in Act Two and his wife’s in Act Five. Why is there a clear mirroring imaginatively? What does this echo suggest about their intimacy? Why does Macbeth’s imagination conjure up such nightmarish revelations so much earlier than his domineering, fixated wife? Think about the effects of these echoes. Do these hallucinatory similarities help to give the play an unsettling coherence, as if certain experiences are inevitably repeated? Do the Macbeths almost seem to be different aspects of the same person? As if they might be twin souls? Look also at their mutual recognition that their criminality is so profound that forgiveness is impossible in any time frame. The emphasis on cleansing perhaps alludes also to Pontius Pilate’s futile attempt to wash away his guilt over the crucifixion of Christ. And the reference to knocking seems fateful and fatal: a beckoning to everlasting damnation through the gates between life and death, heaven and hell.
Act Two Scene Two.
Macbeth: ‘ Whence is that knocking? ….Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood/ clean from my hand?
Act Five Scene One.
Lady Macbeth: ‘ Here’s the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand….to bed, to bed there’s a knock at the door.’
