Write a critical note on the dramatic significance of the sleep Walk

Write a critical note on the dramatic significance of the sleep Walking Scene.

Ans.

1. Introduction

Lady Macbeth is her husband’s accomplice in the crime of regicide. She incites him to murder the King in order to gain the crown. She brings all her will power to bear upon her hesitating husband. She willfully suppresses her womanly nature in order to achieve her aim. But soon after gaining the crown of Scotland she realizes the futility of her ambition. Her bitter sense of disappointment finds a powerful expression in these words:

“Naught’s had, all’s spirit,

Where our desire is got without content;

This safer to be that which we destroy,

Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.”

Very soon, therefore, her sins begin to recoil upon her. She is subjected to great mental and spiritual tortures. Her powerful personality gradually disintegrates under the pressure of circumstance. Her deep spiritual anguish comes to the surface in the sleep walking scene of the play.

2. A very artistic scene

The sleep-walking scene is one of the most awful tragic scenes in all literature. It has been created by the dramatist, no doubt, on a grand scale and with a supreme artistic sense. The actions and the words repeated by Lady Macbeth in this scene are all reminiscent of her role in many of the previous scenes of the play. But more than this, they give expression to her inexpressible sense of oppression and spiritual anguish suffered over a long period in which she feels more and more at odds with her husband. They are an expression of her deep seated and almost unconscious remorse. Her broken and delirious speech in this scene is more pathetic and awe-inspiring than anything she had uttered while she had been in her senses. Her works, if we mark them closely, reveal her great struggle to save her husband from nervous breakdown and from exposing himself. In that unequal struggle Lady Macbeth is overwhelmed. She goes almost mad and comes to behave most strangely by walking and talking while she is all time in a most sound sleep. There is an awful mingling of terror and pathos in this wonderful scene.

3. Its terror

The scene is terrible in its effect. If fills the audience with a sense of awe. The reason for this is quite obvious. The scene is a most unusual one. It displays a most unnatured act on the stage. Lady Macbeth behaves in this whole scene like a living automaton worked by the agones of remorse. Both her continuous action of rubbing her hands together and her broken, disconnected utterances have a terrible effect on the mind of the audience.

4. Its pathos

The sleep-walking scene is a masterpiece of Shakespeare’s dramatic genius. It is a scene of redemption for Lady Macbeth. Without this scene, Lady Macbeth would have been justifiably treated as “the fourth witch” or as a “fiend-like Queen.” Her essential womanliness is brought out only in the sleep-walking scene. She is now an object of pity. The scene discloses the tremendous mental and spiritual struggle this strong-willed woman might have undergone before she completely breaks down under the weight of circumstance. She is filled with unspeakable remorse for her share in the most unnatural act of murder of King Duncan. The horror of the murder scene seems to have haunted her day and night. Each and every detail of the scene goes to arouse heart-felt sympathy for the spiritual agony of Lady Macbeth.

5. Its dramatic significance

The three main features of Lady Macbeth’s delirium (in the sleep-walking scene) have been characterized as (1) the mere reproduction of the horrible scenes she has passed through, (2) the struggle to keep her husband from betraying himself, and (3) the uprising of her feminine nature against the foulness of the deed. Verity adds a fourth characteristic, too, and that is her fear of the “after-death”, which is signified by her exclamation: “Hell is murky!” The horrors of the murder-scene as well as her knowledge of the terrible cold-blooded murders of Banquo and of Macduff’s wife and children allow her no peace of mind. She is constantly bitten by bitter remorse. All her acts of commission and omission seem to have violently recoiled upon her delicate and highly sensitive feminine heart. As a consequence she is turned into an object of utmost pity. We are one with the gentle woman and the doctor attending upon the demented Lady Macbeth in their deep sympathy for her suffering: “You have known what you should not,” says the doctor, and the gentle-woman replies, “She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that Heaven knows what she has known.”

The scene also makes it clear that Lady Macbeth has been completely estranged from her husband, who is now practically “wading” reverse of blood. This was not what she had anticipated from him. She has been left alone for a pretty long time by her criminal husband and she finds herself unable to bear this estrangement. From Macbeth’s point of view, the scene is, again, a signal of his complete loneliness. He, too, is now left alone to suffer the consequences of his misdeeds.

In the end, it may be remarked that the scene has provided us with one of the most beautiful quotations from Shakespeare: “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”