Macbeth

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1. 
   rowens Teacher
   High School - 12th Grade

   Lady Macbeth does a couple of things in this scene:

   LADY MACBETH.
   That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold:
   What hath quench'd them hath given me fire.--Hark!--Peace!
   It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,
   Which gives the stern'st good night. He is about it:
   The doors are open; and the surfeited grooms
   Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg'd their possets
   That death and nature do contend about them,
   Whether they live or die.

   The lines above show that she has drunk to gain courage and then drugged the drinks of the guards who are to watch over King Duncan. Later in the scene she helps to frame the guards for Duncan's murder. Macbeth has killed the king, but still has the bloody dagger. She says the following:

   LADY MACBETH.
   Infirm of purpose!
   Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead
   Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood
   That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
   I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal,
   For it must seem their guilt.
   

   Basically she is telling her husband that he is foolish to be afraid of the dead body--to think of it as a picture, not real. She then takes the daggers and smears the king's blood on the sleeping guards to make them seem like the murderers and leaves the daggers with them. Ironically, it is she who later has difficulty dealing with the blood on her hands.

   For a great side by side original and modern translation of Macbeth, see the link below

   Sources:

   http://www.enotes.com/macbeth-text/3353

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   Posted by rowens on Saturday June 7, 2008 at 8:48 PM
   
   

2. 
   suman1983

   Lady Macbeth overpowers his two guards with wine and feasting. She notes it in Act I, Sc. vii: “his two chamberlains / Will I with wine and wassail so convince / That memory, the warder of the brain, Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason / A limbec only” (l. 64-68). In Act II, Sc. ii, she takes the daggers from Macbeth and kills the two guards. She says to Macbeth that she would paint the faces of these two guards with Duncan’s blood, so that the public would presume that it is the two guards who killed Duncan: “Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead / Are but as pictures: 'tis the eye of childhood / That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed, / I'll gild the faces of the grooms withal, / For it must seem their guilt.” (l. 552-56). Lady Macbeth does so and her bloody hands project that she too has “done the deed”.

   Sources:

   http://www.enotes.com/macbeth

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   • Flag as inappropriate

   Posted by suman1983 on Monday June 9, 2008 at 11:50 AM