Critically analyse the sleepwalking scene in Macbeth.

In the “sleep walking scene” (Act V, scene i) of Macbeth, Shakespeare presents on the stage the terrible theme of how the entire personality of a human being is eaten up by the sense of guilt arising out of the murder of a saint-like innocent king. In Lady Macbeth the sense is so strong and deeply rooted in the unconscious that it ultimately brings about psychological disorder in her personality. But this does not simply focus on the guilty conscience of one character, rather it lays bare the entire tragic process in its extremity: how evil repays. Modern readers find the scene interesting because of the dramatist’s psychological treatment of the consequence of guilt, but the for the contemporary audience the importance of the scene must have had something to do with the divine ‘vengeance’ for the violation of the divine order, in which the king on earth, as E. M. W. Tillyard says, represented the king in heaven. The murder of the king must have been shocking to the Elizabethan ethos. This is emphasized on the religious level of thought; for the couple not only violated one of God’s commandments, “Thou shall not kill”, but also the act of murder can be traced back to the first murder committed by Cain, therefore to evil. At the beginning of the drama Lady Macbeth had been the most determined, the most cruel and the most inhuman figure, but now in scene I, Act V, she emerges as the most suffering, most disintegrated and most human figure.

The scene opens with a Doctor of Physic questioning a Waiting-Gentlewoman about Lady Macbeth’s special kind of ailment. From her account the Doctor and the audience know that since Macbeth’s departure into the battlefield, Lady Macbeth has become a somnambulist. Though in modern psychiatric theories, sleepwalking syndrome is etiologically diagnosed as arising purely out of familial reasons, Lady Macbeth’s case is amply clear that she is caught up in vicious guilt-shame cycle. The trauma of committing an act of such magnitude as being an active party in murdering an innocent king—a relative and benefactor—unhinges her psyche.

It is important to note that Lady Macbeth appears on the stage in her sleepwalking with a light in her hand, and that “she has a light by her continually.” This is a case of nyctophobia or phobia of darkness. Light represents knowledge and knowledge means clearance of phobia of the unknown; for Lady Macbeth it arises out of her fear of persecution, out of the phobia of the unknown divine retribution. All this had been residing in the unconscious, but now her superego is operating so strongly that it has caused turmoil in the entire psychic process. That is why her words have lost coherence; but still the audience/reader discern pattern in those words, which are reflections on past misdeeds and their consequences....................

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