Macbeth and Lady Macbeth React Immediately After the Murder — Macbeth

Immediately after murdering Duncan, Macbeth returns to Lady Macbeth in a state of psychological collapse, fixating on his bloody hands and claiming he heard a voice cry "Sleep no more!" He obsesses over his inability to say "Amen" when Duncan's grooms blessed themselves, and he refuses to return the daggers to the murder scene, declaring "I am afraid to think what I have done; / Look on't again I dare not." Lady Macbeth responds with contempt, calling him "Infirm of purpose" and taking the daggers herself to smear the grooms with blood. While she dismisses the murder as easily washed away with "a little water," Macbeth despairs that "all great Neptune's ocean" cannot cleanse his guilt, and he wishes he could wake Duncan with the knocking at the gate.

This scene reveals the fundamental difference in how the two conspirators process their crime: Macbeth immediately experiences profound guilt and spiritual torment, while Lady Macbeth maintains cold pragmatism and focuses on covering their tracks. Macbeth's vision of sleeplessness and his inability to pray foreshadow the psychological punishment that will plague him throughout the play, establishing guilt as an inescapable consequence of regicide. The contrast between Lady Macbeth's confidence that water will cleanse them and Macbeth's certainty that the blood is permanent introduces the play's central exploration of whether moral corruption can ever be undone.