Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more! / Macbeth does murder sleep,”—the innocent sleep; / Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care, / The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, / Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, / Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
Act II, Scene 2 · Macbeth
Context
Macbeth reports hearing a supernatural voice proclaiming that he has murdered sleep itself. He then delivers a series of metaphors describing what sleep means to human life.
Analysis
Shakespeare piles up five different metaphors for sleep in quick succession—each one presenting sleep as something restorative ("knits up," "bath," "balm," "second course," "nourisher")—which makes the rhythm feel like a desperate incantation. Macbeth is trying to convince himself of sleep's value precisely because he has been told he will lose it, and the accumulation of images mimics a mind spinning out of control, unable to stop listing what it has lost.
Essay Tip
Support a thesis that Macbeth's guilt manifests as verbal excess—the more metaphors he stacks up to describe sleep, the more his speech reveals a mind already experiencing the insomnia and psychological torment the voice predicted, as if the punishment is happening in real time through his own language.