Macbeth Quote Analysis

Lady Macbeth tries to comfort Macbeth, who has entered brooding and isolated. She urges him to stop dwelling on thoughts of the men they have killed.

The monosyllabic finality of 'what's done is done' creates a hard stop, as if the sentence itself is trying to shut down further thought. Yet the phrase is a command, not a fact—she must tell him to stop thinking, which reveals that the past is not actually sealed off but still very much alive in their minds. The audience hears her trying to assert control through language even as the content admits things are slipping beyond remedy.

Use this to argue that Lady Macbeth's pragmatic language masks denial rather than true resolve—the more forcefully she insists the past is settled, the clearer it becomes that neither of them can move on.