Was the hope drunk / Wherein you dress’d yourself? Hath it slept since? / And wakes it now, to look so green and pale / At what it did so freely?
Act I, Scene 7 · Lady Macbeth
Context
After Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth he will not proceed with the murder, she challenges him by comparing his earlier resolve to drunkenness that has now worn off, leaving him sick and cowardly.
Analysis
Lady Macbeth personifies Macbeth's 'hope' as a drunk man who wakes 'green and pale'—hungover and ashamed of what he did the night before. This turns his ambition into something pathetic and unstable, not a heroic drive but a temporary intoxication he now regrets. The question format forces Macbeth to either defend his earlier self or admit the hope was never real.
Essay Tip
Support a thesis that Lady Macbeth weaponizes shame by reframing Macbeth's ambition as a humiliating loss of control—if his desire to be king was just drunken bravado, then backing out now makes him both a coward and a fool.