The Shakespearean tragedy Macbeth underscores the important and usually unforeseen effect of sin, that of guilt. The guilt is so deep that Lady Macbeth is pushed to suicide, and Macbeth fares only slightly better.
Blanche Coles states in Shakespeare’s Four Giants that, regarding guilt in the play:
Briefly stated, and with elaborations to follow, Macbeth is the story of a kindly, upright man who was incited and goaded, by the woman he deeply loved, into committing a murder and then, because of his sensitive nature, was unable to bear the heavy burden of guilt that descended upon him as a result of that murder. (37)
In “Memoranda: Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth,” Sarah Siddons mentions the guilt and ambition of Lady Macbeth and their effect:
[Re “I have given suck” (1.7.54ff.)] Even here, horrific as she is, she shews herself made by ambition, but not by nature, a perfectly savage creature. The very use of such a tender allusion in the midst of her dreadful language, persuades one unequivocally that she has really felt the maternal yearnings of a mother towards her babe, and that she considered this action the most enormous that ever required the strength of human nerves for its perpetration. Her language to Macbeth is the most potently eloquent that guilt could use. (56)
In his book, On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy, H. S. Wilson comments regarding the guilt of the protagonist:
It is a subtler thing which constitutes the chief fascination that the play exercises upon us – this fear Macbeth feels, a fear not fully defined, for him or for us, a terrible anxiety that is a sense of guilt without becoming (recognizably, at least) a sense of sin. It is not a sense of sin because he refuses to recognize such a category; and, in his stubbornness, his savage defiance, it drives him on to more and more terrible acts. (74)
Clark and Wright in their Introduction to The Complete Works of William Shakespeare explain how guilt impacts Lady Macbeth:
Lady Macbeth is of a finer and more delicate nature. Having fixed her eye upon the end – the attainment for her husband of Duncan’s crown – she accepts the inevitable means; she nerves herself for the terrible night’s work by artificial stimulants; yet she cannot strike the sleeping king who resembles her father.
Free Essays on Guilt in Shakespeare’s Macbeth
The Guilt-trip Within Macbeth
Has any reader ever experienced the likes of such guilt as is found in the pages of Shakeare’s tragic play Macbeth? I think not. This paper is an exploration of the many instances of guilt in the drama.
In “Memoranda: Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth,” Sarah Siddons mentions the guilt and ambition of Lady Macbeth and their effect:
[Re “I have given suck” (1.7.54ff.)] Even here, horrific as she is, she shews herself made by ambition, but not by nature, a perfectly savage creature. The very use of such a tender allusion in the midst of her dreadful language, persuades one unequivocally that she has really felt the maternal yearnings of a mother towards her babe, and that she considered this action the most enormous that ever required the strength of human nerves for its perpetration. Her language to Macbeth is the most potently eloquent that guilt could use. (56)
Clark and Wright in their Introduction to The Complete Works of William Shakespeare explain how guilt impacts Lady Macbeth:
Lady Macbeth is of a finer and more delicate nature. Having fixed her eye upon the end – the attainment for her husband of Duncan’s crown – she accepts the inevitable means; she nerves herself for the terrible night’s work by artificial stimulants; yet she cannot strike the sleeping king who resembles her father. Having sustained her weaker husband, her own strength gives way; and in sleep, when her will cannot control her thoughts, she is piteously afflicted by the memory of one stain of blood upon her little hand. (792)
In Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy, Northrop Frye sees a relationship between Macbeth’s guilt and his hallucinations:
The future moment is the moment of guilt, and it imposes on one, until it is reached, the intolerable strain of remaining innocent. [. . .] We notice that anyone who is forced to brood on the past and expect the future lives in a world where that which is not present is present, in other words in a world of hallucination. Macbeth’s capacity for seeing things that may or may not be there is almost limitless, and the appearance of the mousetrap play to Claudius, though more easily explained, has the same dramatic point as the appearance of Banquo’s ghost. (90)
Fanny Kemble in “Lady Macbeth” asserts that Lady Macbeth was unconscious of her guilt, which nevertheless killed her: