Macbeth demonstrates fear of damnation in Act II, Scene 2. Lady Macbeth's guilt is slower to develop; she is not consumed with guilt for the crime of regicide or Banquo's death until Act V, Scene 1.
Knowing that regicide is a serious crime, certainly for the act itself and also because it disrupts the order of creation in the Great Chain of Being—the idea of a perfect hierarchy from God down to the most insignificant creature on earth—Macbeth is overcome with fear and guilt after his murder of King Duncan. Following his heinous act, he tells Lady Macbeth,
Methough I heard a voice cry "Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep"—....
"Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more: Macbeth shall sleep no more." (2.2.35-43)
At this point Lady Macbeth berates her husband, telling him to get water and just wash the "filthy business" from his hands. Further, she dismisses his fears by saying,
The sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures. (2.2.53-54)
However, by Act V, Lady Macbeth has no mettle and is so overcome by guilt that she has lost her mind and is obsessed with images of Duncan's blood on the steps of the castle. Ironically, now it she who can no longer sleep; rather, she sleepwalks, and in her delusions she tries to wash the spots of blood out of the stone steps.
Out, damned spot! Out, I say...
Hell is murky...
Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? (5.1.25-28)
Further, she imagines that she tells Macbeth that Banquo cannot come out of his grave: "What's done is done!"(5.1.46). Clearly, her conscience is tortured by the murders of both Duncan and Banquo. Hearing her, the physician remarks, "I think, but dare not speak" (5.1.57) as he suspects that Lady Macbeth and Macbeth have committed grievous crimes, and now she is disturbed by her part in these murderous acts.
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