FREE ESSAY ON MACBETH

MACBETH

A ravell'd sleave is a tangled skein of thread or yarn. Macbeth uses it as a metaphor for
the kind
of frustration we experience when we have so many problems that we can't see the end to
any of
them. In such a case, we often say that we want to sleep on it in order to get everything
straight.
Macbeth also compares sleep to a soothing bath after a day of hard work, and to the main
course of
a feast. To Macbeth, sleep is not only a necessity of life, but something that makes life
worth living,
and he feels that when he murdered his King in his sleep, he murdered sleep itself.
[Scene
Summary] 
According to Macbeth's Porter--who is still a buzzy from a night of partying--sleep is
one of the
side effects of drink, which causes nose-painting, sleep, and urine (2.3.28-29). The
Porter also
equates sleep with impossible dreams. He says that drink makes a man horny but unable to
do
anything about it, so that he can only dream of having sex: Drink equivocates him in a
sleep, and,
giving him the lie, leaves him. (2.3.35-36). 
Later in the same scene, after Macduff has discovered the bloody body of King Duncan, he
calls
upon Banquo and the King's sons to awake, to Shake off this downy sleep, death's
counterfeit, /
And look on death itself! (2.3.76-77). Macduff means that although sleep and death may
look
similar, real sleep is downy and comforting, while real death is a horror. 
When Macduff rings an alarm bell, Lady Macbeth enters, asking What's the business, / That
such a
hideous trumpet calls to parley / The sleepers of the house? (2.3.81-83). Her words
should remind
us that most of the people on stage look as if they have just been awakened from deep
sleep.
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth certainly appear in their nightclothes, because they want
everyone to
think they've been sleeping. In addition, the rest of those who are sleeping in Macbeth's
castle --
Banquo, Malcolm, Donalbain, and Ross -- must appear in their nightclothes, too. This is
clearly
implied when Banquo proposes that they hold a meeting, when we have our naked frailties
hid, /
That suffer in exposure (2.3.126-127). 
Macbeth has indeed murdered sleep
Bibliography
none