Lady Macbeth Figurative Language

What you allow your audience to witness when directing a play, is an important factor on how they perceive the play. What the audience sees with their own eyes determine how they understand the plot and analyze the characters. A great example of this is in the play Macbeth, when Lady Macbeth believes that there is blood on her hands, causing her to frantically wash her hands in attempt to get rid of the blood (V.I.). When staging this scene, having the blood visible on Lady Macbeth’s hand for the audience to see, weakens the scene and causes it to leave a lesser impression on the audience. In line 39, when Lady Macbeth raged, “Out, damned spot! Out, I say!”, by having the blood visible, this scene loses a lot of its impact and importance (V.I.38).

When describing the smell of the blood, Lady Macbeth cries, “Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand” (V.I.53-55). The doctor notices and explains to the gentlewomen the guilt that Lady Macbeth is carrying in her heart (V.I.56-57). These lines provide the audience with a glimpse of what is going through Lady Macbeth’s head as she is smelling the imaginary blood on her hands, allowing them to conclude that Lady Macbeth is becoming insane and guilt ridden by her involvement in Duncan’s murder. She is the only one able to see the blood on her hands, making it a figment of her imagination, which allows for more intriguing storytelling. By the audience witnessing this, it adds more drama and excitement to the play that cannot be experienced if they staged the play making the blood

The doctor’s final word in this scene were him prophesizing the suicide of Lady Macbeth, “Look after her, remove from her the means of all annoyance, and still keep eyes upon her” he tells to the gentlewoman (V.I.80-81). The lack of physical blood led the doctor to believe there was guilt behind Lady Macbeth’s delusions, eventually leading to her suicide. The doctor could foreshadow Lady Macbeth’s suicide by her washing the imaginary blood from her hands, which he could not have done if there was real blood on her