MACBETH      One cried ‘God bless us!’, and ‘Amen’ the other,

As they had seen me with these hangman’s hands.

List’ning their fear, I could not say ‘Amen’

When they did say ‘God bless us’.

LADY              Consider it not so deeply.

MACBETH      But wherefore could not I pronounce ‘Amen’?

I had most need of blessing, and ‘Amen’

Stuck in my throat.

LADY              These deeds must not be thought

After these ways. So, it will make us mad.              (2.2.24-31)

Macbeth’s stuck, going over and over it, with mounting horror and distress; is he in fact thinking about a moment after the killing, was it then, not before, when the servants almost woke up? It’s not clear, it’s all muddled, but this bit is stronger than any memory of the killing itself; it’s a screen memory, the recollection of the servants’ prayers, obscuring the trauma of the murder, too extreme. So Macbeth instead remembers and relives, again and again, the servants’ words, ‘God bless us’ and ‘Amen’, a quick automatic prayer and response—as they had seen me with these hangman’s hands. Bloody hands often stand for murder on the early modern stage (relatively easily washed backstage, unlike costumes), but these are given a nastier, more pointed edge when Macbeth describes his hands as hangman’s hands. It’s probably one of the play’s Gunpowder Plot references, for when those convicted of treason were executed and suffered the full penalty of the law, as was the case with the ill-fated plotters, the executioner disembowelled and dismembered them, officially (and frequently) while they were still alive. Macbeth identifies himself with the hangman because of the blood on his hands, but here it is he who is the traitor, he who has succeeded in killing the king. (Even if he can’t quite say it.)

What he’s fixated on is not being able to pray, and the horror that suggests, of being damned. I could hear their fear, even half-asleep, I wanted to join in their prayer, but I couldn’t, I couldn’t say the simple word ‘Amen’, when they did say ‘God bless us’. Consider it not so deeply, says his supportive wife, perhaps rather impatiently, stop dwelling on it (implicitly, what’s done is done, get over it). But why could I not pronounce ‘Amen’? I wanted to pray, I was desperate to, I needed to, I needed God’s blessing, but the word stuck in my throat. He’s choking still, perhaps, gesturing helplessly with his terrible, bloody hands, at his own throat, increasingly hysterical. So Lady Macbeth tries to take charge: These deeds must not be thought after these ways. You mustn’t dwell on it, get obsessed with these things. (Too late for that, lady.) So, it will make us mad. If you do—well, you know what will happen. That way madness lies…