MACBETH      Methought I heard a voice cry ‘Sleep no more.

Macbeth does murder sleep’—the innocent sleep,

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,

The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

LADY                          What do you mean?

MACBETH      Still it cried ‘Sleep no more’ to all the house,

‘Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor

Shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more’.           (2.2.32-40)

SO good. Arresting, uncanny horror. Methought I heard a voice cry—well, we know they’ve both been hearing things, jumping at every unexpected noise, real or imagined. But the voice cried Sleep no more. Macbeth doth murder sleep. To be cursed with perpetual insomnia is bad enough, but to imagine sleep as murdered: that’s properly uncanny, something so domestic and also so simple and universal, so taken for granted. Here sleep is innocent, perhaps to be aligned with the babies who have already been invoked (often to terrible effect) in the play, and like them, a bloody victim. Duncan’s sleep, too, has been innocent; he has been sleeping like a baby, one might say. But sleep is more than mere restful oblivion: it heals and nurtures. In an extraordinary image, it knits up the ravelled sleave of care: sleave or sleave silk is a silk thread (such as might be used for embroidery) which has been untwisted and pulled apart so that it is a tangle of fine floss, knotted and chaotic. It’s an image of division and confusion; it’s sleep that smooths out the knots, makes the thread fine and whole once more. Gone. Sleep is a little death at the end of each day, a terminus, a point of rest; it’s restorative, like a proper soak in a deep bath, soothing tired muscles, washing off the sweat and dust of work. Even more, it’s the balm of hurt minds: sleep restores the brain and the soul, giving them time to heal, like a restorative, even holy unguent. (Balm is often associated in the period with the oils used for anointing in ceremonies such as coronation; it’s sometimes used to describe Christ’s healing power in the Eucharist.) Sleep is like the second, more substantial course in a meal, which really satisfies and strengthens; it is the chief nourisher in life’s feast. All of this rings utterly true to the still-evolving modern understanding of sleep and its role in mental and physical wellbeing: that both body and mind do need sleep in order to function, and that the brain in particular needs sleep for cognitive processes such as memory. The idea of the sleep-deprived mind as full of tangles, threads whose ends are lost, an aching confusion of memories, thoughts, and feelings is all too familiar. What do you mean? Is Lady Macbeth confused, impatient, horrified, frustrated at this intense, self-involved account? What the hell are you going on about? And so he repeats it, amplifies it, although he’s not really talking to her? Still it cried ‘Sleep no more’ to all the house—ah, not just to Macbeth then, but a curse on his whole house, his family (or his castle, or both. Wife included). A chilling detail: ‘Glamis hath murdered sleep’—his old name, the title with which he was, only a few days ago, presumably quite happy—‘and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more’. The old man, in the sense of Macbeth’s former identity, has cursed the new, and so Macbeth, name rather than simply title, for as has already been seen, titles are mutable—Macbeth shall sleep no more.