LADY              Infirm of purpose!

Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead

Are but as pictures; ’tis the eye of childhood

That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,

I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal,

For it must seem their guilt.             Exit     (2.2.49-54)

Infirm of purpose! You weakling, losing your nerve, unable to follow through and finish the job. Give me the daggers. I’ll do it, then. Saying that the sleeping and the dead are but as pictures suggests either that they are similarly inert, unmoving and so unthreatening or, possibly, that the dead and the sleeping look alike, that the dead could just be sleeping. No reason to be afraid, and only children get spooked by a painted devil, by the picture of the scary thing, rather than the thing itself. So think of—Duncan’s body?—as an image, a simulacrum, not an actual dead body? (I do think it’s striking that Lady Macbeth really doesn’t consider the servants; partly she’s confident that they’re still in a drugged sleep, but also she assumes that they have no agency and no power, that even if they wake up, they won’t be able to do anything, and whatever they say won’t be believed.) By referring to the eye of childhood, she makes Macbeth the frightened child, the child afraid of the scary story, the bad dream, afraid of the dark. Lady Macbeth’s taking charge, the practical grown-up: if he do bleed, I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal, for it must seem their guilt. She still won’t name him—he, him, not the King, not Duncan—but here she is also acknowledging her own guilt, that the murder has been as much her act as Macbeth’s, referencing the belief that the wounds of someone murdered started to bleed again in the presence of the murderer. The idea of gilding the faces of the grooms is disturbing: she’s punning grimly on gild and guilt/gilt, but also the sense of blood as something decorative, ornamental, like gold in a painting (the painted devil). Here the blood is gilding that is intended to damn the innocent servants, turning them into the murderous painted devils, a mark of Cain, not a sign of favour. A disturbing gleam of red and gold flashes in the mind’s eye, in the deep black darkness of this scene.