Knock [within]
LADY I hear a knocking
At the south entry. Retire we to our chamber.
A little water clears us of this deed.
How easy is it then! Your constancy
Hath left you unattended.
Knock [within]
Hark, more knocking.
Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us
And show us to be watchers. Be not lost
So poorly in your thoughts.
MACBETH To know my deed,
Knock [within]
’Twere best not know myself.
Wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst.
Exeunt (2.2.62-71)
BOOM. More knocking; Lady Macbeth, unlike her husband, can identify where it’s coming from: I hear a knocking at the south entry, so, this is a visitor or visitors come from outside the castle. We need to get out of here, retire to our chamber, as if we’ve been in bed asleep (or not) all along. And, vainly? valiantly? defiantly? A little water clears us of this deed: all we need to do is wash our hands. And it’s gone, done—as if water can cleanse minds and souls, wipe the slate clean, as it were; surely she must know that this is a vain hope, and the audience too, given the state that Macbeth’s in. How easy is it then! We’ve got this. Implicitly, he’s not listening, still staring with horror at his hands, her hands? And so she needles again, tries to jolt him into action: your constancy hath left you unattended. You’re weakening, wavering, losing your will to action. Get a grip (again)! Focus! BOOM. OK, we need to act. She’s going to have to walk him through this. We go to our room, we put on our nightgowns (dressing gowns, that is, not nightwear), in case (surely inevitably) we’re called for; we don’t want to look like we’ve been watchers, that is, that we’ve still been up and about. We have to look like we’ve been asleep, oblivious to—anything—that’s been going on. Be not lost so poorly in your thoughts! Real frustration: you’re being pathetic, weak, but also, perhaps: you’re not listening to me, you’re not here with me, I feel like I’ve lost you. He’s really not listening, and his next line is spoken more to himself than to her. BOOM. To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself. To recognise what I’ve done, to be fully conscious of it—it would be better not to know myself at all, to exist in a kind of oblivion, alienated from myself, my identity, my relationships. I am now defined solely by what I have done, and I can’t get it out of my head. This is a moment of rupture, of the relationship, and of Macbeth’s identity, and the world of the play, of the castle is about to rupture too, with that knocking growing ever more insistent. A final furious, desperate phrase: wake Duncan with thy knocking. I would thou couldst. I would meaning I wish? If only? If only this were all a bad dream, if only I really had been asleep in my chamber, with my wife? Or bitterly ironic: try all you like to wake him, you won’t be able to, whether I want it or not.
What an extraordinary scene, more and more tense, as half-heard, perhaps imaginary noises give way to very real knocking, and the realisation that this is not an end, but very much the beginning of something terrible and utterly destructive. The knocking at the door can sound, with terrible irony, like done, done, done. But done is never done.
