LADY [aside to Macbeth] O, proper stuff!
This is the very painting of your fear.
This is the air-drawn dagger which you said
Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts,
Impostors to true fear, would well become
A woman’s story at a winter’s fire,
Authorized by her grandam. Shame itself!
Why do you make such faces? When all’s done,
You look but on a stool.
MACBETH Prithee see there.
Behold, look, lo! (3.4.58-67)
Such scorn, but also, Lady Macbeth’s perhaps trying everything possible to keep him with her, to salvage the situation, even by making him angry, to make him snap out of it. (But she’s pretty close to breaking point too.) O, proper stuff! What utter rubbish, complete nonsense. It’s just your paranoia that’s making you see things, making you think that your terrible imaginings are true: this is the very painting of your fear. Your mind’s playing tricks on you (so, pull yourself together, stop doing this to yourself). This is the air-drawn dagger which you said led you to Duncan. Interesting moment: Macbeth at some point told her about the vision of the dagger, but not within the action of the play. It could be an inconsistency, or something that’s dropped out of the text, but what it is a reminder of here is that Macbeth used to tell his wife everything, perhaps he’s told her about the dagger over and over, obsessively, and now he doesn’t tell her things anymore. And the way it’s framed—which you said led you to Duncan—suggests that she didn’t believe him then either, that he makes excuses (it was the dagger made me do it!) rather than taking responsibility for his own actions. O, these flaws and starts, impostors to true fear; he’s twitching, jumpy, making sudden outbursts—and she’s saying he’s faking them, just pretending to be afraid. It’s the sort of thing that a woman would do (Lady Macbeth is not a notable defender of her own sex) if she were telling a story by the fireside in winter, an old wives’ tale, to make it seem spookier with gestures and funny voices, authorized (confirmed, but perhaps also egged on) by her grandam. It’s a scornful evocation of ordinary women telling fantastical tales, ghost stories on a dark night, nodding and shaking, credulous and ridiculous. Shame itself! She’s belittling him, comparing him to foolish women, old women—and she doesn’t believe him. Why do you make such faces? Stop making an idiot of yourself, gurning and grimacing. When all’s done, you look but on a stool. It probably literally was a stool, much easier than a chair on stage (and the only chairs are likely to be those for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; the thanes have quite possibly carried on their own stools with them) as well as being standard household furniture—but also lower in status, more ordinary than a chair. It’s another dig at him: you’re frightened, of a stool? So he begs, not only prithee see there. Behold, look, lo! can’t you see it? perhaps pointing, desperately. But also, why won’t you believe me? Please believe me!
