MACBETH                  I am in blood

Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,

Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

Strange things I have in head that will to hand,

Which must be acted ere they may be scanned.

LADY              You lack the season of all natures, sleep.

MACBETH      Come, we’ll to sleep. My strange and self-abuse

Is the initiate fear that wants hard use.

We are yet but young in deed.

Exeunt            (3.4.134-142)

Just when it seems that the scene’s almost done, coming its natural conclusion, this ominous, bleak confession from Macbeth: I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er. It’s proverbial in origin—once your feet are wet, it doesn’t matter how much deep you go—but the idea here, of wading in a sea of blood, is horrific. The syntax reinforces that horror: I am in blood, strikingly awful, vivid, strange; stepped in perhaps has the effect of a retreat, with the repetition of in (in blood stepped in), because a step briefly seems measured, shallow: let’s take a step back, step out again. But then like a wave the blood rushes onwards: in so far that, should I wade no more. Wading is no longer a step, it’s deep, to the knees at least, in blood, a sea of blood, the sea that Macbeth imagined after his killing of Duncan, dyed with so much blood that its waters ran red, incarnadine. No turning back, because returning were as tedious as go o’er. What’s done is done and cannot be undone, and going on, continuing in this way of blood, is every bit as tedious, as arduous and painful, as stopping. Macbeth is horrifically helpless: he sees no other way but continuing in his bloody path, helpless and hopeless. But frightening too, and he’s not really speaking to Lady Macbeth, but to himself, in that closed couplet: strange things I have in head that will to hand, which must be acted ere they may be scanned. His mind is full of imaginings, fears, doubts, and plans, and there’s no time to lose: he must move and act even before he has a chance to think them through, consider the consequences, let alone articulate them to his wife.

A poignant intervention from Lady Macbeth, and an accurate one: you lack the season of all natures, sleep. It’s partly what one might say to a child, you’re so tired, over-tired, no wonder you’re in a bit of a state; it takes it to the audience, too, that recognition of a state simultaneously exhausted and over-wrought, too tired to sleep, confused, not really knowing what you’re saying or doing. In a way she’s saying, come back to me, come back to us. He half does, although it’s a response that’s again a self-contained couplet, so that Lady Macbeth’s single line is isolated by the rhymes either side: come, we’ll to sleep, he replies. (Wishful thinking.) My strange and self-abuse is the initiate fear that wants hard use. Opaque and indeed strange, its strangeness concealing its threat. I’m only being like this, confused, perhaps deluded, because I’ve been indecisive, because I haven’t yet started to act, the initiate fear, the nervousness before getting properly underway, becoming accustomed to doing terrible things. I just need to act, not think, not ask questions. Because we are yet but young in deed. We’ve only just begun…

That’s the Macbeths’ last appearance together in the play, the last speech that they share. For all the terror of the scene, and the sense that Macbeth is now fully embarked upon an even more terrible course, there’s great sadness to it. They don’t (or can’t) really talk any more. In performance there can be a flicker of intimacy as the scene ends, of the old team back together again, but there’s a real sense of, and for one last time.