How does Shakespeare present guilt in Macbeth?
Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth shrugging off what she dismisses as Macbeth’s foolish, over-emotional response to King Duncan’s blood on his hands. Instead, she declares that “a little water clears us of this deed.” She takes Macbeth’s earlier water metaphor and renders it concrete. Literal water will indeed wash away the blood and, she believes, will hide her guilt, but not from the audience nor, as she too late realises, from God.
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