Tuesday, November 16, 2010

What has Lady Macbeth done to the grooms?

I agree with the above, but perhaps you are asking about something that came before the murder. While Macbeth is about to do the deed, Lady Macbeth is alone and says (again Act 2, Scene 2):



LADY MACBETH:


That which hath made them drunk hath


made me bold;


What hath quench'd them hath given me fire. Hark! Peace!


It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman,


Which gives the stern'st good-night. He is about it:


The doors are open, and the surfeited grooms


Do mock their charge with snores: I have drugg'd their possets,


That death and nature do contend about them,


Whether they live or die.



What she says she has done is this: she has put some kind of powerful sleeping potion into their spiced drinks (possets), so that they are not only asleep but in a kind of drugged stupor.


Here's her full plan, that was hatched back in Act 1 , Scene 7:



LADY MACBETH:


When Duncan is asleep—


Whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey


Soundly invite him—his two chamberlains


Will I with wine and wassail so convince,


That memory, the warder of the brain,


Shall be a fume and the receipt of reason


A limbec only. When in swinish sleep


Their drenched natures lie as in a death,


What cannot you and I perform upon


The unguarded Duncan?


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