The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now? –
What, will these hands ne’er be clean?
– William Shakespeare
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1. A hallucinating Lady Macbeth sees the blood of the murders committed by her husband on her hands. The Thane of Fife’s wife is Lady Macduff, whom Macbeth had murdered along with her children. As Lady Macbeth sleepwalks, she frantically goes through the motion of washing her hands and wonders if they will ever be clean. This is ironic, given that after goading Macbeth to murder Duncan, she was telling her husband the very opposite in her bid to control him: “A little water clears us of this deed.” Now the once ruthless and power-hungry manipulator is so overwhelmed by guilt that her carefully-constructed mask has slipped, her control has broken down and her mental state has deteriorated into madness.