To bed, to bed! there’s knocking at the gate: come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone. – To bed, to bed, to bed!
– William Shakespeare
Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1. In this passage from Lady Macbeth’s final scene before she takes her own life, many important themes are shown. Among them guilt, madness, good vs evil, isolation and appearance vs reality. Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking and hears an imaginery knocking at the gate and rushes off to bed. This recalls the actual knocking at Macbeth’s castle by Macduff after Duncan was murdered by Macbeth. When she speaks the line, “give me your hand,” it is her husband’s hand she is referring to. But he is not there. The imagined image of Macbeth’s hand and her words convey an air of longing, desperation and isolation. Her statement “What’s done cannot be undone” actually reverses her earlier one in Act 3, “what’s done is done.” When she made that last comment to Macbeth the hard-hearted Lady Macbeth was suggesting that Duncan’s murder was part of the past and was of no further concern. But now the past has caught up with her and it haunts her present. At this stage Lady Macbeth has gone mad and her conscience is overwhelmed by the sins of her past. These are Lady Macbeth’s final words in the play.