A Spot That Will Not Wash
📖 A Spot That Will Not Wash
Act 5, Scene 1. A doctor watches Lady Macbeth pace the corridor in her sleep, washing her hands. "Out, damned spot! Out, I say!" There is no spot. There is only the memory of blood, and a hand that cannot forget.
Notice what Shakespeare has done. He has made guilt VISIBLE. The supernatural in this play is not a witch in a wood — it is a stain only the guilty can see. Daggers, ghosts, voices, blood that will not wash. Shakespeare uses the supernatural to externalise the conscience. Every ghost is a verdict.
English Literature glossary
- What is equivocation and how does Shakespeare use it in Macbeth?
- Equivocation: using language that is technically true but intentionally misleading. The Witches' prophecies equivocate — 'none of woman born shall harm Macbeth' is literally true but designed to deceive. Shakespeare uses equivocation to show how guilt is seeded by false certainty: Macbeth trusts the words while ignoring their double meaning.
The play opens on the supernatural before it opens on a single human act. "When shall we three meet again / In thunder, lightning, or in rain?" (1.1) — Shakespeare puts the witches on stage in trochaic tetrameter, a meter that sounds nothing like the iambic blank verse of the human characters. The supernatural arrives
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🧠 The Trajectory in Three Words
Three stages. One mnemonic. Remember this and you have the spine ready for any guilt-or-supernatural question:
PROPHECY → PHANTOM → PUNISHMENT
Why it works: PROPHECY = external supernatural plants the choice (witches in 1.1, 1.3, 4.1). PHANTOM = guilt internalises and shows up as visions only the guilty can see (dagger 2.1, ghost 3.4, spot 5.1). PUNISHMENT = the supernatural delivers verdict — prophecies fulfil destructively, conscience consumes. The arc tracks what the supernatural PRODUCES, not what scene it appears in.
Now try it yourself
Quiz · Question 1 of 12
Which quote is spoken by Macbeth just before he kills King Duncan?
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