In Act 5, scene 1, Lady Macbeth is seen to sleepwalk as a result of her guilty conscience. Ironically, it was Macbeth who -- immediately after he killed Duncan -- feared that he would never be able to sleep peacefully again, and Lady Macbeth found him cowardly and weak. Now, it is she who cannot sleep peacefully. Further, after the murder of Duncan, Lady Macbeth had said, "A little water clears us of this deed. / How easy it is then!" (2.2.86-87). Now, however, she washes her hands over and over and over, believing that "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand" (5.1.53-55). She once thought it would be easy to wipe the guilt away from her mind, just as she could wipe the blood off her hands; now, she feels, ironically, that the blood remains on her hands because the crime remains on her conscience. An additional irony is that, after Duncan's murder, she had told Macbeth that "These deeds must not be thought / After these ways; so it will make us mad" (2.2.45-46). Now, she is the mad one, hallucinating spots of blood still on her hands, reliving the night of the murder, conflating the murder of Duncan with Macbeth's murder of Banquo.
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