Her words should remind us that most of the people on stage look as if they have just been awakened from deep sleep. When Macduff rings an alarm bell, Lady Macbeth enters, asking 'What's the business, / That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley / The sleepers of the house?' (2.3.81-83). Macduff means that although sleep and death may look similar, real sleep is 'downy' and comforting, while real death is a horror. Later in the same scene, after Macduff has discovered the bloody body of King Duncan, he calls upon Banquo and the King's sons to awake, to 'Shake off this downy sleep, death's counterfeit, / And look on death itself!' (2.3.76-77). He says that drink makes a man horny but unable to do anything about it, so that he can only dream of having sex: Drink 'equivocates him in a sleep, and, giving him the lie, leaves him. The Porter also equates sleep with impossible dreams. To Macbeth, sleep is not only a necessity of life, but something that makes life worth living, and he feels that when he murdered his King in his sleep, he murdered sleep itself.ДЄccording to Macbeth's Porter-who is still buzzed from a night of partying-sleep is one of the side effects of drink, which causes 'nose-painting, sleep, and urine' (2.3.28-29).

Macbeth also compares sleep to a soothing bath after a day of hard work, and to the main course of a feast. In such a case, we often say that we want to 'sleep on it' in order to get everything straight. Macbeth uses it as a metaphor for the kind of frustration we experience when we have so many problems that we can't see the end to any of them. (2.2.32-37)ДЄ 'ravell'd sleave' is a tangled skein of thread or yarn.

The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,Д«alm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,Д¬hief nourisher in life's feast. Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, Macbeth does murder sleep,' the innocent sleep, Methought I heard a voice cry 'Sleep no more! The speech is one of the most famous in Macbeth : Moments later, still talking about the frightening things that happened to him, Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth that he thought he heard a voice telling him that he would never sleep again.

To him, it's as though those men, even in their sleep, could see his bloody murderer's hands. Staring at his bloody hands, he tells his wife that as he left the King's chamber, he heard two men in another room: 'There's one did laugh in's sleep, and one cried 'Murder!'' (2.2.20). But in the dark of night wicked dreams can penetrate the curtains and sleep itself.ДЄfter Macbeth murders King Duncan, he's so unnerved that he can't move. Sleep is 'curtain'd' because the well-to-do used four-poster beds hung with curtains to keep out drafts. Banquo shows that he is suspicious of Macbeth's motives, and Macbeth ends the conversation by wishing Banquo 'Good repose' (2.1.29), a good night's sleep.ДЄfter Banquo has gone to bed, Macbeth hallucinates, seeing a bloody dagger in the air, and then he tells himself that it is the time of night for such a hallucination: 'Now o'er the one half-world / Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse / The curtain'd sleep' (2.1.49-51). A little later in the scene, Macbeth seems to suggest that he could reward Banquo if Banquo would somehow support him in something having to do with the witches' prophecies. Banquo doesn't say just what thoughts are disturbing his sleep, but we can guess that they have to do with the witches' prophecies. On the night that Macbeth murders King Duncan, Banquo says to his son, 'A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, / And yet I would not sleep: merciful powers, / Restrain in me the cursed thoughts that nature / Gives way to in repose! (2.1.6-9).

Sleep no more scenes