Sorry to begin by correcting your question, but Lady
Macbeth's problem was not that she could not sleep. Rather she could, but when she did
sleep, she would sleepwalk and talk about what she had done. It becomes evident if you
have a look at what she says in Act V scene i that her problem is caused by massive
guilt about what she has personally done and now what Macbeth, her husband, has gone on
to do now that she has pointed him in the right direction of rapacious ambition that
will let nothing stand in its way. Consider what she says in this scene to her unknown
audience of the Doctor and Gentlewoman:
Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One; two: why,
then 'tis time to do't.--Hell is murky.--Fie, my Lord, fie! a soldier and afeard?--What
need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to accompt?-Yet who would have
thought the old man to have had so much blood in
him?
Notice how her speech
starts with trying to rid her hands of the stain of blood after she has taken the dagger
and covered the poor henchman with Duncan's blood. It is clear that she is re-living a
moment that now is particularly traumatic to her, and the guilt that she is experiencing
is particularly evident in the last line, as, in spite of all of her tough talk, the
amount of blood that emerges after the deed has been done shocks
her.
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