Lily Sanchez
For my mask, I have chosen Lady Macbeth.
1.
The right side of the mask is purple with a crown to signify royalty. When you think of Lady
Macbeth, you might think of “queen” first, but given the manly role she played in her and
Macbeth’s relationship, I used “king” to describe her with this mask. She planned the King’s
murder, drugged the grooms, laid the daggers ready and left them with the dead grooms when
Macbeth was finished. Knowing her husband's weakness, she assumes the manly part, and
calls upon the spirits to fill her
Lady Macbeth: "Come, you spirits,
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full,
Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood,
Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th’ effects and it! “
Act One, Scene 5, Line 40
Macbeth: “We will speak further.
Lady Macbeth: "Only look up clear;
To alter favour ever is to fear:
Leave all the rest to me."
Act One, Scene 6, Line 70
Lady Macbeth: “Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
how tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling on my face,
Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done this.”
Macbeth. "If we should fail?
Lady M. We fail!
But screw your courage to the sticking-place
And we'll not fail. When Duncan is asleep-”
Act One, Scene 7, Line 59
2.
On the left side of the mask, you’ll see a bloody handprint. This represents the mental struggle
Lady Macbeth went through after she left them with the dead bodies of the grooms. The image
imprinted in her head of the fresh blood dripping off the blades scarred her. She has to
constantly wash her hands of the blood that drips off her flesh and the warm iron in her hands.
Lady Macbeth scrubs for hours only to remember that the moment has passed. She doesn’t
have to clean her body anymore. The blood only exists in her memory, until she restarts the
cycle over and over again, fleeing from the red portrait painted in her mind that chases her
every waking hour of the day, and the few minutes she spends asleep in her dreams. That is,
until she couldn’t bear it any longer.
Doctor: “Look, how she rubs her hands.”
Gentlewoman:’It is an accustomed action with her, to
seem thus washing her hands. I have known her
continue in this a quarter of an hour.”
Act 5, Scene 1, Line 25
Lady Macbeth: “Here is the smell of blood still. All
the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
Oh, Oh, Oh!” Act 5, Scene 1, Line 49
Macbeth: “How is your patient, doctor?”
Doctor: “Not sick my lord,
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies
That keep her from rest.”
Act 5, Scene 3, Line 38
Macbeth: “What is that noise?”
Seyton: “It is the cry of women, my lord.”
Macbeth: “I have almost forgotten the taste of fears:
The time has been, my senses would have cooled
To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in’t. I have supped full with horrors.
Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts,
Cannot once start me.”
Macbeth: ”Wherefore was that cry?”
Seyton: “The queen, my lord, is dead.”
Act 5, Scene 5, Line 15