Scene 2

• “What’s done is done”

  • ridiculing it and dismissing it making it seem like it is irrelevant
  • She’s down playing it because she doesn’t want to face the magnitude or the true extent of what they’ve done - regicide which is one of the ultimate sins in the Jacobean era
  • Downplaying it to Macbeth which downplays it in her mind so she doesn’t have to fave the gravity of the acts she’s committed
• “You must leave this”

  • the direct address on “you” seems like a forceful attack on Macbeth, she has encouraged him to commit regicide and is extremely duplicitous because she made him do it to fulfil her own desires and her own ambitions
  • Now instructing him to “leave this” - the imperative shows she’s still got a power over Macbeth but perhaps she’s trying to have this power of Macbeth in act 3 because she is losing control and losing this power because thoughts are starting to engulf her mind
  • shown as she isn’t present in act 4 and she descends into madness in act 5
• “Using those thoughts which should indeed have died with them they think on?”

  • the rhetorical question is that she is questioning Macbeth and questioning his guilt
  • Throughout the play, she continuously questioned him to threaten his identity as a man