Thick Scottish accent] Your Honour, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth w’re did controlled by destiny and fate. I, Nym Rosyth, the gentlewoman at Dunsinane castle, consent to giveth a truthful testimony of mine own witnesses to the events leading up to the death of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. I whole-heartedly believe that they were the cause of their own downfall. Durin’ the dynasty of Macbeth and the Lady, I served the wee role of the nurse in Dunsinane castle. It was my duty to cook, clean and come to the aid of both his and her majesty. Macbeth came back from many battles covered in gashes and his garments soaked through with the blood of the slain. It’d be my duty to retrieve them from him, clean them and return them as if they were brand new. Many times, did I dare enter the chamber of his majesty, I could hear a meaningless murmur escaping his mouth. Each time it was different, he spoke about hands contaminated with the blood of those he did murder, the weird sisters foretelling a fruitful fate but the one that is engraved forever in my consciousness is the night he spoke of a graspless dagger. See, t’was not before me, had he not known I was there, the mumble of a corrupt man lay spoke ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, yet thee still I see.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? Or art thou but a dagger of the mind, a false creation, proceeding from the heat oppresses brain’ (II.I)It was but the eve of the King’s stay in the castle. A choir of the night’s creatures sang with the clarity of darkness, hiding their identity, all was well. T’was late in the eve, perhaps almost 7, when his majesty arrived. I’d finished dusting his chamber and the finest rags were laid out for his bath. Macbeth and the Lady both stood at the door, smiles stretching ear to ear, eager to greet the king. Time passed and King Duncan was shown to his chamber. The clock struck 9, a deafening chime echoed throughout the castle, I did go to my chamber to get some rest when I passed the wash room. A candle appeared to be lighting the room, I peered in. I saw the lady, her body sat hunched over and shadow spilt across the floor. I seeked closer, what I seen shook me to my innards, King Duncan’s lifeless, blood-covered body filled the room with grief. The candle flickered though the chamber, to warm of a room for such a cold act. My stomach found a new resting place, my throat. I edged further away, it was an arduous tip toe, but alas, I’d been sighted. Convinced that these would be the last few breaths I took, I stood still and waited for the end. The Lady approached me, hands smeared with blood, eyes hollowed with craze. I could sense my grasp of reality slipping with each pressing second. In the moments preceding me I prayed for mercy.
She mocked my plea. I begged for forgiveness and in a subtle second, compromise. My heart did race and the blood returned to my skin, what I had done was unforgiveable. To be in a deal with the devil and I, was the bloody sheets.The lady was in a blood-hungry trance, I recall her brainless babble going around and around in my head, she spoke of an unsuspecting city and her, being merely a woman, were too fragile to be suspected of such an act. ‘Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent underneath it’ (I.VI), a high held woman was mad. I was so shaken with the night’s events that I barely noticed her move the king’s body back to his chamber, lay him down and grievously announce the death to Macbeth as if she had never seen blood. In her path back to her chamber, she stopped at the washer room where I was. She snared at me, ‘What’s done is done’ (I.VI). What had I done?Preceding the rule of Macbeth and the lady, the weather turned sour, towns folk had begun to speak of new times, as I passed a farmer and his wife, I heard him whisper that the ‘earth was feavourous’ (II.III) and that he himself had earlier that day witnessed ‘a falcon, towering in pride and place, was by a mousing owl, hawked and killed’ (II.IV).
It would be one late afternoon, when the wind blew up and the air was sour, that the most unusual occurrence happened. I had been walking past the Lady’s chamber when ‘I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon it, read it, afterward seal it, and again return to bed, yet all this while in a most fast sleep’ (V.I). I was sick to my stomach, I had witnessed an act of the devil. I did run down the corridor to warn the doctor. In his disbelief, he gasped at what he’d been told, ran down the corridor and went to behold the devil in his practice. The doctor n’ I stood fearful at the door, body full of rock we were unable to move. I screech came from the room and we were freed from the trance, barging into the room we saw the lady, we were eye to eye with the petite lady, she stood upright, eyes wide open yet somehow, in the deepest slumber.
I couldn’t help but notice her rubbing her hand together, to seem ‘thus washing her hands’ (V.I), yet without the faintest warning she edged a word out ‘Yet here’s a spot’ (V.I), a thunder stricken silence was broken by a forceful banishment of a non-present stain ‘Out, dammed spot! Out I say! – One; two; why, when ‘tis time to do’t. – Hell is murky! Fie, my Lord, fie! A solider, an afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? – Yet who would have though the old man to have so much blood in him?’ (V.I)A murderer, a bloody murderer and her lifeless confession. The lady was not unknown the gore of blood, yet she should know of no such thing. She had driven herself insane. To be so captivated in a foretold fate that a grasp on reality seems untouchable. Insanity. Your Honour, A King and Queen, driven by blood, have no place on the throne, I do truly believe that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth be solely responsible for thy own destruction.