In the perpetration of the Deed itself we have the woman passing from weakness to strength, the man from strength to weakness. To Lady Macbeth this actual contact with a deed of blood is the severest point of the strain, the part most abhorrent to her more delicate nature. For a single moment she feels herself on the verge of the madness which eventually comes upon her:
ii. ii. 33.
These deeds must not be thought
After these ways; so, it will make us mad!
And at the beginning of the scene she has been obliged to have recourse to stimulants in order to brace her failing nerves:
ii. ii. 1.
That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold.
And in part the attempt to bring her delicate nature to the repugnant deed does fail. It is clear that, knowing how little her husband could be depended upon, she had intended to have a hand in the murder itself:
i. vii. 69; compare i. v. 68.
What cannot you and I perform upon