The Implacable Guilt of MacbethThe Shakespearean tragedy Macbeth highlights the important and generally unforeseen effect of sin, that of guilt. The guilt is so deep that Lady Macbeth is driven to suicide, and Macbeth fares little better. Blanche Coles states in Shakespeare's The Four Giants that, regarding guilt in the play: In short, and with developments to follow, Macbeth is the story of a good and honest man who was instigated and driven by the woman who he deeply loved to commit murder and who then, due to his sensitive nature, was unable to bear the heavy burden of guilt which fell upon him as a result of this murder. (37) In "Memoranda: Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth", Sarah Siddons mentions Lady Macbeth's guilt and ambition and their effects: [Re "I sucked" (1.7.54ff.)] Even here, horrible as she is, she shows herself to be made by ambition, but not by nature, a perfectly savage creature. The very use of such a tender allusion in the midst of her appalling language convinces unequivocally that she truly felt the maternal yearnings of a mother towards her child, and that she considered this act to be the most enormous that had ever been required human strength. nerves for its perpetration. His language addressed to Macbeth is the most powerfully eloquent that guilt can use. (56) In his book On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy, HS Wilson comments on the protagonist's guilt: It is a more subtle thing which constitutes the main fascination which the play exerts on us - this fear felt by Macbeth, a fear not fully defined, for him or for us, a terrible anxiety which is a feeling of guilt without becoming (at least recognizably) a feeling of sin. It is not a feeling of sin because it refuses to recognize such a category; and, in his stubbornness, his wild defiance, this pushes him to more and more terrible acts. (74) Clark and Wright, in their Introduction to the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, explain the impact of guilt on Lady Macbeth: Lady Macbeth is of a finer and more delicate nature. Having fixed her gaze on the goal - the obtaining for her husband of the crown of Duncan - she accepts the inevitable means; she gives herself courage for the terrible work of the night thanks to artificial stimulants; yet she cannot strike the sleeping king who looks like her father.