Lady Macbeth must have originally been a role for the gifted young male actor whose presence in the King’s Men acting company made possible this play, and also Cleopatra, Coriolanus’s mother Volumnia, and John Webster’s heroine the Duchess of Malfi. It is also a brilliant set piece for actors. This scene at the beginning of the play’s fifth act is Lady Macbeth’s swansong – as Verdi realised in his opera, giving her a gloriously controlled aria at this point. It speaks of a contamination that can never be washed away.Ī young Judi Dench played the scene with ‘feverishly writhing hands' Lady Macbeth’s hand-washing is the sign of guilt. Her confident words to her nervily blood-stained husband – ‘A little water clears us of this deed’ – come back to haunt her. Lady Macbeth’s involvement in the assassination of King Duncan echoes in her conscience. While soap does indeed incapacitate the COVID-19 virus, it cannot help mitigate the psychological aftermath of murder. She can still smell blood: ‘All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand’. Lady Macbeth, sleepwalking in her chamber, ‘rubs her hands’ for ‘a quarter of an hour’, lamenting ‘what, will these hands ne’er be clean’. In the context of the play Macbeth, those instructions are, of course, rather self-defeating. The poster adapts World Health Organisation’s guide to the use of soap and water, using Shakespeare’s words to establish the proper length of time to spend on sanitising. If you haven’t seen the handwashing instructions set to Lady Macbeth’s fractured soliloquy ‘Out damned spot’ you’ve not been visiting the right bathrooms. Adapted by Fossilheads, original by World Health Organization.

Terry pratchett macbeth