virtuous honour to the guilt of murder.The first reference to blood occurs in (I,ii,1) when Duncan meets the bleeding sergeant and remarks, "What bloody man is that?" The man is bleeding after having fought to protect the noble Malcolm, which makes the blood a symbol of honour. Blood symbolizes another virtuous trait when it appears again in the sergeant's description of Macbeth's victorious fight with Macdonwald, "Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel, Which smok'd with bloody execution. (I,ii,17)"Duncan's blood on the Macbeths' hands is symbol of the evil crime they committed, the guilt of which cannot be washed away. Pontius Pilate is the supreme example of the futility of the symbolic act of 'washing the hands' to expunge guilt. History will forever hold him guilty. Macbeth's curse, "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red. (II,iii,61)" The symbol was also used earlier as Lady Macbeth tries to blame of the murder on the sleeping grooms, "...smear the sleepy grooms with blood. (II,II,49)" Lady Macbeth's remark on her entry shorty after that "A little water clears us of this deed; How easy it is then!" shows that she has less immediate guilt for the crime, where Macbeth's conscience is eating away at him, or that she has not yet absorbed the enormity of the deed. The same symbol of evil deeds not being washed away is brought out again in (V,II,17) where Angus says, "Now does he feel His secret murders sticking on his hands;" The bloody hand appears again when Lady Macbeth has the waking dreams in which she curses,Lady Macbeth: "Out, damned spot! out I say! ...Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" (V,i,38-43)"What! will these hands ne'er be clean?" (V,i,46)"Here's the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! oh! oh!" (V,i,52)T...
