Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead
Are but as pictures: ’tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted devil. If he do bleed,
I’ll gild the faces of the grooms withal;
For it must seem their guilt.
– William Shakespeare
Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 2. Lady Macbeth expresses disgust at Macbeth’s cowardice for failing to finish the job after murdering Duncan. She grabs the daggers used in the killing to place them with the sleeping guards, in order to frame them for the crime, a task she expected her husband to carry out. In a simile she compares the dead and sleeping to pictures. She accuses Macbeth of behaving like a child. Using a metaphor she says that she will gild the grooms’ faces with blood, so that they will appear guilty of the murder. While Macbeth’s conscience is troubled over the terrible thing that they have done, his wife’s is certainly not. Lady Macbeth is very dominating and manipulative in this scene, and basically wearing the pants in the marriage.