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If you’re feeling grossed-out by the cover-to-cover bloodshed in Macbeth, don’t despair. All the blood may not make for a very inspiring read, but it does make for some interesting meaning. Find out why when Jenny explores the first of Macbeth's symbols.

Video Transcription:

If Macbeth were a video game, it would be rated M for Mature. This play’s got violence, gore, and a whole lot of the red stuff. But Shakespeare can get away with it. After all, in Macbeth, blood is a symbol.

Act 2, scene 2. It’s one of the most memorable moments in the whole play. Macbeth has just returned from killing King Duncan and he’s in shock. He can’t believe what he’s done, and his remorse and horror are manifested in his response to his bloody hands. He can’t bring himself to wash them. In other words, he is stained—both literally and figuratively—by blood, by his guilt.

Now Lady Macbeth seems, at first, to be immune to such prissiness. “My hands are of your color,” she tells Macbeth, “but I shame to wear a heart so white.”

Unfortunately, the bloodbath is only beginning, and a few acts later, Lady Macbeth herself is feeling the stain of all the blood. Act 5, scene 1 gives her the famous line, “Out damned spot!” But of course, the blood of Duncan and Banquo and Macduff’s family is a stain that can’t be removed from her guilty conscience.

In fact, it’s only when both Macbeth’s and Lady Macbeth’s own blood has been shed—when Scotland has literally been purged from their staining influence—that the country can finally be set right.