In the tragedy 'Macbeth', Shakespeare illustrates the devastating consequences of guilt through the troubles that the eponymous tragic hero and his wife have with sleep, a representation of their descent into madness. This acts as a warning against traitors and sinners to appease Shakespeare's king and patron, James I, who faced instances of unrest and rebellion. In the beginning of 'Macbeth', the consequences of guilt are shown immediately after Macbeth has committed regicide. In Act 2, he claims "Glamis hath murdered sleep, and Cawdor shall sleep no more. Macbeth shall sleep no more." This syntactical parallelism shows Macbeth's panic and desperation, making him sound unwell. Mental illness is much more familiar to a modern audience, where a contemporary audience may have just passed this off as divine punishment for attempting to usurp the throne and altering the Divine Rights of kings, which Shakespeare utilises to deter the audience from doing such a thing.. The use of Macbeth's titles in his panicked frenzy represent his recognition of his peripeteia, an element of Aristotle's original tragedy that Shakespeare preserved, and simply increases tenfold the guilt he feels because of such a swift change. The creation of the motif of sleep here is a crucial representation of the effects of guilt - the innocent e.g. Duncan and the "sleepy grooms" the pair framed sleep well, and the guilty have problems with sleep after Macbeth's metaphorical brutal "murder" of "sleep." In the middle of 'Macbeth', the guilt of Macbeth is made arguably tangible as Banquo's Ghost. Lady Macbeth is mortified at his husband's unrest, and accuses him of lacking "the season of all natures, sleep". This metaphor again illustrates the motif of sleep as a natural thing, a consequence of being pious and obeying the laws of God. The fact that Lady Macbeth, a woman, accuses Macbeth of such a thing is humiliating and it emasculates him. It goes against the Jacobean expectation of a woman, to be in the 'private sphere', involved with nurturing children and keeping the home. This in itself is unnatural and shows a disrupt of the Great Chain of Being. A desperate separation is created between the pair-- another dire effect that the guilt has on them both, though not as explicitly in Lady Macbeth. Arguably, it could be said that Lady Macbeth is illustrated as panicked in this rhetorical question, a small implication of her guilt. The contemporary audience are likely to be shocked by Lady Macbeth's bold and masculine nature-- however, the modern audience may have a feminist perspective on Lady Macbeth's masculinity. While Macbeth acts out due to his guilt, the other must keep a level head. This level head is evidently shattered, however, when Lady Macbeth's guilt gets to its zenith in Act 5, illustrated by the disruption of her sleep. She sleepwalks, frantically washing her hands of blood, as she exclaims, "To bed, to bed, to bed!" This repetition is reminiscent of the syntactical parallelism from Macbeth at the beginning-- that panicked repetition. This, however, is a command like those from Act 2 once they had killed the king (e.g. the imperative sentence "Give me the daggers"), revealing that when Lady Macbeth seemed masculine and overbearing, she was actually just as guilt-stricken as Macbeth. The disruption of sleep is very clearly due to unholy actions, especially to a contemporary audience, as sleep is a blessing in the bible. In the book of Proverbs, it says that "When you lie down, your sleep will be sweet." The fact that Lady Macbeth's sleep is disturbed illustrates her guilt as a consequence of her own actions. This is furthered by the fact that Lady Macbeth dies after this scene, almost an eternal sort of sleep. It is ambiguous how she dies, but it is likely that she took her own life due to the unbearable effects of guilt due to her moral degradation. For a contemporary audience, this is very cathartic-- the "fiend-like" woman who became very equivocally androgynous in her actions met her end.