Sleepwalking Scene in “Macbeth” by William Shakespeare: Was Lady Macbeth preoccupied but awake, having dialogues of alternate personalities?

The only way to have known for sure whether Lady Macbeth was actually asleep would have been to do an EEG (electroencephalogram), but that was not available.

She appears to have been having complex dialogues, at first addressing her husband and later addressing herself (see below). And from what I read online, although complex speech, including dialogue, does occasionally happen in cases of sleep talking alone, I don’t know if complex speech happens while sleepwalking, especially since sleepwalking and sleep talking may have different patterns on EEG.

In the following transcript of the sleepwalking scene from Act 5, Scene 1, I have labeled it “Lady Macbeth #1” when she talks as herself, and “Lady Macbeth #2” when she talks to herself (as if she were someone else).

       Doctor

32   Hark! she speaks. I will set down what comes

33   from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more

34   strongly.

       LADY MACBETH #1

35   Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One: two: why,

36   then, 'tis time to do't.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my

37   lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we

38   fear who knows it, when none can call our power

39   to account?—Yet who would have thought the old

40   man to have had so much blood in him?

       Doctor

41   Do you mark that?

       LADY MACBETH #1

42   The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?—

43   What, will these hands ne'er be clean?—No more o'

44   that, my lord, no more o' that: you mar all with

45   this starting.

       Doctor

46   Go to, go to; you have known what you should

47   not.

       Gentlewoman

48   She has spoke what she should not, I am sure

49   of that; heaven knows what she has known.

       LADY MACBETH #1

50   Here's the smell of the blood still. All the

51   perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this

52   little hand. O, O, O!

       Doctor

53   What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely

54   charg'd.

       Gentlewoman

55   I would not have such a heart in my bosom

56   for the dignity of the whole body.

       Doctor

57   Well, well, well.

       Gentlewoman

58   Pray God it be, sir.

       Doctor

59   This disease is beyond my practise; yet I

60   have known those which have walked in

61   their sleep who have died holily in their beds.

       LADY MACBETH #2

62   Wash your hands, put on your nightgown;

63   look not so pale.—I tell you yet again, Banquo's

64   buried; he cannot come out on's grave.

       Doctor

65   Even so?

       LADY MACBETH #2

66   To bed, to bed! there's knocking at the gate:

67   come, come, come, come, give me your hand. What's

68   done cannot be undone.—To bed, to bed, to bed!

Two other possible manifestations of multiple personality in Macbeth are, first, in Act 2, Scene 2 when Macbeth hears a voice cry “Sleep no more. Macbeth does murder sleep” and, second, in Act 3, Scene 4, when Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo. When nonpsychotic people hear voices and/or see ghosts, I suspect multiple personality.

Please search “Hamlet” for six past posts. Also "sleepwalking."

Added Sept. 19: On rereading the above, I cannot be sure whether Lady Macbeth #2 was addressing herself or her husband. If the latter, then there may be no second Lady Macbeth personality. She may have been having a fantasized conversation with her husband (or a second personality representing her husband). Lines 62-64 and 66-68 certainly do appear to be two personalities interacting. And although the Doctor refers to her as walking in her sleep, he has not tried to engage her in conversation, so how can he distinguish between sleepwalking and her being awake, but preoccupied in a fantasy, multiple personality, conversation?