Macbeth's implacable guilt The Shakespearean tragedy Macbeth underlines the important and usually unexpected effect of sin, that of guilt. The guilt is so profound that Lady Macbeth is driven to suicide, and Macbeth fares only slightly better. Blanche Coles states in Shakespeare's The Four Giants that, regarding guilt in the play: Stated briefly, and with elaboration to follow, Macbeth is the story of a good and upright man who was goaded and prodded, by the woman he loved deeply , to commit murder and then, due to his sensitive nature, was unable to bear the heavy burden of guilt that fell upon him as a result of that murder. (37)In "Memoranda: Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth", Sarah Siddons mentions Lady Macbeth's guilt and ambition and their effect:[Re "I gave disgust" (1.7.54 ff.)] Here too , horrible as she is, she shows herself made by ambition, but not by nature, a perfectly wild creature. The very use of such a tender allusion amidst her frightening language, persuades unmistakably that she truly felt the maternal desire of a mother towards her child, and that she considered this action the most enormous that ever required force of man. nerves for its perpetration. His language with Macbeth is the most powerfully eloquent language guilt can use. (56)In his book On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy, HS Wilson comments on the protagonist's guilt: It is a more subtle thing that constitutes the main fascination that the play has on us: this fear that Macbeth feels, a fear not fully defined, for him or for us, as a terrible anguish which is a sense of guilt without becoming (at least recognisable) a sense of sin. It is not a sense of sin because it refuses to recognize this category; and, in his stubbornness, in his ferocious defiance, pushes him to increasingly terrible acts. (74)Clark and Wright in their Introduction to The Complete Works of William Shakespeare explain how guilt affects Lady Macbeth:Lady Macbeth is of a finer and more delicate nature. Having fixed her sights on the end - her husband's attainment of Duncan's crown - she accepts the inevitable means; he steels himself for terrible night work with artificial stimulants; however he cannot strike the sleeping king who resembles his father.