Explore how Shakespeare presents the character of Lady Macbeth in this extract. Refer closely to the extract in your answer.

In Act 5 Scene 1, Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth sleep walking and talking aloud about the murder of Duncan. Her speech is often fragmented, incoherent and puzzling to the audience, and the Doctor and gentlewoman who listen in on stage. In lines 31-32, Lady Macbeth's speech is particularly erratic and fractured, giving the impression of madness, and trauma. She moves between these short, assertive cries of "Out, damned spot! Out, I say!" and "Fie, my lord, fie!" in which the quick monosyllabic exclamations emphasise the panicked sounds like the sharp consonance of the 't' sound in "out", to the more ominous and loaded statements like "Hell is murky" which creates an uneven tone in her speech. She is both aggressive and melancholic, afraid and simultaneously in control. It is this confusion of emotions that would've been highly intriguing to Shakespeare and his audience. An imbalance of the four humours would determine one's character. This combined with the time's relatively unknown field of the subconscious and sleep, creates an intriguing study into the psychology of guilt, which was groundbreaking at the time. We see this intrigue in the way the Doctor notes everything down that Lady Macbeth is saying; Shakespeare presents the character of Lady Macbeth as one who has been profoundly affected by the guilt of murder, and this manifests itself through her subconscious.