A/N: This is something I had to write for a school assignment (in English, where else?), and I figured since I wrote, I may as well do something with it. So here it is. I'm very open to criticism, especially that which helps me become a better author... so review it! And as to whether Lady Macbeth has a sister, I have no idea, but I needed a recipient. So here it is.



This is a letter written by Lady Macbeth to her sister, in Act 5, Scene 4, the scene before she is reported to have committed suicide.


DEAR SISTER


Dearest sister,

This should be a happy letter, for am I not now Queen of Scotland, beside my husband, the great Macbeth? Yet it is not, and the very reason for my grief is that which should make me happiest. For we have committed a great crime, my husband and I, and all for the sake of ambition. It was foretold that he should be King, and yet I cannot wash my hands of blood. No longer is my sleep at night restful, for I toss and turn, and when I finally fall into the hands of sleep it is fitful, and oft I wish I had not, for my dreams... nay, not dreams, call them, instead, nightmares, for they come and go with a suddenness which is not natural, and they scare me so.

Why am I telling you this? For in truth it can do naught but worry you, you that have been so kind to me in my darkest moments. I fear, however, that this pit that I have fallen into is not one which even you could haul me out of. By rights, I should be confessing this to a man of the cloth, formal and proper, but the crime I have commit is so dark I dare not voice it aloud.

Forgive me, for I cannot seem to keep a straight thought in my head, and every so often I feel myself wander near to the edge of the great pit, into which I know I shall fall and never return. True, I feel that perhaps my lord and husband has already fallen thus, for does he not see strange visions that are not there, and act strangely, even around me, whom he should be free to act as if he was no more than he ever was? Yet he is as a stranger, and no longer can he bring himself to tell me everything, claiming instead that it is better that I should not know. But it is a wife's duty to help her husband bear his load in life, and if he cannot trust me, who can he truly trust?

The Lords do not trust him, I fear that, and indeed, that may well be his downfall. It is all because of that dreadful night, when he claimed to see people who were not really there, indeed, people who are dead and buried for all eternity. Should he not do something, anything, to gain their loyalty and trust, I fear he may not be King much longer.

And still I cannot find it within myself to write those horrid words, even when I know that to do so would free me from this burden I have placed upon myself. I do not feel I want to shift this burden, if to do so is merely to place it on yours.

I should ask at least, how are you and your husband? Your fair children? Now that I have asked I find it nigh impossible to cast such horrors your way. You should, nay, I should rip this up and burn it right now, but I have need to say that which cannot be said. Forgive me, sister, that I have done such wrongs.

For I, and my husband, Macbeth, now King of Scotland, we have killed Duncan, King of Scotland, whilst he was sleeping in our bed.

Such horror I feel I cannot live with. If you never hear from me again, fair sister, pray that I have paid my repentance, and no longer soil this earth with my presence.


Farewell.