Mrs. Ed Sheeran

Lady Macbeth as Mrs. Ed Sheeran

While Macbeth is battling his own selfish demons and fighting his own self inflicted war, he leaves his wife falling to the hands of her own murder. Even though Lady Macbeth never kills anyone but herself directly, she encourages Macbeth to take the necessary actions to become king. Her indirect involvement causes her soul to bare the weight of the guilt, grief, and paranoia that follows a murder. The blood stains her hands and refuses to wash away as the pile of dead bodies grow with Macbeth’s greed. As demonstrated in her actions sleepwalking, Lady Macbeth has been driven to a point of insanity, unable to escape the reality of her decisions; not even in her sleep. In the wise words of Ed Sheeran, she is a mess, inside out.

In Ed Sheeran’s song “I’m a Mess,” he describes the well-known heartbreak resulting from a breakup. Sheeran depicts the sadness, the anger, the passion, the denial; all emotions Lady Macbeth fights to control up until her death. The flames inside Sheeran’s eyes are the same as Lady Macbeth’s as they yearn for something more: Ed Sheeran wanting love and Lady Macbeth wanting freedom from guilt and bloodshed. Sheeran’s used of the lyric “going through the motions, hoping you’d stop,” deeply connects to Lady Macbeth as she begins to regret her decision in encouraging Macbeth to kill his way to the top. In the same way as Sheeran, Lady Macbeth has only caused pain to her husband, the lives he took, and her kingdom.