Lady Macbeth is a leading character in William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth (). As the wife of the play's tragic hero, Macbeth (a Scottish nobleman), Lady Macbeth goads her husband into committing regicide, after which she becomes queen of Scotland. After Macbeth becomes a murderous tyrant, she is driven to madness by guilt over their crimes, and commits suicide offstage. Lady Macbeth is a powerful presence in the play, most notably in the first two acts. Following the murder of King Duncan, however, her role in the plot diminishes. She becomes an uninvolved spectator to Macbeth's plotting and a nervous hostess at a banquet dominated by her husband's hallucinations. Her sleepwalking scene in the fifth act is a turning point in the play, and her line "Out, damned spot!" has become a phrase familiar to many speakers of the English language. The report of her death late in the fifth act provides the inspiration for Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech. The role has attracted countless notable actors over the centuries, including Sarah Siddons, Charlotte Melmoth, Helen Faucit, Ellen Terry, Jeanette Nolan, Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, Vivien Merchant, Glenda Jackson, Francesca Annis, Judith Anderson, Judi Dench, Renee O'Connor, Helen McCrory, Keeley Hawes, Alex Kingston, Marion Cotillard, Hannah Taylor-Gordon, and Frances McDormand. Origins Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth appeared to be a composite of two personages found in the account of King Duff and in the account of King Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles: Donwald's nagging, murderous wife in the account of King Duff and Macbeth's ambitious wife, Gruoch of Scotland, in the account of King Duncan. In the account of King Duff, one of his captains, Donwald, suffers the deaths of his kinsmen at the orders of the king. Donwald then considers regicide at "the setting on of his wife", who "showed him the means whereby he might soonest accomplish it." Donwald abhors such an act, but perseveres at the nagging of his wife. After plying the king's servants with food and drink and letting them fall asleep, the couple admit their confederates to the king's room, where they then commit the regicide. The murder of Duff has its motivation in revenge rather than ambition. In Holinshed's account of King Duncan, the discussion of Lady Macbeth is confined to a single sentence: Role in the play Lady Macbeth makes her first appearance late in scene five of the first act, when she learns