The notion of inwardness is central in Macbeth, where it takes various forms and shows how tightly linked the physiological and the psychological are in Shakespeare’s age. Duplicity is the first step towards a tension between the inner and the outer being, and it gradually leads, through the metaphor of the body as castle, to the motif of the closed body and the closed mind, leading in turn to the dislocation of the self, incapable of escaping its inner hell.