The exclamation of Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, in Act5, Scene 1. Tortured by her guilt in the murders she has incited, she hallucinates blood on her hands and struggles to wash it off; but she cannot.
"What, will these hands ne'er be clean"? she moans. Despite the identification of the phrase with ghastly crimes and tortures of the conscience, it is usually used today in humorous references to such matters such as dry cleaning or misbehaving Dalmations.
