At the end of the play, Malcolm, the newly crowned King of Scotland describes Lady Macbeth as a 'fiend-like queen. ' To a certain extent this judgement is true, yet Lady Macbeth has to actually evoke evil spirits to help prevent her from feeling any compassion or warmth. The evil spirits 'unsex ' Lady Macbeth and remove all feminine qualities from her, trading them for evil, proving that deep down there must be some good in her if she has to call for some outside help to aid her with her deeds.
Lady Macbeth likes to be seen as ruthless and cruel by everyone, yet we know that she must have feelings if she cannot bring herself to murder King Duncan because he 'resembled my father as he slept. ' This shows that she cannot possibly be as
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It was his duty to protect the King, not turn against him, and kill murderers, not change into one. After all Macbeth was named 'Thane of Cawdor ' by King Duncan. However this title is ironic as it once belonged to a disloyal traitor, which Macbeth later on becomes in the play. Yet Macbeth does dismiss and disregard the idea of murdering King Duncan, he can 't let himself believe he would contemplate such a thing. Once confiding his innermost desires to Lady Macbeth he cannot escape the idea, Lady Macbeth willingly takes charge of the situation which Macbeth accepts and begins to formulate a plot.
After going through with the murder with Lady Macbeth 's support and help, Macbeth starts talking about hearing people crying out 'Murder! ' in their sleep. He soon comes to the realisation that he will never be able to sleep innocently again. At the thought of this Macbeth begins to lose control but Lady Macbeth manages to keep him sane. Lady Macbeth appears as if she is in control of the situation, but she is already showing signs of weakness especially as she needed supernatural assistance and alcohol to help her get through the crime.
Once successfully carrying out one murder, Macbeth begins to carry out more. He murders Banquo and Macduff 's family, each time becoming easier. Macbeth didn 't even talk to Lady Macbeth about killing Lady Macduff and her children, it was a pointless and reckless thing to have done,
Lady Macbeth progresses throughout the play from a seemingly savage and heartless creature to a very delicate and fragile woman. In the beginning of the play, she is very ambitious and hungry for power. She pushes Macbeth to kill Duncan in order to fulfill the witches’ prophecy. In Act I, Scene 6, she asks the gods to make her emotionally strong like a man in order to help her husband go through with the murder plot. She says, “Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty!” Also, she does everything in her power to convince Macbeth that he would be wrong not to kill Duncan. In Act I,
Macbeth was honored and looked highly upon by the soldiers he commanded. He was a brave fighter and trusted by everyone around him. When a soldier is telling the events of the battle he says to King Duncan “For brave Macbeth- well he deserves that name” (4). This showed how much his subordinates trust him on and off the battle field. After the battle Macbeth was promoted to Thane of Cawdor, on top of his current position, Thane of Glamis. King Duncan honored Macbeth for his courage on the battlefield. At this point in the play, Macbeth had no intentions on hurting or turning on his king.
Even so, if Lady Macbeth was a heartless, truly selfishly ambitious and a ruthless character then she would not have to call upon spirits to help become evil and take all her womanly qualities. Thus implying that she has womanly qualities that she wants rid of. And Shakespear makes us weary of this by allowing her to speak her thoughts and agony’s but only when Macbeth is not around.
Macbeth murders many to gain power. He causes the suffering of families and murders former friends. The violence starts with the murder of the king, Duncan, who’d trusted and honored Macbeth; Macbeth kills him to gain the position of king. Duncan’s death is the catalyst; Macbeth subsequently begins to use violence as a regular way to attain power. He murders his former friend, Banquo, refusing to accept that Banquo’s sons will be kings as prophesized by the witches. He says in regard to the prophecy, “Rather than so, come fate into the list, / And champion me to th' utterance.” Instead of accepting fate, he challenges the prophecy and orders Banquo’s death. His final homicide is the massacre of Lord Macduff’s family. When Macduff hears of the brutal slaughter, he cries, “That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on, / And would not take their
Lady Macbeth’s strength of will persists through the murder of King Duncan as it is she who tries to calm Macbeth after committing the crime by declaring confidently that, “a little water clears us of this deed,” (2.2.67). Afterward, however, Lady Macbeth’s strong and ambitious character begins to deteriorate into madness. Her first sign of weakness occurred when she confessed that she could not have killed the king, revealing a natural woman’s feelings, “had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t” (2.2.13-14). Just as ambition has affected her before more so then Macbeth before the crime, the guilt plagues her now more effectively afterward as she desperately tried to wash away the invisible blood from her sin, “Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfume of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,” (5.1.48-49). Lady Macbeth’s
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s desire and ambition leads to her eventual downfall. When Lady Macbeth hears of Macbeth’s prophecy she dreams of the glory and high-standing that awaits being queen. She cannot withhold her ambitions and she is willing to manipulate fate to bring about Macbeth’s prophecy. She invokes evil spirits to be filled from head to toe with cruelty to do the evil actions necessary to make Macbeth king and to remove all remorse and pity for her action from her heart. She is initially able to be involved in the treacherous deeds that are needed to bring about the prophecy quickly, but as the play progresses the weight of the merciless deeds fill her with remorse. The remorse and pain she feels for her wicked
After the “deed” is carried out Macbeth is full of remorse. He is shaken by the sin he has committed and it is Lady Macbeth who soothes his nerves once he comes back to the castle. This shows Lady Macbeth’s remarkable strength of will through the murder. She even jokes about
Throughout the play "Macbeth", by William Shakespeare, Lady Macbeth's character drastically changes from being sinister to feeble. Lady Macbeth was an evil, manipulative person whose greed and selfishness were eventually the downfall of her character and well being. During the beginning of "Macbeth", she used her twisted mind to convince her husband to murder, making him believe that it was the only way he could get what he wanted. But as the play developed and the murders started to increase, Lady Macbeth started to question whether or not they were necessary. Sadly, though possibly justifiably, she ended up committing suicide after her constant questioning of the murders drove her to insanity. Lady Macbeth was an unemotional person who only cared about what she could gain. She made her disconcern about other people well known when she said, "How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me I would, while it was smiling in my face Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this." (Act I, Scene VII, Lines 55-60). Lady Macbeth refers that she would have no problem taking the life of her son, if it meant getting what she wanted. The fact that she would even fathom the idea of killing her own child makes her morose and appalling. If only she knew that it would be her who would be taken out of this world so cruelly. Being able to manipulate her husband's mind and the minds of others was another one of Lady Macbeth's baneful traits. After Macbeth killed King Duncan, still reeling from the crime he had committed, he met up with his wife. Once again, she used her manipulative ways to make him think that she felt just as bad as he did. She said, "My hands are of your color, but I shame To wear a heart so white." (Act II, Scene II, Lines 63-64). Lady Macbeth appeared to her husband as if she felt just as guilty about the act of violence as he did, knowing that in reality she didn't care at all. Telling Macbeth that her hands were as bloody as his own was to try to give him comfort that he was not alone in his schemes. But Lady Macbeth had other ideas in mind. She couldn't care less about her husband's thoughts or worries. All she could think about was
Lady Macbeth has the power over her husband to persuade him into doing anything she requests. She manipulates Macbeth with incredible efficiency by overruling all of his thoughts and changing his perspective on the present. Even though the many tasks that need to be completed are difficult to understand why they need to be done, Lady Macbeth will always convince Macbeth to do it. Her husband often tells her that she has a “masculine soul” which is obvious due to her murderous and envious actions. When the time came to kill king Duncan, Macbeth believes that his wife has gone insane and tells her that the crime they were about to commit was a horrible idea. As a result of his questioning, Lady Macbeth says that executing the crime will show his loyalty to her. On the night of the assassination Lady Macbeth watched the guards of the castle become drunk and unaware of what was going on. Lady Macbeth sent her husband into the castle to kill King Duncan. The married couple fled the scene leaving the guards covered in the evidence. Lady Macbeth and Macbeth are stained with the blood of their victims and the feeling of guilt in their stomach.
When she learns of the predictions of the witches, she immediately goes to work on figuring out how to get her husband into the throne of power. She fears that her husband is too kind and that “impedes thee from the golden round” (1.5.31). She manipulates her power over and tells him that he would not be a man if he did not kill Duncan, "When you durst do it, then you were a man;/and, to be more than what you were, you would/ be so much more the man" (1.7.56-58). Using her power over her husband, Lady Macbeth convinces him to kill King Duncan. However as Macbeth becomes power, and becomes more paranoid he begins to be the mastermind of his fate, as Lady Macbeth had once been. Macbeth plans to kill Banquo and Fleance, without communicating with Lady Macbeth about his plans; when he tells her of his plans, she warns him no to, where he responds she should “be innocent of the knowledge” (3.3.51). Macbeth’s plans were not successful, and Fleance escaped, which causes his “fit again. else been perfect.” (3.4.23) When Lady Macbeth was dominant, Macbeth experiences hallucinations, for instance the floating “dagger of the mind.” However, as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s relationship shifts, Lady Macbeth is now experiencing hallucinations of the “damn’d spot,” the blood, which shows her guilt for the feeling of committing murder. Her guilt was so great, that while she was sleep walking, she began to re-enact the
As the strong hold in the relationship, Lady Macbeth shows remarkable strength up to the point of Duncan's murder. She is the comforter of Macbeth immediately after he commits the crime. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth later lose the ability to sleep because if they do, they have terrifying dreams but she still shows more strength during the day than her husband. To help keep Macbeth from feeling guilty and to help keep him calm in the night, she once again questions his manhood. That is until she cracks and her conscience becomes too much for her to handle. She was the one who had more
Macbeth is easily tempted into murder by his wife to fulfill his ambitions to the throne. Once he stabs Duncan there is no stopping him. Macbeth then proceeds to kill Banquo, Fleance, Lady Macduff, and her children. Lady Macbeth only manipulated him to kill the king, but the decisions to kill Macduff and Banquo were his own. Banquo was his good loyal friend, after he killed him we know that he was out of his mind. Each person he has killed
Lady Macbeth is essentially an evil woman. She condones the death of innocent people and even wishes she were a man so she could commit murder herself. The idea to murder King Duncan was thought of by no other than Lady Macbeth,
Macbeth soon realises that he can not stop at just killing King Duncan. There are now other people that he must eliminate in order to retain his position as King. He realises that the one person who is most likely to threaten his position is Banquo. This is because Banquo was present when the weird sisters gave Macbeth their predictions, and he may suspect that Macbeth is the true murderer of the King. In Act Three, Scene One, Line 48, there is a large speech which shows Macbeth’s fears about Banquo’s knowledge of his dirty crime. After this speech, the three murderers enter, and he assigns them to kill both Banquo and his son Fleance. This act does seem to be butcher-like as Banquo was Macbeth’s best friend and had done nothing wrong. However, it has become a necessity for Macbeth to have Banquo killed.
Although cautious in his killings to begin with, as with that of King Duncan, he eventually becomes a heartless murderer who stops at nothing to gain power. By the end of the play, Macbeth murders his blameless King; one of his closest friends, Banquo; the entire house of Macduff, excusing only Macduff; and countless soldiers and chamberlains. Macbeth absolutely did not value human life, and thought it an insignificant task to dispose of it whenever he thought necessary. His evil ambition and destructive rule ruined the lives of countless people, all of whom were completely innocent.