How are characters presented as disturbed in Macbeth, Laboratory and My Last Duchess?

Macbeth is confused as he is arguing with himself on what he should do. He states reasons not to kill Duncan, because Macbeth is his noble kinsmen and the act would bring dishonor. However, he also states reason why he should kill him, because Macbeth will then become king and fulfill the witches ' fortune. Lady Macbeth, who appears in the beginning as the driving force for the murder of King Duncan, also develops internal conflict. At first, Lady Macbeth seems to be a woman of extreme confidence and will. But, as situations become more and more unstable in the play, guilt develops inside her. For instance, she exclaims; "Wash your hands. Put on your nightgown. / Look not so pale. I tell you again, Banquo 's / Burried; he cannot come out on 's grave" (Shakespeare V, ii, 65-67). Lady Macbeth sleepwalks and frets about her evil wrongdoings because she is extremely guilty of her influence on Macbeth to commit the murder. Lady Macbeth reacts emotionally and dwells on her actions as guilt eats at her soul.

A deadly combination of ambition and guilt poisons both Macbeth and his wife and leads to their deaths in the end. Ruined by her desire for power, Lady Macbeth’s descent into madness is more vivid and guilt seems to affect her more than her husband, even though he is responsible for more crimes. Her request to the spirits to “unsex [her] here,/ And fill [her], from the crown to the toe, top-full/ Of direst cruelty!” is contrasted as the more guilty she feels, the more weak and sensitive she become, a polar opposite of her usual masculine and bold self (1.5.44-46). As a result, she is unable to cope with the guilt and meets her ultimate demise by taking her life. This has an immediate effect on Macbeth: the almost always apparent tension of ambition and guilt disappears. He does not seem interested in living and is ready to face death in a manner more relatable to his former self rather than the murderer he has become. Moreover, Macbeth’s final remark is “Arm, arm, and out!”,

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

“Come to my woman’s breasts And take my milk for gall.” One would assume here that if one of the two were to have the strength of mind to live through this evil tragedy it would be Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare is entering into this very interior of Macbeth’s mind allowing the audience to realise further differences between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Macbeth at this stage is going deeper and deeper into the world of evil. “Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtained sleep.” Macbeth realized that in obtaining the crown by foul play he is devaluing as the king is meant to be appointed by God. By now, Macbeth is able to have the courage to look into the heart of fear; lady Macbeth on the other hand is unable to do this.

Shakespeare also utilizes the theme of appearance and reality. The classic dagger scene, when Macbeth is not sure if he can trust his eyes, is only one of many references to this theme. For instance, he sees Banquo's ghost at the banquet and Lady Macbeth imagines blood on her hands. Banquo talks about the 'cursed thoughts' he has had and his dreams of the witches. Macbeth talks of the world of thought and dreams and sometimes becomes lost within it. Lady Macbeth is critical of Macbeth's 'foolish thoughts' and talks of him being 'lost' because of this. The idea of sleep is also integrated, as Macbeth is told he has murdered sleep and will 'sleep no more' whilst Lady Macbeth thinks of sleep as death, calling it the sternest 'goodnight'.

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.

Lady Macbeth is a complex and intriguing character in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. She is a difficult character to embody as her personality seems split between two sides, one that is pure evil, sly and conniving in contrast to her softer, vulnerable, weak and feminine side. In the play we see her in these two main ways. The reader may feel a certain animosity towards Lady Macbeth throughout the first few acts as her personality appears more and more distasteful, in spite of this towards the end she has a serious breakdown over the guilt that torments her, even in her sleep, regarding her hand in Duncan’s untimely death.

She tells the sprits ‘Come to my woman breasts/And take my milk for gall’ so that she can get rid of all the kindness within her-blood and milk form her breasts- Shakespeare uses ‘direst cruelty’ to express the desperation running through Lady Macbeth and with this Shakespeare creates a very hell-like picture for the audience. However, eventually Lady Macbeth persuasion overcomes Macbeth and finally he agrees to kill Duncan. ‘Let light not see my black and deep desires’, this shows Macbeths ambitions are not of good intention and turns to the universe to express this ambition (about how great it is) It also shows that even though he wants to kill Duncan, the audience is still finding Macbeth arguing whether or not to do it. Shakespeare also uses alliteration to emphasize the amount evil involved in this deed. In relation, Shakespeare shows Macbeth willing to jump the hierarchy of position. ‘We’d jump the life to come’ show the willingness to jump the hierarchy, which instantly shows the relation to the archangel which went against God and the hierarchy of Heaven to create his own land of chaos which is better known as hell. Moreover, Lady Macbeth is shown with even more evil to represent her will for Macbeth to complete the deed, ‘I have given suck and know how tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me: I would while it was smiling in my face, Have plucked my nipple from

William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, a tragedy based upon the fallen hero, by whom the play is written after, is commonly discussed with attention focused upon Macbeth’s mental health. While people in the Shakespearean era had very little understanding of the human brain, modern readers and psychologists have examined the thoughts, speech, and actions of Macbeth to determine the accumulation of his mental illnesses.

This essay will explore number of disturbed character and how they came to disturbed. There are many ways that a person can be disturbed; power; greed; need for control or, by love for example. These are some of the ways that a character can be disturbed. In, Macbeth we learn about his thirst for power and how he achieves this, Also, Lady Macbeth has a part to play in this by poising Macbeth by calling him weak, and that he is not a man.

Macbeth, a memorable play that keeps its patrons enthralled, but what many do not realize is that what makes each scene so excellent is Shakespeare’s exceptional shifts between blank verse, prose and rhyme verse all through the play. Throughout Macbeth, Shakespeare switches from using blank verse to prose and even to using rhyme verse, each time in a manner that perfectly matches the scene. Shakespeare has used blank verse, prose, and rhyme verse in several other of his poems and plays, and they are a common technique for Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s utilization of these techniques in Macbeth truly establishes a perfect mood at every instance on whence they are used, displaying a true mastery of english language. Shakespeare’s inclusion of blank verse that is interrupted by both prose and rhyme verse, was for the sake of establishing a perfect flow with the

Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth and Browning’s lady in lab share common characteristics of insanity as well as great ambition. The essay will explore dilemma faced by Lady Macbeth and the cruelty expressed in “The Laboratory”. Shakespeare’s play, was written in 1848, and set in the 11th century. The play was presented to King James I of England, and portrays one of his ancestors, "Banquo". In contrast, “The Laboratory”, is set in pre-revolutionary France, portraying the main protagonist as a schizophrenic woman whom hallucinates over a mysterious unnamed man.

It is human nature to be intrigued by all things mystical and dangerous. We fear the unknown but seek it nonetheless out of greed. Most of Shakespeare’s works hold an element of the supernatural and the play Macbeth is no exception. In this play we see a contemporary morality that warns of the dangers of trafficking with instruments of darkness; the witches in the play prophesize of Macbeths future as king, and Macbeth blinded by his hunger for power fails to recognize that the witches prophecies are luring him to evil . In act 1 scène 3 we see the effect that the excitement of the prophecies has had on his imagination as he begins to contemplate murdering the king. As Macbeth gets closer to

Secondly, Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as ambitious woman who shows eagerness at the prospect of murder. In act 1 scene 5 Shakespeare uses a metaphor to present lady Macbeth’s eagerness to fulfill her ambition ‘valour of my tongue’ this suggest that lady Macbeth was going to do everything she could do to persuade Macbeth to kill king Duncan, when he was not willing to do so. Her determination to persuade her husband shows eagerness to kill the king. Correspondingly, in the Laboratory plosives are used to show the eagerness of the persona to kill her lover’s love. She says ‘Brand, burn up, bite into its grace’ implies that the persona had real passion and interest in killing her victims.

When he hears the Doctor’s medical opinion of his wife, Macbeth sarcastically asks the doctor; “What purgative drug / Would scour these English hence? Hear'st thou of them?” (5, 3, 55-56). Also when he learns that his wife has committed suicide, he does not grief for Lady Macbeth because he is unable to express his feelings. Before she dies, she cries out; “Here's the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten / this little hand…” (5, 1, 48-49). His mind is engaged with the witches promise and therefore hopes that this will protect him.