Lady Macbeth Research Paper

The Macbeth's have a very unsteady relationship and from the beginning it is known that Lady Macbeth is the one who plays out the dominant role in their marriage. She is ambitious and power hungry and won't let anyone or anything get in the way of her pertaining the throne. Lady Macbeth is ambitious in her doings and she is more driven by her determination than Macbeth. Right after reading the letter she received from Macbeth, she realizes that he has power and ambition but lacks the will to seek it through. Luckily, Lady Macbeth quickly turns to murder and realizes although Macbeth is a coward, she holds enough ambition and strength for the both of them, "Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be / What thou art promised ; yet do I fear thy nature, /

The writer, Shakespeare, illustrates to the audience that the consequences do not just affect the person who have the ambitions, but it also affects the people around them. He does this by expressing the ambition through the characters of Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are shown to be ambitious and their ambition feeds off of each other. Macbeth is initially shown to the audience as a brave and selfless soldier who is loyal to his king till the day he dies. But, once Macbeth hears the prophecy of the three witches’, (that he will become the King of Scotland), Macbeth changes. He develops a deep, dark and horrible ambition of ruthlessly murdering the king and taking his place. Macbeth then writes to Lady Macbeth telling her of his ambitions. This leads to Lady Macbeth provoking Macbeth’s ambitions instead of telling him to forget about it. As she provokes Macbeth the audience can clearly see that this woman is bad news. “Was the hope drunk?Wherein you dress'd yourself? hath it slept since?... and wakes it now, to look so green and pale which thou esteem'st the ornament of life, and live a coward in thine own esteem, Letting 'I

In William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is the true villain of the play as she is evil, ambitious and eventually insane. Lady Macbeth masterminded the idea to kill King Duncan and planted the vision into Macbeths mind, she convinced Macbeth to commit such a crime, and her love for her husband was eventually overruled by her determination and lust for power. Throughout the play she starts to show her true colours and the destructive force of her ambition, which inevitably results in nothing but disaster.

The struggle for power is encountered through the interactions between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth. When initially introduced to the character of Lady Macbeth, she reads a letter addressed to her from Macbeth in which he states his plans to kill King Duncan and assume the throne. Lady Macbeth responds with a speech signifying her agreeance and calls for the strength to carry on with the plan: “Come, you spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/ And fill me from the crown to the top-full/ of direst cruelty” (1.5.47-50). Here, she is denouncing her femininity to take on a more masculine role and to be filled with nothing but motivation for the cruel crime. Shakespeare uses this scene to foreshadow the event in which the crime will be committed. While Macbeth begins to have second thoughts and uneasiness towards the situation, Lady Macbeth tells him: “What beast was ’t,/ then, / That made you break this enterprise to me?/ 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” (1.7.53-58). Lady Macbeth is emasculating her husband her by questioning his ability to be a man and how he hesitates to make the move towards power while she is confident in her decision. Shakespeare makes a choice to have a woman be the one to urge the death of Duncan to show the reversal of gender roles and to expose Lady Macbeth’s character. The playwright

When Shakespeare first presents Lady Macbeth in the play, we believe that she was an ambitious woman who was driven to get power at all costs. We are irresolute however as to whether she is part of a chain of events in the evilness going around the source. The first words we from her mouth are her husband’s word, which he wrote on his letter, showing us that she was the agent of his thoughts. Women in that period of time, were running a household, producing heirs for their husband and taking care of them, this is not the case for Lady Macbeth as she involves herself in social affairs. Her drive for power is what makes them so successful in their deceitful plans. The play shows us that there is a unique chemistry between two individuals which rare in that period as marriage was usually arranged. She is essentially what keeps the force going as she guides Macbeth and teaches is him how to be manipulative. Even though the crime that they had committed was treason she was simply past the point of caring as she believed she had nothing to lose as she was childless and she had no emotional fulfilment as a woman. She is superfluous and nothing less than reigning alongside Macbeth can feel this hole.

Macbeth’s ambition for power interests his wife, Lady Macbeth, who also desires power and corrupts Macbeth’s ambition. When Macbeth is having second thoughts as to whether or not he should murder Duncan, Lady Macbeth manipulates Macbeth, coaxing him into killing King Duncan despite his loyal service to him;”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”(I.7.56-58). Lady Macbeth questions Macbeth’s manliness as a way to get Macbeth to go through with the murder. Macbeth, offended and hesitant, struggles with moral conflict. He fears being caught and does not wish to murder Duncan because he has been fair to him. Lady Macbeth however knows that Macbeth strives for power, and finds a way to use this as a way of manipulating him. Earlier on in the play, Lady Macbeth is reading her husband’s letter and learns of the prophecies. Her first instinct is to kill Duncan. She reads the letter and reflects on Macbeth’s nature,“Glamis thou art, and cawdor,and shalt be / What thou art promised. Yet I do fear thy nature; / It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness”(I.5.15-17). Lady Macbeth knows that her husband does not have enough ambition to kill Duncan, and realizes she must push him into murdering King Duncan. [This is the moment in the play where Lady starts planning to murder King Duncan and gets the play moving in the direction it ends]. Macbeth’s thirst for power never leaves him satisfied.

The Tragedy of Macbeth would be greatly different had Lady Macbeth not been apart of it. Lady Macbeth was the puppet master for the entire scheme; she had her fingers in everything without boasting about it. Macbeth had a lot of instruction from Lady Macbeth regarding what he should and should not do. The tragedy would not have been the same without Lady Macbeth. Every little choice in life matters, every little thing that one takes into consideration when making a choice will end up affecting the outcome. In the case of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth has a lot to do with how his life turns out once he encounters the Weird Sisters. Lady Macbeth is a key character in The Tragedy of Macbeth. She proves that a man is not necessarily in charge. If Lady

The tragedies in Macbeth can be blamed on various characters. However, the tragedies can be traced to the root of the story. In the beginning the witches came to Macbeth and presented a prophecy to him. The prophet gave MacBeth and Lady Macbeth motive to strive for the crown.

In the Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth may have just caused Macbeth’s death. Lady Macbeth caused Macbeth’s downfall in the story, Macbeth was forced to kill King Duncan because Lady Macbeth was calling Macbeth a coward and saying that she would kill her own baby if she swore to. Macbeth did not really have a decision because he wanted to become king. Macbeth tried talking himself out of killing king Duncan but Lady Macbeth did not listen and Macbeth ended up having to kill King Duncan.

Reading the story of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth takes control and understands his state of mind. Lady Macbeth could not understand how Macbeth could fail, as he brings the daggers back with him. She had a plan, and prepared for the murder as well as set the daggers by the guards herself. She claimed that she would have killed the king herself, yet Lady Macbeth also states, "Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done 't." Lady Macbeth refuses to commit this murder being that she sees a resemblance between King Duncan and her father, which causes her to not be able to do the killing of Duncan.

For our project we chose to use Macbeth as our inspiration. In our art piece, Lady Macbeth is standing tall looking over her shoulder at an distanced Macbeth, who is seen off to the side, not as a lesser character, but as an isolated being holding a dagger. The dagger is dripping crimson red blood, fresh from his latest kill; King Duncan. Over Lady Macbeth’s right shoulder is the devil; the king of all evils and evil doings; Satan. Creeping over her shoulder, the devil is clasping onto Lady Macbeth with his dagger like nails, gripping on, waiting for his next victim. In the background there are flames that engulf Satan and Lady Macbeth, while Macbeth is surrounded by trees that are green and thriving, but they are soon to be reduced to ash

In group A, Macbeth hears the weird sisters' greeting him as Thane of Cawdor and King, which he is not familiar with. Macbeth explains to the sisters that he cannot be Thane of Cawdor as that title belongs to someone else. Macbeth, at this point, believes he should not be called Thane of Cawdor or King. In group B, Macbeth's thoughts of the 2 titles begin to shift. He now adapts/believes that he is Thane of Cawdor. Macbeth now begins to think that he should kill the king to make the weird sisters' story true. He believes that he needs to gain the King title. In conclusion, Macbeth went from an innocent person, to a person who is considering murdering the king.

Lady Macbeth can be said to be one of Shakespeare's most famous and frightening female characters. She fulfills her role among the nobility and is well respected, like Macbeth. She is loving, yet very determined that her husband will be king. At the beginning of the play, when she is first seen, she is already plotting the murder of Duncan, showing more strength, ruthlessness, and ambition than Macbeth. She lusts after power and position and then pressures her husband into killing Duncan. Upon receiving the letter with the witches' prophecies from her husband, she begins to think and knowing that Macbeth lacks the courage for something like this, she calls upon the forces of evil to help her do what must be

In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare we see the character of Lady Macbeth and her relationship with Macbeth as destructive as she supports his bad ambitions to fulfil the witches prophecy as soon as possible. At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is a brave soldier, but because his ambitions get out of hand, he kills King Duncan so that he can become the King. Ambitions make people try hard to achieve any of their goals and it will make people do the things that they never done before. But ambitions can lead to some bad consequences and it can lead to a person or couple’s downfall. The purpose of the writer is to show how destructive a relationship can be when Lady Macbeth provokes Macbeth, which leads to guilt. Lady Macbeth was a supportive

In Shakespeare’s work, he often creates different types of female characters to influence the outcome of the plot in his literature. In his play, Macbeth, Shakespeare introduces Lady Macbeth, a femee fatal who is extremely ambitious. Because Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most scandalous characters, the use of her dominating personality shows pure intelligence from Shakespeare and makes Macbeth a memorable piece of literature (Jamieson, Lee 2014). Lady Macbeth, affects the outcome of the play through her appetite for power, ability to influence others, and dependence upon witchcraft. One method Lady Macbeth affects the outcome of the play is through her dependence on witchcraft.