Macbeth's Emotions

From the very beginning, he has the ability to choose his own path. His greed is already overpowering him when hearing the first prophecy from the witches as he believed what they were saying was of great importance to him. Their words were tempting, but his own greed and blind ambition drove him to commit Duncan’s murder. This streak of evil within him is at its most prominent when he orders the murder of Macduff’s wife and children; it’s clear that he is no longer troubled by killing the innocent. Macbeth’s determined nature is shown when he ponders his “black and deep desires” – “I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself, and falls on th'other”. He admits that there is no motivation to kill Duncan other than to fulfil his own ambition and become king himself. Macbeth’s greed and ambition get the best of him and lead his descent into insanity and eventual

He is Duncan’s ‘kinsman and his subject’, he reminds himself that what he is doing is wrong and that he has the duty to protect the king, not murder him. In an interaction with Lady Macbeth prior to the murder of Duncan, he says they ‘shall proceed no longer in this business’, this shows that he has a moral compass, and he knows that what he is about to do is wrong. Also, previous to the murder he hallucinates a ‘dagger’, it is a figment of his imagination because he is very anxious, and is already feeling culpability. This part in the play is key in showing that Macbeth is consumed by guilt and anxiety, so is not in the best mindset to commit a murder. Despite this, he still kills Duncan. His guilt returns after the murder when an ‘Amen [is] stuck’ in his throat, he knows that he has sinned against God, and he is too anxious to say Amen. Immediately after killing Duncan he is ‘afraid to think of what [he has] done’, he has immense regret and feels a lot of guilt.

     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,

Following the meeting with the witches, Macbeth begins to think about killing Duncan and taking the throne by force. Macbeth becomes concerned with the witches prophesies and wants to learn more, as we can see from what he says after they leave, "Would they have stayed!" (1.3.82). After this, he begins thinking about his desire to be king. We can see that he is thinking about murdering Duncan from his soliloquy, "Stars, hide your fires, /Let not light see my black and deep desires;"

Since she was an accessory of murder and she keeps it hidden, it bottled up inside her. It comes out as she hallucinates blood. She is loses her mind as a result of messing with the forces of order. In Act 5 Scene 3, Lady macbeth dies. Like Macbeth, Lady Macbeth lost her life as a result of Nature trying to restore balance.

In this instance, Lady Macbeth has been pushed into conforming to contemporary societal view of a woman as she is being consumed by fear. As a matter of fact, Malcolm later states that she committed suicide (Shakespeare 5.8.2560-61), and while it is unlikely that he can know this for certain, this action correlates with her unstable state the audience last sees her in. Her rejection of characteristics normal for a woman of Shakespeare’s time, compounded by her fears inability to fully achieve the emotional distance she wanted has led to her mental undoing and loss of agency. She becomes the emotionally driven, conscience-weighed person she did not want to be in the beginning of the play, and led by fear of her weakness and of the deeds she and her husband perpetrated, completely loses her ability to rationalize, plan, and stay

During his soliloquy, the audience is given a window into Macbeth’s mind and is able to understand his current mental state. At this point, Macbeth muses over the list of reasons for why he should not commit the murder. The first reason being that such an act would be morally and ethically wrong, and the consequences of his ambitions would lead to disaster: “but only Vaulting ambition, which overleaps itself and falls on the other”(1.7.26-28). The second reason is that King Duncan trusts him on two different levels: “First,... as his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against the deed; then, as his host”(1.7.13-14). Macbeth is loyal to the king and does not want to betray him like the others, whom he recently defeated in battle.

Macbeth is very indecisive about all of the choices he indulges on, but mostly the murder of Duncan. In Act I scene VII of Macbeth, Macbeth does not want to murder the king. After he faced the foretell the witches gave him, his ambition to become king strengthens. He is faced with many problems as he goes through the outcomes that the murder will bring upon him. He looks aside and continues with what the three witches, and Lady Macbeth told him to do. He tries to talk himself out of the murder but completes the task anyway because of the sole reasoning that his ambition gets in the way and his wife’s manipulation.

However, Macbeth was not going to go through with the murder of King Duncan until Lady Macbeth coerced him by saying he was cowardly for not killing the king; she also persuaded him through the thought of all the power he could have. Then, he ignored all of his moral values to the point where he started to drive himself insane. “Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee...mine eyes are made fools o’ the other senses.(MAC 2.1.42-53)” Macbeth is conflicted with the fact that he truly believes this is wrong but he still continues to kill because he is blinded by his thirst for

She was showing symptoms of suicidal thought, insomnia, restlessness, and suicidal attempts. “Gentlewomen saw lady Macbeth rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her…returns to bed.” (Act V, I, 4-8) In future, Lady Macbeth might commit suicide because of her guilt that she was driven to the point of madness. She tried to talk herself out of her dark guilt to comfort her conscience, but she could not do it.

Macbeth as king, becomes paranoid of anyone who threatens him and this leads him to commit more murders. He then turns into a man who fears nothing and starts to challenge fate itself. He is finally redeemed by the death of his wife and his demise at the hands of

“Out, damned spot! Out, I say!” (Shakespeare,). Hallucinations, visions, and madness are highly affected in within the book Macbeth. Macbeth gets himself into something he can’t handle and gets the affect within his physical actions and in his mentality.

Given the fact that “Macbeth” is among the most famous plays ever written, it is only natural that

In “Macbeth,” Shakespeare created an illusion of Lady Macbeth being the most strong and powerful woman in the book. However, the truth is her ruthless ambition caused her final downfall. Her burning ambition led her to persuade her husband to commit sinful acts, since it will lead them to power. Through out the book she taunts Macbeth about his cowardly behavior, he needs to be fearless and deceiving like she is. Ironically, Lady Macbeth deceived the audience and all the characters to believe that she is courageous and ruthless. Ultimately, she could not handle her own ruthless behavior and caused a gradual disintegration of her mental health. Lady Macbeth’s strong ambition to gain more power caused her anguish in the end. Throughout the book Lady Macbeth’s character development has drastically changed from the first time she appeared in the book, her gradual disintegration, and her final collapse.

In William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s character develops greatly throughout the play. In the opening of the play she is illustrated as a dominant, devious woman who does not have to think second about conspiring to execute the King of Scotland. Nonetheless after the dirty deed is completed, Lady Macbeth breaks down at the end of the play. She endures a nervous breakdown and commits suicide, which displays how she went from a powerful woman to a remorseful maniac.