The Tragedy Of Macbeth By William Shakespeare

No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red" Macbeth Quote (Act II, Sc. II).

Lady Macbeth states, “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be what thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it” (1.5.16-21). Lady Macbeth depicts her husband as being ambitious, but he is also too kind to murder Duncan and take the throne for himself. She also says, “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe topful of direst cruelty…”(1.5.41-44). In this quote Lady Macbeth is praying to the spirits to literally deprive her from her femininity because she desires to take the initiative in seizing power for her husband. Another example of reversed gender roles is when Lady Macbeth says, “O,proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear. This is the air-drawn dagger which you said led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts, impostors to true fear, would well become a woman’s story at a winter’s fire, authorized by her grandam.Shame itself!”(3.4.62-67). In this quote Lady Macbeth yet again takes on the dominant role in a relationship and tells Macbeth that he is yet again hallucinating just like he did with the floating dagger that led him to Duncan and he is also acting like a woman. This quote further connects to the thesis in which the roles of the Lady Macbeth and Macbeth is reversed in

Everyone has a quality that they do not like about themselves. Some people struggle to be social, others may be too controlling of people. The list goes on and on, but the point is that everybody has a particular quality that they must learn to control or else that particular quality can get out of hand. Of course, one could write a list of characters that have major flaws. There is no better example than William Shakespeare’s character, Macbeth, in The Tragedy of Macbeth. Anyone who has ever read it, could easily identify the fatal flaw that the character Macbeth possesses which is greed. Even though many readers can all agree that greed is Macbeth’s fatal flaw, the argument as to whether or not

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

As the play goes, Macbeth shows a character of free will. Although his destiny was pre-determined for him by the witches, he took action to believe and to make sure that his prophecies will come true. Macbeth is a strong character with many deep desires that include gaining power, and so throughout the play with the many crimes he had committed, there was no turning back for him. In all, his decisions help shape the future ahead of him.

In The Tragedy of Macbeth, Shakespeare attempts to define manhood and explore the different perceptions held towards what it means to be a man. As William Liston notes in his essay, “Man appears more than 40 times, almost always with a conscious sense of defining the term—or rather, of defining a person by the term” (232). Lady Macbeth is used as a tool to not only convey this theme, but she instigates the plot as well. Without her consistent scorn and ridicule of Macbeth and his “femininity”, he would most likely have never killed King Duncan or performed any of the other murders that occur throughout the play. Specifically speaking, the word choice of Lady Macbeth as well as her actions are what propel her husband into acting himself. Eventually, Macbeth’s overall attitude changes as a result of his wife’s ridicule. While Lady Macbeth undoubtedly spurs her husband into action, it is important to note that by the end of the play, she has lost what influence she had over him as well as her ability to control her own emotions.

Lady Macbeth is a very significant figure in Macbeth who challenges her gender roles. As we read the play, Lady Macbeth’s influence on her husband at the beginning a very strong, and even though we do see her fade out towards the end. The prominence of the decisions she made, that would later become the actions of Macbeth, were important to the events of the play. Therefore, she challenges gender roles emotionally and

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

Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's shortest, and most violent plays. Lady Macbeth and Macbeth both display ways that traditional males and females are not mean’t to act. This is made more evident by Macbeth not being able to finish the murder of the king. This is also shown when Lady Macbeth wanted the witches to strip her of all her feminine traits and replace it with manly traits. To add to that she told Macbeth that if she had promised to beat the brains out of a nursing child she would.

In Macbeth by William Shakespeare, gender plays a pivotal role in the development of the overall plot and as the play advances, certain characters, including Macbeth and Lady Macbeth experience a reversal in traditional gender behaviors. Additionally, we see gender confusion among other characters that enhances conflict in the play. Originally, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are portrayed in ways that enforce their respective masculinity and feminism in accordance to the society around them. As Macbeth begins to contemplate his decision regarding the killing of Duncan, his marriage becomes the primary driving force behind his action and thoughts in this matter. Although in some cases, male and female roles in this play remain static, the

It is interesting to note the importance of gender in the personifications of evil in Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is as obsessed with her gender as her evil. When she implores evil to "unsex" her, to take her "woman's breasts for gall" she reveals the sense of powerlessness and weakness she feels. Being a woman makes her dependant on her husband for her social

Lady Macbeth has female appearance and male ambitions, and Shakespeare (perhaps through the manipulative technic) shows that women could have same ambitions as men do. Although, the patriarchal boundaries and social structures still require the usage of men for the proper achievement of their (women) goals. In this way, Lady Macbeth overcomes the “expectations” of how woman suppose to behave. She ought to behave as male but not as her husband. She clearly performs a desire to be someone with lack of feelings and emotions, someone who is capable to carry a burden of responsibilities. By doing so, she labels Macbeth with lack of masculinity and

In the play The Tragedy of Macbeth, William Shakespeare uses satire as tone and irony as points of view to portray Macbeth’s unfortunately placed ambition and the manipulation that is used on him. His ambition to gain a higher status as king ends with consequences to himself and the others in his path. Shakespeare adds dramatic irony, verbal irony, and situational irony to keep the readers at the edge of their seats as well as engaged in each lie and mishap that Macbeth and his wife have to go through by will or by force. Satire is used to capture Macbeth’s confusion and doubt as well as the outcomes of his ambition.

Macbeth is a tragedy written in the 17th century that shows what the desire for power can do to a man. Macbeth is expressed as being the villain. But, Macbeth is in fact a tragic hero, doomed by fate from the beginning into the madness he put himself in. If it not been for meeting the witches and persuasion of his wife, the play would have had a very different ending.

Lady Macbeth’s burning ambition to be queen drives her to the point of insanity. She stops at nothing to gain power and uses Macbeth as the enforcer for her plans. This power is clearly illustrated as her husband follows her command to kill the king of Scotland, she constantly taunts Macbeth bringing him even further under her control. She is quite the opposite of how we generally assume feminine characters to act, and even begs the gods to remove her femininity at one point, “...Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here...Come to my woman’s breasts, and take my milk for gall, you murd’ring ministers...” (Shakespeare 12). As Lady Macbeth expresses her desire to become unsexed, we see the link that clearly exists between masculinity and murder. She believes that since she is a woman she cannot be capable of committing such evil deeds, and her reference to her breasts which is generally linked to the idea of nurture, is called upon in reference to her desire to do quite the opposite. Lady Macbeth presents a very strong character throughout the play, and through her actions a very clear picture of a manipulative wife is painted. Though Macbeth is the one to carry out many of the deviant plans, Lady Macbeth’s role is clearly portrayed as the evil mastermind behind the murders.