Essay on William Shakespeare's Macbeth

     In Shakespeare’s classic tragedy of Macbeth the main character Macbeth is driven from his status as a well respected warrior and lord of not one, but two Scottish regions to a dishonest, unloyal murderer. Macbeth gets caught in a web of lies and vile acts of murder in which he brings about his own demise. His criminal actions lead up to his tragic ending of life. ‘ They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly, But bearlike I must fight the course.’ His great ambition and gullibility of the witches predictions are two of the biggest factors of his downfall;however, Lady Macbeth was probably the biggest influence in the whole tragedy.

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!”,

Once guilt begins to overtake Lady Macbeth, she looses control of her emotions and actions, sending her onto the fast track to death. In a way, Shakespeare has Macbeth and Lady Macbeth change roles. In the beginning it seems as if Macbeth is more emotionally affected by the killing of Duncan. However, once Banquo is killed Macbeth is perfectly fine with it, and Lady Macbeth becomes vulnerable and lets the guilt overrule her. She begins to repeatedly pretend to was her hands and sleep walk. “Here’s the smell of blood still. All the perfumes of/ Arabia will not sweeten/ this little hand”

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

"Macbeth" is a tragic play that was written by William Shakespeare in the early 1600’s. It revolved around the character Macbeth and his urge to become king of Scotland. Macbeth had to do anything possible to become the king including murder, lying, and deception. However, Macbeth committed these evil deeds due to some influential people in his life. Between Macbeth’s wife persuading him to do anything to become king and the witches prophesying over him causes Macbeth to try and bury the past and control the future.

Lady Macbeth is a vicious and overly ambitious woman, her desire of having something over rules all the moral behaviors that one should follow. On the beginning of the novel, Macbeth receives the news that if Duncan, the current king, passed away he would be the next one to the throne. So,

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 gives Macbeth the first push to kill Duncan, and she wants to be ruthless, feel no remorse so that she and her husband will successfully kill Duncan. She desires to “stop up th’ access and passage to remorse” (Shakespeare 1.5.51) so that she will not feel bad about the murder. She persuades Macbeth to kill Duncan, but he struggles afterward when he does not follow the plan and forgets to put back the daggers he cannot face the evil act he has committed. Lady Macbeth is satisfied after Macbeth is king, but that is not enough for him any longer. Eventually the killings take a toll on Macbeth’s mental state, and the guilt he begins to feel is unbearable. Macbeth kills Duncan and then says “this is a sorry sight”

To begin with, Lady Macbeth is forcing Macbeth to kill Duncan so they can be King and Queen. Macbeth is not sure that he wants

As you can imagine Lady Macbeth was a big shock to a seventeenth century contemporary audience, she was a world away from her era. During the seventeenth century woman were seen as the weaker and inferior sex, to delicate and fragile for this was a mans world, they were far from equal to men in fact you could say that they were the slaves of the seventeenth century. Their only responsibilities were to look after the house, the children, and to keep their husband happy. Now you can see why Lady Macbeth wanted to have power and responsibility so much though to be quaint she did rule with an iron fist over Macbeth.

Laurence Sterne once wrote, “No body, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time.” This passage embodies one of the over arching themes of Macbeth. The character Macbeth, in Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, could easily identify with this passage due to the fact that he is pulled in opposite directions by both his desire to do what is right and his desire for power.

In “Macbeth” written by Shakespeare Lady Macbeth wants Macbeth to kill King Duncan so he can become king, and her queen. Ambitious and cunning she convinces Macbeth to go along with her plan to murder Duncan. Lady Macbeth shows her desire to become evil and remorseless in her monologue by using the literary devices such as symbolism, and alliteration. Lady Macbeth fully expresess her desire to be cruel and heartless in order to become Queen of Scotland. She describes how she wishes for demons to “unsex” her and strip away her womanly emotions.

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

William Shakespeare’s famous play ‘Macbeth’ both reflects and challenges power relations in the context of the seventeenth century. The play centres round the character Macbeth, who is brave, ambitious and has a tendency to self-doubt, and becomes a murderer due to his lust for power. The play focuses on Macbeth’s psyche and his downfall, yet it also portrays a variety of power relations. The relationship between men and women is represented by Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s relationship, and the constant change in gender roles. The theme of masculinity is common throughout the play, which is portrayed through contrasting views on gender. Another power relation in ‘Macbeth’ is the relationship between a king and his