‘This dead butcher and his fiend-like queen.’ How fair is this assessment of Macbeth and his wife?

In the beginning of the play Macbeth has praise heaped upon him, he is a successful general, described as noble and valiant. He has done his duty for his king and country and is rewarded because of this. He is popular and well regarded at the beginning of the play. However the temptation is too strong and his ambition to be king gets the better of him so he kills the King of Scotland (Duncan) and the evil of this murder has powerful effects on him and the whole country. Macbeth knows that what he does is evil and originally doesn't want to do it. The witches play upon Macbeth's weakness and so does Lady Macbeth. Macbeth thinks that the supernatural powers of the witches will help him instead they lead him to his downfall. Macbeth obviously believes very much what the witches tell him and this shows us that the supernatural was taken very seriously in these times. Macbeth's downfall is really his own fault, because he makes a deliberate choice to take the road to evil. He is responsible for the murder of King Duncan, his colleague Banquo, and Lady Macduff and her children. At the end of the play Macbeth has changed from the 'Noble Macbeth' he was at the start, to a 'butcher' hated by everyone.

At the start of the play Lady Macbeth seems to have a very strong character - stronger than Macbeth's does - but the end of the play reduces her to being afraid of the dark. At the beginning she is Macbeth's 'dearest partner of greatness', but at the end she is his 'fiend-like queen'. However to be so 'fiend-like' would mean that Lady Macbeth would have little trouble in living with being a murderer. She obviously feels so guilty about what she has done that she goes insane. This doesn't particularly show someone 'fiend-like'. Perhaps Lady Macbeth influenced Macbeth's decision to kill Duncan but afterwards she couldn't live with the fact she did.

Macbeth is, also, a strong character and is fully aware of the good he has rejected. This makes Macbeth an amazing character because he is much more than just a horrible monster. It is possible to feel disgusted by the evil in Macbeth but at the same time to feel sorry for the waste of all the good things in his character. Macbeth was a good man whose mind was played with by evil forces.

Lady Macbeth has the lust for power and it is her provoking that leads Macbeth to seize the throne of Scotland by murdering King Duncan. On the other hand, Lady Macbeth cannot cope with the evil she has unleashed and she goes insane. Lady Macbeth is often seen as a symbol of evil like the witches, but at the end she falls victim to evil just like her husband. After the murder of King Duncan Macbeth increasingly shuts her out of his plans, so she becomes lonely and rather isolated. At the end of the play it is suggested she committed suicide.

I think that Macbeth does behave as a 'butcher' in parts of the play but is fooled by the supernatural. Lady Macbeth behaves in a 'fiend-like' manner in parts of the play but at the end this evils punishes her. What Malcolm says about Lady Macbeth applies to her early on in the play but when she goes insane I think she has changed and that she no longer has the ambition inside of her. I think Macbeth, in truth, was a butcher but only because he was convinced by others to be one.

Felicity Giles