Analyse Lady Macbeth and Macbeth's relationship throughout the play and how this changes.

Authors Avatar

Shakespeare Essay- Macbeth

To analyse Lady Macbeth and Macbeth’s relationship throughout the play and how this changes, I am going to first describe them at the start of the play, then pick key scenes which show well the change and are strong and highly dramatic.

        At the start of the play, Macbeth is a well-respected warrior who is well liked by Duncan.  He is already Thane of Glamis and one of the first things that happen in the play is that he is made Thane of Cawdor.  This is a great honour and he is highly favoured by the King.  He seems to be doing well for himself.

        Lady Macbeth is his wife, who is also well liked.  As a couple, they are in a strong marriage.  They have had children, however we do not see them or hear much about them in the play.  Lady Macbeth loves Macbeth a lot, but she is very ambitious.  This leads to being a contributing factor to his downfall.

The first scene I am going to analyse is Act I Scene VII.  In this scene, Lady Macbeth is trying to persuade Macbeth to murder King Duncan.

        The scene opens with a long and important soliloquy from Macbeth that adds to the dramatic tension of the play.  Here, Macbeth is having second thoughts.  He is thinking about what would happen to him if he were caught, and what he ought to be doing as a friend of the king.  He recognises the fact that he has no reason to kill the king, and knows he would be wrong to do so.  In very eloquent, heightened language, referring a lot to the supernatural, he describes how awful it would be to murder Duncan, what a horrible deed he is about to commit.

This is the first real sign of a human side to Macbeth, showing that he still cares and would not just murder Duncan without a second thought or any sort of a conscience.  It shows that he is still human, not yet a ruthless, murdering monster, and this adds to the drama as he hesitates, then changes his mind.

When Lady Macbeth enters, he is strong and decided, telling her in a definite tone that We will proceed no further in this business, and gives her his reasons.  She replies by attacking his manhood, his courage and bravery.  She bombards him with insults, overwhelming him and leaving him unable to fight her.  He defends himself in a short sentence or two, before she carries on.

This time she uses his children against him in her argument, telling him that, while breastfeeding her own child, she would have killed it if she had so promised to him that she would.  This is important in showing the way the audience see Lady Macbeth, because this cruel, harsh way of addressing him makes the audience almost hate her.  She is using a feminine, maternal image in a horrific way against Macbeth in order to get her own way.

Macbeth is now almost convinced, so Lady Macbeth becomes very pragmatic now, taking a different approach.  She assures him they won’t fail, and tells him exactly how they will carry out the murder.  At this point in the play, she is definitely the stronger of the two, the driving force in the marriage, and Macbeth is full of admiration for her.  She now has him so convinced that he again promises to her that he will kill Duncan.  The scene ends in a decided, strong way with a rhyming couplet: False face must hide what the false heart doth know.  This quote adds emphasis to the scene, and brings in the theme of pretence.

Join now!

The scene works particularly well because the stereotype of a married couple is reversed in this scene.  The stereotype would be that the male is the stronger character, more practical, and making the majority of decisions, and the female is the one who is swayed by emotions, who has a conscience, and is gentler.  However, here Lady Macbeth is the strong, driving force: ruthless, not at all emotional or feminine, and Macbeth is weaker, easily swayed by his wife.  This role reversal adds drama and irony to the scene.

Lady Macbeth is completely in control at this point in the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay