As I said before Macbeth is a very good warrior and he isn’t doing anything for his reputation by killing all these people. He battles with his conscience as to whether or not to kill certain people. In the first soliloquy he is deciding if he should kill Duncan or not. He goes through the points: that he is related to Duncan, that Duncan is a good man, Duncan trusts Macbeth and if he killed Duncan it would be a betrayal of trust. He thinks that angels would come down from heaven to plead Duncan’s case if Macbeth were to kill him and they would sweep around making sure everyone would take pity on Duncan and anger the murderer.
“…Heaven’s cherubin hors’d
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye,”
At the end of the soliloquy he has talked himself out of killing Duncan because if he did murder Duncan and he was caught he would get punished. This is a very selfish decision and Duncan was not considered in the final agreement. He also said earlier that if there were no consequences. That it would be over and done with and forgotten then he might as well get on with it.
“If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well
If it were done quickly.”
But obviously this is not going to happen as Duncan is the king and some people would want to know the full story.
Lady Macbeth doesn’t like his decision and forces Macbeth into killing Duncan- she uses his emotions to make him feel guilty. She calls him a coward if he doesn’t kill Macbeth. You can see from this that Macbeth feels overpowered by his wife and would do anything she says, as she is very good with words and feelings.
In the second soliloquy Macbeth thinks he sees a dagger in front of him but when he goes to pick it up he can’t because it isn’t there. He sees this dagger because he is under so much pressure and his mind is making him see things. The dagger points towards Duncan’s room urging him to go on when Macbeth looks closer he sees blood on the handle, this is because of what he is about to do. Then Macbeth talks to himself trying to make himself evil enough to kill Duncan. When the bell rings he goes.
“I go, and it is done. The bell invites me.
Hear it not Duncan for it is knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.”
Banquo becomes suspicious of Macbeth so Lady Macbeth and Macbeth plan to murder Banquo. In the final soliloquy Macbeth again argues with himself whether or not to kill Banquo. He knows he will have to kill Banquo because he might tell people what he knows about Macbeth. He says how Banquo has a noble spirit and would always do the right thing. But Macbeth is talking about his future. He has sold his soul to the devil and he knows killing a king is bad enough but killing a friend is worse. He knows he is never going to be at peace and eternal damnation lies ahead of him.
“Only for them, and mine eternal jewel
Given to the common enemy of man”
He isn’t happy when he isn’t king and when he becomes king he still isn’t happy. He wants to give up kingship, say sorry and admit to doing everything wrong but it doesn’t work like that.
After Banquo is killed he sees his ghost at a dinner party and starts talking to it, Lady Macbeth says that he must be ill and hurries everyone out. Throughout the play you can see how Macbeth is handling the murders and I think now he is of the scale for giving the murders away.
At the end of the play Macbeth looses the will to continue because when the witches visited him again they said that when Birnam Woods move he is in very serious danger. Macbeth think s he is safe because woods can’t walk. When they start walking towards the castle he knows he is going to be killed. When he faces Macduff he wants to die honourably so they fight. Macbeth is killed only by his own fault.
I still think that “dead butcher” is not a very accurate description to me but to Malcolm it is because of what Malcolm saw of Macbeth.
Malcolm describes Lady Macbeth as a “fiend-like queen”. A fiend is an evil spirit or cruel/ wicked person. I think both of these definitions describe what Lady Macbeth is like. Throughout the play she is related to evil and cruelty. During the letter she makes many references to evil and bad things.
“That my knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of dark.”
She wants the dark to cover up what she is going to do so that heaven won’t be able to se what she is doing as she is surrounded by darkness. Macbeth also asked for darkness to cover up the evil that he was doing.
As I said before Lady Macbeth encourages Macbeth to kill Duncan to become king. When Macbeth tells Lady Macbeth what the witches had said, she likes the idea of his promotion and if he were to be made King then she would be Queen. I don’t think Macbeth wants to be King as much as she wants him to be King. She encourages him and takes personal control to organise the timing of the murders. She is very sinister and persuades Macbeth to kill Duncan. Although Macbeth doesn’t have enough evil in him to kill Duncan, by himself without her persuasion, Lady Macbeth couldn’t kill Duncan because women in Shakespeare’s time didn’t handle weapons. Also she would never actually murder anyone because if someone were ever to find out then she can say she had nothing to do with it because she never actually murdered anyone.
After the murder of Duncan she is harsh on Macbeth, as she thinks eh shouldn’t feel anything after killing someone. No regret or remorse. She tells him not to think about the murder. She thinks that you can just wash the blood of your hands and that will wash the guilt away with it. Then you have to appear normal as if nothing has happened to hide the fact that you have done it. She thinks it should be easy to wash away the blood and wipe the guilt away.
“My hands are of your colour, but I shame
To wear a heart so white.”
I don’t think she understands how Macbeth is feeling at this time in the play.
I think this is when “fiend-like” suits her best as at this pert of the play she is sly and evil.
During the ‘sleepwalking’ scene you can really understand what Lady Macbeth is thinking as it is her subconscious mind that is speaking and you can find out a great deal from this scene. You seem shocked as she is usually is such control. She talks about trying to wash the blood off her hands – you can draw from this that she is affected by the murder of Duncan. She also remembers calling Macbeth a coward, because she encouraged him into killing Duncan she feels partially responsible. She smells her hands and says she smells blood and when she says, “Arabia will not sweeten this little hand” she is taking pity on herself. There are some echoes of Macbeth hen he was describing when he couldn’t wash the blood off his hands and if he tried to wash it off in the ocean the ocean would turn to red blood instead.
I think Malcolm was correct to describe Lady Macbeth as a “fiend-like queen”. I think she fits this description better than Macbeth fits his- “dead butcher”. She is very evil and encourages Macbeth to commit the murders and if you noticed she never had anything to do with the actual murder, just the organisation.
