“Come you spirits,
That tends on mortal thoughts,
Unsex me here.”
Lady Macbeth is strong, confident and very well organised, taking the initiative to go ahead and plan the murder:
“Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.”
Lady Macbeth encourages and taunts Macbeth. She knows his character very well. She tricks him again into feeling sorry for her:
“Was the hope drunk,
Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?”
Lady Macbeth shows the reader that she has a conscience. She says that she would have done the deed herself but Duncan resembles her father as he sleeps:
“Had he not resembled,
My father as he slept, I had done’t- my husband.”
Again lady Macbeth shows a sign of nervousness. If Lady Macbeth were a ‘fiend’ she would not get nervous, she wouldn’t have a conscience.
“It was the owl that shrieked.”
Lady Macbeth shows that she is ‘fiend- like’ because she takes the daggers back to the bedchamber and smears the blood over the chamberlain’s faces with Duncan’s blood. She does this with ease; she doesn’t show any sign of discomfort:
“Infirm of purpose!”
At his point in the play Lady Macbeth is still the dominant character. She knows her strength and weaknesses. She knows that if she thinks about the murder of Duncan it will make her mad:
“These deeds must not be thought,
After these ways; so, it will make us mad.”
Lady Macbeth talks about their expedition. She feels that they have given everything and gained nothing. This statement is associated ‘fiend- like:’
“Nought had all spent,
Where our desire is got without content.”
Lady Macbeth is gentle and soft here. She is telling Macbeth to be clam and happy unfront of the guests tonight:
“Come on;
Gentle my lord, sleek over your rugged looks;
Be bright and jovial among you guests tonight.”
Towards the end of the play Lady Macbeth becomes the weaker of the two characters. Macbeth regains his courage and takes control by organising Banquo and Fleances death. He kept this to himself, without telling Lady Macbeth. This is a huge shift in behaviour from Lady Macbeth. She knows that Macbeth is keeping something from her and she doesn’t care.
I think that Malcolm’s description of lady Macbeth is not entirely accurate. Malcolm is at a disadvantage in comparison to the reader because he doesn’t hear Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy’s. These soliloquies’s show the reader who and what she really is. But there are some parts in the play that show she is ‘fiend- like.’
Duncan Macaulay 12’7