To aid her, she calls upon the dark spirits, as if praying to them, like the witches. She begs the "murdering ministers" to "unsex" her (much as the three evil witches seemed both male and female) and make her strong enough to murder King Duncan. She also asks them to make her blood thick against remorse and regret and to make the night dark to hide the sin that is to be committed. The wording of the entire soliloquy serves as a flashback to the first scene of the play, where the witches plotted their evil doings in a place where the air was foul and dark. The use of neglecting the motherly responsibility would have amazed the Elizabethan audience, this would have added up to Lady Macbeth’s status as evil. Lady Macbeth installs alliteration in her lines and she uses her poetic skill to make the spell flow and sound even more horrifying.
At one point, she wishes that she were not a woman so that she could do it herself. This theme of the relationship between gender and power is key to Lady Macbeth’s character: her husband implies that she is a masculine soul inhabiting a female body, which seems to link masculinity to ambition and . Shakespeare, however, seems to use her, and the witches, to belittle Macbeth’s idea that “fearless courage should compose nothing but males.”
Through out scene 1 act 5 iambic pentameters are used when Lady Macbeth speaks. Lady Macbeth is thought to portray herself and has high authority with higher-class lexis. She is very discreet with her language using techniques like euphemisms, to show her wants to the audience. ‘O, never shall sun that morrow see!’ Lady Macbeth says that King Duncan will not live to see another day.
Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband with amazing effectiveness, overriding all his objections; when he hesitates to murder, she repeatedly questions his manhood until he feels that he must commit murder to prove himself. This is when the audience witnesses Lady Macbeth’s persuasion to Macbeth to murder King Duncan. She start when she sees Macbeth and she praises his success, ‘Great Glamis! Worthy Cawdor.’ This gains Macbeth’s attention to her. Lady Macbeth then takes her persuasion one step further, this time she questions his manhood, ‘When you durst do it, then you were a man.’ Soon bribery is involved to make sure Macbeth has undertaken her plans to execute the extermination of King Duncan. Her observations about Macbeth also point out another one of the play's many ironies. Macbeth, the brave and victorious warrior, is really softer than his wife.
We make out Lady Macbeth’s slyness when she tells Macbeth to look as innocent as a flower but act like a serpent, she recalls Duncan's earlier comments about the difficulty of recognizing a traitor by his face, ‘Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under’t.’ This line tells us that she wants Macbeth to deceive the King; pretend to be his friends but then kill him when he is not ready. Lady Macbeth uses a metaphor in this quote. This phrase illustrates to the audience that Lady Macbeth is a traitor and a conspirator to the King. This quote also has a result to the Adam and Eve story, where Eve entices Adam into eating the forbidden fruit. Lady Macbeth undertakes the role of Eve by alluring Macbeth into killing the King.
In Act 1 Scene 7 we see that Macbeth is still two minded in killing King Duncan. Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, displays no virtue or goodness, but becomes the personification of evil and greed in this scene. Lady Macbeth’s superior strength and mental courage dissolves when she is in Act 5. This shows the effect of ignoring both moral and religious principles. The fact that her audience changes from everyone else, in Act 1 to just herself in Act 5 also justify the effects of such a crime.
When Lady Macbeth hears of her husband's decision to call off the murder, she attacks his masculine ego, calling him weak and unmanly. She has "given suck and knows how tender 'tis to love the babe," but she would dash its brains out, if necessary, in order to obtain her goal. Only an extremely sick female could envision killing her own child, and yet she says she would gladly do it in order to become queen. This line indicates she will go that far to be upgraded in the chain of the hierarchy, from noble to Queen.
This scene further develops the tensions between good vs. evil and appearance vs. reality. Macbeth almost allows his evil plans to be destroyed by his good conscience, but his wife's wickedness is too strong for him to overcome. In this scene, goodness loses to evil. The appearance to the audience is that Lady Macbeth is a gentle, mild female married to a strong, unswerving warrior. In reality, it is Lady Macbeth who is the stronger one, but stronger in evil and greed. The attention of the audience is captured with Lady Macbeth’s unconventional character. This is because women are often seen as hesitant and obedient. The contemporary audience can see the suicide of Lady Macbeth as a penalty for stepping outside the responsibility of women through that period of time.
Macbeth recaptures his manhood in the eyes of his wife at the end of the scene by agreeing to the murder. The irony is that he has become very unmanly and weak by surrendering to his manipulative wife. Lady Macbeth tries to control Macbeth’s mental side until he murders King Duncan. This is showed to the audience as his weakness and illustrates to us the fact that he is scared, ‘Why have you left the chamber?’ This informs us that Lady Macbeth is the more leading partner in their relationship. She also uses emotional power to take complete control of her husband, ‘such I account thy love’ by saying this she implies that Macbeth must prove his affection for her by assassinating King Duncan. Macbeth’s devotion and love for his wife is know to be an Achilles' heel in him.
Lady Macbeth’s remarkable strength of will continues through the murder of the king, it is she who steadies her husband’s nerves immediately after the crime has been committed.
In act 5 scene 1 she begins a slow slide into madness, just as ambition affects her more strongly than Macbeth before the crime, so does guilt curse her more strongly afterward. Scene one of this act is the most-quoted, most familiar part of this play. Until this point Macbeth has been tormented with visions, nightmares and disturbances in his sleep while Lady Macbeth disciplines him for his weakness. Now the audience witnesses the way in which the murders have preyed on Lady Macbeth as well. In her sleepwalking, Lady Macbeth plays out the washing theme that runs throughout the play. The evil has driven her to insanity, and when she looks at her hands, she sees blood upon them. She tries over and over to clean the evidence from her person, but the blood always remains, just as her guilt remains. Her hands will never be clean again. Ironically, this is the same lady who told Macbeth after Duncan's murder that "A little water clears us of this deed.’ She has found out the hard way that guilt is never easy, but a powerful force that destroys both her and her husband.
Lady Macbeth’s language changes in this scene. It is known to be choppy, jumping from idea to idea as her state of mind changes. Her sentences are short and unpolished, reflecting a mind too disturbed to speak fluently. Although she spoke in iambic pentameter before, now she speaks in prose, ‘Out, damned spot, out, I say! One. Two. Why then, Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard?’
Act 5 filled with irony. In the past, Lady Macbeth has begged for the darkness of night to hide her evil deeds. Now she cannot stand the darkness and keeps a candle always by her side, almost as if trying to disperse the darkness of her soul. Lady Macbeth was untouchable before, but is even more untouchable now, as confirmation by the doctor saying he cannot help her. Only a priest (a symbol of goodness, forgiveness, and God) can help her now. Once the sense of guilt comes home to roost, Lady Macbeth’s sensitivity becomes a weakness, and she is unable to cope. Significantly, she kills herself by suicide.
In conclusion Macbeth was carrying the guilt from the beginning, but as the play concluded Lady Macbeth had gained that same guilt, resulting in her sleepwalking with her eyes wide open. Shakespeare uses constant reference to act 1 in act 5. As Lady Macbeth washes away an imperceptible spot, this signifies to the audience what happened in act 1 when she tells Macbeth to wash as bloodstain. Additionally Lady Macbeth is thought to be the more corrupting character through the play as she is confident to murder the king, but as the play ends she is identified to be more ruined than Macbeth and is driven into insanity. Shakespeare uses Lady Macbeth to portray a strong message to the audience. Lady Macbeth is exposed as a manly character, who wishes to have masculine features. She was driven to kill herself by guilt and we think that she executes herself by suicide. The play reveals many moral and religious issues; there is comparison and reference to biblical stories.
