When Macbeth returns, Lady Macbeth bids him to hide his feelings, to wear a ‘false face’ and “look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it”. This reference to showing feelings that are false and under hand is Shakespeare’s way of showing how evil Lady Macbeth is becoming, she is a strong character who at the minute is controlling the situation by telling Macbeth what to do and how to go about it to achieve success.
In Act 1 Scene 6 Lady Macbeth greets Duncan and comments how everything has been “twice done” and then ‘done double’ for their ‘honoured’ guest implying that a lot of trouble has been taken to make sure their ‘honoured’ guest is comfortable.
It seems ironic that Lady Macbeth greets king Duncan warmly while at the same time she is planning to kill him. Shakespeare is showing how skillful she is at showing a ‘false face’ to hide secrets, and ‘dark’ desires from her ‘guest’.
In Act 1 Scene 7, the interaction between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth brings her strength of character. She sees his hesitation to the murder as a sign of weakness in his character. She pounces on him and rains a torrent of scornful words on him. She accuses him as being a ‘coward’ clearly an insult to a brave, victorious soldier, and states she would have “dashed the brains out” of the babe she was breast feeding if she had known he was going to change his mind. Again reference to being brutal and destroying innocent baby is an evil act. She asks Macbeth to “screw his courage to the sticking place”, and we will not fail. “The idea of ‘screwing’ to a sticking place” is a metaphor, Shakespeare uses to give us the image of a crossbow tightened so it effectively hits the target, it is aiming for success. The use of the word ‘we’ by Shakespeare, also shows us that Lady Macbeth is prepared to be involved in the evil murder, and determined to see it thorough. To argue about doing the murder at this stage is Shakespeare’s way of showing us how people thought about murder of a king. In the Jacobean era kings were seen to be a part of divinity. They were seen as being God-like, possessing healing powers, and to kill them would be a sacrilegious act, and it would upset the natural order. So Macbeth’s hesitation about doing the murder would perhaps be seen by the audience as being justified because of the consequences.
However the audience might have mixed feelings about Lady Macbeths intentions, is she driven by her wish to see Macbeth better himself or is she overly ambitious herself an wants to be queen? They would still see her as evil and ruthless and a woman who does not fit into the Jacobean view of the ‘ideal woman’.
In Act 2 Scene 2 after Macbeth has committed the murder he is obsessed with thoughts of being ‘damned’ for doing the deed, but Lady Macbeth is not so affected she tells him “to consider it not so deeply”. When he says he could not say “amen”, he feels this is some bad omen but she just dismisses it and takes the daggers back to Duncan’s bedchamber, to smear the servants so they will get the blame. This itself is an evil act, one that she does quite calmly, and reveals to the audience what she is capable of.
In Act 2 Scene 3 the new of Duncan’s death is given to Lady Macbeth and she puts on her ‘false face’ again and makes a great show of expressing horror at hearing the news. “Woe alas!” Later she ‘faints’ or appears to ‘faint’ when Macbeth announces he has killed the guards for his love of Duncan, but I do not think the audience would believe she really had fainted, because she is so conniving and underhand she probably wanted to get Macbeth out of the way so he could not show how guilty he felt, because he does not seem as clever as she is at hiding his feelings.
In Act 5 scene 1, lady Macbeths Lady-in-waiting has called the doctor to watch her mistress’s sleepwalking. At this point in the play Lady Macbeth is beginning to feel the strain of what she has been a part of, and her relationship with Macbeth has become strained since the murder. Macbeth has alienated himself from her, because he is troubled by what he has done and is in turmoil and cannot sleep. She in turn is sleepwalking and acting out her troubles in her sleep. Shakespeare uses this sleepwalking scene to give the audience an insight into her innermost thoughts. He uses ‘Hand Imagery’ to signify how she washes her hands to get rid of ‘the damned spot’, she imagines is there. He uses the word ‘damned’ because of the action she has been involved in, the evil action. That is part of damnation and the devil.
She refers to the death of Duncan, Lady Macduff and Banquo. There are references to ‘hell’ being ‘murky’. She is quite upset that “all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”, again hand imagery the hand being the instrument that does the evil deed. At this point I think the audience would have a little sympathy for Lady Macbeth because she is seen in a different way, as someone who is deteriorating in mind because of what she has done. She has a conscience about what she has been involved in so cannot be seen as truly evil, but like Macbeth greedily ambitious which is a flaw in her character.
By Dale Jehu
