Examine the deterioration of Lady Macbeth over the course of the play 'Macbeth'

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Joey Ward  10E

 

Lady Macbeth Essay

In this extract Lady Macbeth is speaking alone on stage, following Elizabethan convention in theatre, she is speaking her true feelings. In this instance her feelings are especially important as these are the first words she says that are her own, as opposed to reading the letter from Macbeth, so this is the audience’s first impression of Lady Macbeth, and immediately it is clear that she is an ambitious woman who not only knows her husband very well, but wants him to be great. Her expectations of Macbeth are captured very well in the line “and shalt be / What thou art promised” she is determined that her husband will be king as she knows what he is capable of and believes that he has been guaranteed the crown by the witches. Also the use of short, harsh, monosyllabic words make a powerful rhythm, which not only serves to emphasize the line and her determination but also reflects her personality overall as a woman who will accept nothing but the absolute best.

During this speech she is speaking to many levels of audience; the first of these is herself; she is thinking out loud and it is important to note the long complicated sentence structure as well as the logical and ordered structure of the speech as a whole, showing that she is thinking through each step carefully. Again this demonstrates her character as a woman who leaves nothing to chance and thinks things through to the end before taking any sort of action. The second audience is Macbeth; she is speaking as if he was standing with her, however, she is rehearsing what she will say to him and also what she will do: “And chastise with the valour of tongue / All that impedes thee from the golden round”. The third audience is the actual audience watching the play while she is not speaking directly to them she is, in a sense intentionally showing them what she is thinking, unlike her third speech, during which she is oblivious to all other forms of audience outside of her own mind. Similarly, during her third speech, the structure is illogical; she moves from one thought to the next unpredictably and there is no correlation between thoughts, also the sentences are short and, often, make very little sense in themselves.

There are a number of interesting choices of words and images within this first speech, for example, “milk of human kindness” the notion of “milk” is interesting here it is referring to a woman’s milk which is associated with children, and therefore innocence, and a reference to women and characteristics that would have been associated with them (in this cases it is the weakness and unwillingness or inability to fight as in Shakespeare’s time three were no women in the army or in the government or anywhere that wasn’t at home). The notion of milk also carries through into later in the scene when Lady Macbeth is asking for dark spirits to take the milk in her breasts for gall. Similarly, in this instance, the milk is referring to the notion of femininity. Also there is the use of the word “chastise with the valour of tongue / All that impedes thee from the golden round” (my emphasis). To chastise is something normally done to child in order to ‘teach them a lesson’ and drive away any bad habits. For her to have the confidence to place herself farther up in the hierarchy than her husband is rather incredible especially in the times that both she and Shakespeare would have been living in. One of the effective images is: “That I may pour my spirits in thine ear” not only is this an effective line in the sense that it provides the audience with a vivid image of her whispering into Macbeth’s ear but also, pouring poison into somebody’s ear was a well-known way of killing somebody and the audience would have known about this so it is not an accident that this image also is suggestive of Lady Macbeth poisoning Macbeth with her “spirits”, that is to say, her thoughts and ideas. The notion of poisoning also links to the milk and, more specifically, the innocence that it implies; it is as if she is tainting Macbeth’s innocence with her own mind.

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The second speech takes place during the third act, which is directly in the middle of the play. This means it is also in the middle of Lady Macbeth’s deterioration into madness. This can immediately be seen as the first half of her speech links to the third speech and the second half links to her first speech. The link in the first half is most prominent in the lines: “Where our desire is got without content: / ‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy”. The first of these lines shows that she is beginning to be consumed ...

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