Explore Shakespeare(TM)s Presentation of Lady Macbeth

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Explore Shakespeare’s Presentation of Lady Macbeth

        In the time Shakespeare was writing Macbeth there were many new ideas and concepts coming forward and the country was changing. There was growing tension between parliament and the King, resulting in many debates about kingship and what makes a good king and growing tension between Protestants and Catholics, resulting in plots and rebellion like the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. There were sharp divisions between rich and poor and society at the time was dominated by men. The church was very influential. Plays at the time often reflected political situations and taught moral lessons, and Macbeth, written in the early 1600s, echoes all the changes and tension present in the country at the time.

In particular, Shakespeare focuses on the issues of kingship through Macbeth’s struggles to, and on, the throne but it is Lady Macbeth that demonstrates how women were perceived in the male-dominated culture and the links between good and evil that are subtly examined by Shakespeare throughout the play.

The way that women were perceived in Shakespeare’s time is shown by widespread belief in witchcraft. Witches were believed to be women who had sold their soul to the devil in exchange for doing evil deeds. This suggests that women at the time could not be too powerful or independent and that women were maybe the inferior sex as they were easily coaxed into evil. The widespread belief in the supernatural is repeated often in Macbeth, often in the form of the three witches. The opening scene features the three witches hinting that there is lots of wrongdoing to come in the play. The three witches are also all women, showing that women were often behind evil-doing.

How women were perceived and expected to behave is further suggested when Lady Macbeth receives Macbeth’s letter recounting his encounter with the witches. At the beginning of the scene Lady Macbeth is seen to be acting conventionally, reading a letter that has been sent by her husband whilst he is away in battle. This is how women were expected to behave - to wait patiently for their husbands to return and to care for the home and family. So far she is acting as any women should but after reading the letter, Lady Macbeth’s attitude quickly changes.

Instead of acting conventionally, she begins to show more masculine traits. She thinks that Macbeth is “too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way” which is not how a conventional women would think. She is thinking of murder which would be too ruthless and brutal for a conventional woman to contemplate. This also shows that Lady Macbeth is taking the manly role rather than Macbeth, as Macbeth is described as being too kind, a trait that is more womanly than masculine.

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Her unconventional behaviour continues when she decides to persuade Macbeth to kill to fulfil the witches’ prophecies. “Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear” she commands of the absent Macbeth. She is seeking to control Macbeth and give him orders, but wives of the time were expected to obey their husbands. There is also a suggestion that she is evil and supernatural, as she has ‘spirits’ to pour into Macbeth but this may be a suggestion that women were perceived as being manipulative.

The letter itself is an important part in demonstrating what is going ...

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