How can blame be apportioned in “Macbeth”?

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How can blame be apportioned in “Macbeth”

The title of the play is “Macbeth”. It was written by William Shakespeare around 1606  for King James I. This is a play of many opposites,  especially good versus evil.  Meaning that through this play there is always good opposing evil. In the period that Shakespere lived and King James reigned, there were people (Jacobeans) who believed in the existence of witches. Witch craft was very important in the days the play was witten because people strongly belived in witches and believed in their “powers”.  These people hated witches and could accuse anybody of being one just because they were different or had a mark on their body: this mark was seen as the devil’s mark.


When Lady Macbeth receives the letter at the beginning of the play her reaction when she reads her husband's letter is powerful and dramatic. As soon as she's finished reading, she has decided she will make sure Macbeth is king
                   
"Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be
                    What thou art promised."
 
It's as if she and her husband are thinking exactly the same thing. She does not hesitate for a moment. Lady Macbeth does for her husband what he cannot do for himself: she encourages him to take chances, to further his ambitions at any cost, to do things no other man would dare. And he follows, spurred on by her sheer enthusiasm and daring.
 
In the early scenes we see her in action. She is always in charge. She takes control. She acts in a practical manner when Macbeth expresses doubts about murdering the king, organising and planning the deed with precision. She appears to be absolutely secure in her belief in her husband's claim to the throne and her own position at his side as queen. So she supports him and, when he can do no more, she herself gilds the faces of the grooms with blood. When he is doubtful she comes to the rescue:

Macbeth: If we should fail?”
Lady Macbeth:We fail?But screw your courage to the sticking place,
And we'll not fail.”

In a sense, Lady Macbeth shares the same characteristics as her husband, but in her the reader sees an excess that Macbeth would like to control until convinced by her that success is within their grasp. So, like Macbeth, the reader sees her as ambitious, proud, ruthless, and manipulative. Her belief in their great venture overrides all else. It becomes an obsession with her, as it must with her husband. We watch with admiration as she manipulates Macbeth, using all her feminine wiles to achieve her purpose. How well she understands her husband and his needs. She knows immediately that murdering Duncan is the only way of quickly achieving her goal
"He that's coming,
Must be provided for." (I, v)
 
When Macbeth brings further news that Duncan is actually coming to spend that night with them, it becomes clear that her role is to seize the moment and facilitate her husband's rise to kingship.


Later in the play she acts out the role of accomplished hostess and wife when, at the banquet, Macbeth gives in to his fears, caught up in doubt and dismay. Earlier in the play she used guile when dealing with Duncan, making him believe she welcomed him as king and kinsman. We cannot but note the irony as she speaks to Duncan with such apparent sincerity and respect:

All our service
In every point twice done and then done double,
Were poor and single business to contend
Against those honours deep and broad wherewith
Your majesty loads our house.”
Her ability for deception also comes to the fore when she faints at the news of Duncan's death a clever move to detract attention at a key and tense moment.

In public she relies on the appearance of normality, of being in control. In private she drops the role, allowing her truly devious ideas full flight. At this time we see her as a vicious and driven woman. We watch in awe as she goes about achieving her aims, using her powers and wiles as a woman to win over her husband:
 Lady Macbeth uses different methods to persuade Macbeth to change his mind.

She says he has already promised to do it.
What beast was't then
That made you break your enterprise to me?”

She taunts Macbeth's masculinity by calling him a coward
"Art thou afeared
to be the same in thine own act and valour
as thou art in desire?"

This is an important part of her approach. Macbeth's rank and fame depend on his courage and bravery.

She says he cannot love her. This personal taunt really hits home for Macbeth. It is unexpected because their relationship is so intense.
"From this time
such I account thy love."

 
Lady Macbeth is really shocking when she says she would have smashed her own baby to the floor rather than go back on a promise. This is good because it shows how dedicated she is to Macbeth

This would be the ultimate sacrifice she makes the point that she knew the joy of being a mother, and would have given that up for Macbeth to be king. She uses terrible, violent imagery as a shock tactic
"I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this." (I, vii)

She realises that Macbeth's doubt needs to be overcome quickly and this needs extreme measures. If they delay one night, the chance is gone.

Almost inevitably, once they find themselves so caught up in evil that they cannot escape, the relationship begins to break up. Macbeth no longer relies on his wife. The strength she once showed has been passed on to him. He is now in control. Her support is no longer necessary. In a sense, she has fulfilled her role and is in danger of being left behind, lonely and neglected, while her husband goes about the business of making war and defending his position. Lady Macbeth does not appear in Act IV she is then seen as an isolated, broken and mentally disturbed woman, no longer the "partner in greatness" that was seen earlier in the play.

Lady Macbeth seems totally devoted to evil. She calls upon the forces of evil to unsex her, taking away the very compassion that is usually associated with the female sex - a truly frightening thing for a Jacobean audience whose image of womanhood was one of compassion and meekness. There is a dreadful destructiveness in her words, a fervour and commitment that is truly frightening:
“Come, you Spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty.”

There is only one aim in life to achieve the goal of kingship for Macbeth, with her at his side. In the pursuit of this aim it becomes necessary to put aside any semblance of weakness or tenderness. She relies solely on her strength of will, made greater by the forces of evil upon which she calls. She becomes the essence of evil: cruel, heartless, free of the morality of mankind, taking events into her own hands to create her own reality. Yet it is this denial of reality that will finally be her downfall. She is awesome in her commitment, yet pathetic in her belief in herself and the powers of darkness.

From her first appearance we are made aware of the enormity of her desire to succeed at all costs - in spite of her husband's apparent virtuous and compassionate nature
“Come thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark
To cry, 'Hold, hold!”
Lady Macbeth seems inherently evil, but we should consider that she is trapped by the very same device that leads to her husband's downfall. Her dark and evil thoughts are prompted by Macbeth's letter. If he had not met the Witches, her ambition might also have lain dormant.
As mentioned, it is necessary for Lady Macbeth to deny reality. She ignores the rules of humanity and organised (Christian) society, pursuing her own ruthless motives. In the process she reject even her own femininity. However, there are flaws in her control. Repeatedly Lady Macbeth gives the
appearance of being in control but like so much else in the play this comes at a price. Lady Macbeth cannot simply create her own reality, cut off from society and humanity. What we see in the latter part of the play is a woman who must accept the rules of civilised people, the reality that she too is part of humanity, even though it is too late for change.

Earlier in the play Lady Macbeth was unable to kill the king herself, claiming he looked too much like her. Not much later she advises her husband: "These deeds must not be thought / After these ways: so, it will make us mad." Now this is exactly what we see at the end of the play: a woman driven to madness and eventual self-destruction by her guilt and despair, yet still unwilling to accept reality and her own weakness. There is a marked frailty and vulnerability about her final appearance in the play. We see a woman out of control. Filled with guilt and fear she re-enacts past happenings, her mind wandering from one event to another:
“Out, damed spot! Out, I say! - One; two, why then
'tis time to do't - Hell is murky! - Fie, my Lord, fie!
A soldier and afeard? - What need we fear who know
it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who
would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”

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At the beginning of the play Macbeth is the "bravest" soldier and the honourable Thane of Glamis. His rank and nobility are of great value, and he seems to be fit for his status. But his encounter with the witches awakens in him a deep impatient ambition. Immediately after the first prophecy of being Thane of Cawdor becomes true the "horrid image" of the murder of King Duncan in order to become king himself crosses his mind. He is not totally cold and solely ambitious as shown by his terror of the murder image, which thoroughly defies his loyalty. There ...

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