‘Hie thee hither, that I may pour my spirits in thine ear, and chastise with the valour of my tongue all that impedes thee from the golden round, which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem to have thee crowned withal’.
Here, she is asking her husband to come home as she says hurry here so that I can influence you with evil thoughts and argue away (‘chastise with the valour of my tongue’) everything that stands in the way of the crown (‘the golden round’), which fate and supernatural help seem to have crowned you with already. Lady Macbeth wants to tell him her plan, which she hasn’t yet let us into, so that he shall get the crown quicker because she already seem to feel drawn towards the power. The language that she uses causes supernatural imagery (pour my spirits), which is effective because it makes the reader debate in their mind whether she really is religious or not. The word spirits is usually used alongside or in describing witches or witchcraft as earlier seen in the play. ‘Pour’ suggests to the reader that her ideas are flowing and natural like a river, which is natural imagery.
The speech on a whole suggests that she knows that she is the dominating one of the couple and that their relationship is very much influenced by what she wants him to do.
Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy ‘Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts’ in Act 1 Scene 5 tells us that she wants the spirits, meaning the witches, to come and listen to her evil and murderous plans; again supernatural imagery. Lady Macbeth wants to be consumed by their evil.
Lady Macbeth is delighted to hear the news that the King shall stay at the castle that night and comments: ‘the raven himself is hoarse’ because the raven was thought to be the messenger of death and she is referring to Duncan. ‘Unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty…come to me woman’s breasts and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers wherever in your sightless substances you wait on natures mischief’ this is one of the most important speeches that Lady Macbeth makes as it shows supernatural and natural imagery.
In Act 1 Scene 7 Macbeth changes his mind about killing Duncan and as he tells his wife she gets more and more angry. Lady Macbeth says: ‘Was the hope drunk, wherein you dressed yourself?’ She asks him if the only reason that he was being so optimistic before was because he was drunk. ‘hath is slept since, And wakes it now, to look so green and pale At what it did so freely?’ She asks is he has now woken, as though after a hangover, to feel sick about the idea of it all. She refers to green and pale as if he were sick from drinking too much and then she uses a very manipulative technique by saying that she will count his love as drunken lechery too from then on. This is a persuasive technique because she knows that she will get him to do what she wants him to do if she can bring his relationship with her into it because she knows that he loves her more than anything. She comments that he never dares to do what he really wants to do because he is too afraid. ‘Art thou afeard?’, ‘Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would”, like the poor cat I’ the adage?’ In the period in which this was written, for a man to be called afraid or scared was always a bad thing as they always competed with each other to compare braveness. The adage was a proverb – ‘The cat wanted to eat fish, but didn’t want to wet her paws’ – so she is comparing him to this old saying making him realize that he should do what he wants rather than looking forward towards the consequences of his actions.
‘And, to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man.’ She brings his previous braveness into it saying that he would be even braver and fearless than he was previously which would make him a better man. This is very persuasive as all he wants to be is bigger and better than he already is.
After Duncan’s murder, Lady Macbeth is the one who is in control. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are talking to each other in very short, clipped words, which is very effective as it gives it a feel of lots of tension. As Macbeth gets more upset by what he has done the conversation turns into more detail and they take longer turns in talking. Lady Macbeth is trying to hold him together by being assertive and scolding his weaknesses: ‘Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers. The sleeping and the dead Are but as pictures’. She compares the sleeping and the dead to pictures, which is saying that she sees them as as much of a threat as a picture on a wall. In this scene she is very much in control and trying to take control of her husband as he is very upset and disturbed by what he did. This shows us that capability of holding things together is one of her strong points in the personality of her character.
In Act 2 Scene 3 when the murder is discovered there is a lot of speculation over who had done it. Macbeth is making it worse for himself because he feels so guilty and he has also just killed Duncan’s servants and is talking about his love and sadness for the King. ‘Here lay Duncan, His silver skin laced with golden blood; And his gashed stabs looked like a breach in nature’. Macbeth compares Duncan’s injuries to a breach in nature meaning that there is a gaping hole in natural world, through which death could make its destructive entrance ‘For ruin’s wasteful entrance there’.
When Lady Macbeth hears her husband making people suspicious of him she fakes fainting to draw everybody’s attention away from Macbeth. This shows that she doesn’t want to get her or her husband into trouble so she finds an easy way out. It also shows that she is prepared to go to the extremes to get herself out of a possible mess.
When Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost in the dinner party – Act 3 Scene 4 – Lady Macbeth has to think of a way to disguise his fear. She tells everyone to sit and then she makes an excuse for his behavior. Lady Macbeth doesn’t want anybody to know that there is anything wrong because she holds a guilty conscience. She wants to make him quiet as soon as possible before he says something incriminating so she tries to draw attention away from him like she did when everyone was speculating over who had killed Duncan. ‘ Feed, and regard him not. (To Macbeth) Are you a man?’ She asks him that to make him see that he is being silly and to consider what a dangerous situation he is putting them both in. ‘O proper stuff! This is the very painting of your fear’ She tells him that he is talking rubbish and that his fear is painting imaginary pictures to him. This is effective because men in that day and age did not like to be afraid of anything so in a way she is making him believe that he is not brave by saying it which will, in turn, make him realize that he has to face up to it and be a ‘real man’. Again, this scene shows Lady Macbeth taking control and having power over her husband.
Lady Macbeth now reappears in Act 5 Scene 1 where she has changed in personality somewhat and is sleep walking. She is obsessed with the murder of Duncan and whilst she sleepwalks is convinced that she has blood on her hands. ‘Out, damned spot! Out, I say! – One’ two; why, then ‘t is time to do ‘t.’ She can see an imaginary spot of blood on her hands and she is scrubbing and scrubbing to get it off, when she counts, she is referring to Hell’s bells telling her to do the deed of killing Duncan. She has detached her character from the main plot of the play and has become more distant from her husband. You get the impression that she has almost changed personality to the woman she was during the first half of the play. It makes you feel more distanced from the character. She has turned into the nervous character that she once told her husband off for being. Lady Macbeth has become obsessed by the murder and death of Duncan and Banquo and is getting herself into the same trouble, which she previously tried to previously her husband from getting into.
When Lady Macbeth’s character is reported dead to Macbeth he reacts differently to how most husbands would react to their wife’s death. ‘She should have died hereafter: There would have been a time for such a word.’ He reacts very calmly and says that she should have died sooner. I think his character had distanced himself from Lady Macbeth’s character when she became mentally ill so it didn’t hit him as hard as it maybe should have done. I think it has less of an affect on the reader as if she had dies earlier in the play because there is nothing big made of it and it isn’t a very dramatic death.
Lady Macbeth is continually changing in character throughout the play and this is very intriguing for the reader and it makes you want to find out more about her. I return to Malcolm’s description in Act 5 Scene 9 because I think this is very true of her character throughout. ‘Fiend-like queen, Who, as ‘t is thought, by self and violent hands Took off her life;’.
