A messenger then arrives with the news that Duncan will be coming to stay at the their castle and the news that the opportunity for the murder has come so soon excites Lady Macbeth which Shakespeare highlights through the use of verse with shared lines. “The King comes here tonight.” “Thou art mad to say it” This speeds up the scene fuelling the tension in the audience to add dramatic effect. Her following speech shows her in a terrifying and almost supernatural light. Shakespeare uses a variety of techniques to make the moment creepy and witchlike: the image of the “raven himself is hoarse” is forbidding as the raven, which is a symbol of death, has lost its voice crying about the terrible things that are about to occur, the quick succession of imperatives, “Come… tend… fill… make… stop…” makes her speech sound like a spell adding to the theme of witchcraft and “make thick my blood” conjures the image of asking for bravery as thin blood is the symbol of being a coward and it also symbolises the thickened blood preventing pity and any remorse – that we find hard to believe she has - from reaching her heart. “Unsex me here.” Lady Macbeth asks the spirits to take away her womanly characteristics to make her like a man so she will be capable of the murder. This is one of the several references in the play where Shakespeare has highlighted the differences between the traditional gender roles and where overlapping qualities of the different sexes are needed. Lady Macbeth wants to have masculine characteristics of violence, as well as manipulation.
The statement would have horrified an Elizabethan audience – people were meant to stay to their particular place in society and a woman asking to be a man was completely wrong. The appalling image, “Come to my woman breasts and take my milk for gall,” emphasises this, particularly due to the symbolism of milk with nurturing and life, which she wants to have replaced with poison. This is a similar to the false image of protection that Duncan receives, when really in the ‘refuge’ he has taken there is a great traitor.
Then enters Macbeth and we have an insight into the couple’s relationship. On meeting her husband she echoes the witches “Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor, / Greater than both the all-hail hereafter,” which reminds the audience of her the witchlike qualities she has picked up in her desperation to get to the throne. He replies “My dearest love,” showing that they are close and in a loving relationship with each other. In the verse they also share lines, “We will speak further –” “Only look up clear;” this makes it seem as if they finish each others’ sentences highlighting their tight bond. They work as a unit. He shares everything with her, even writing ahead with the news witches’ prophecy as he wants her to know all his thoughts and feelings and does what she commands him to. “Look like th’innocent flower, / But be the serpent under’t” Lady Macbeth tells Macbeth and he does not refuse only makes a non-committal reply, “We will speak further.” This image adds to the sinister apprehension we have for Duncan approaching the castle. The symbol of the evil serpent, dating back to the Creation, hiding under a beautiful, pure flower is another creepy description of their regicide plot. “Leave all the rest to me.” Is this final line of the scene which not only leaves the audience in suspense at how the murder will be carried out, but also encapsulates Lady Macbeth personality of control in a sentence and she leaves on a note of power the audience can remember.
Within her first five minutes on the stage Shakespeare portrays Lady Macbeth as a powerful, controlling and ruthless woman who has no regard for morals in her attempt at her goal and has dramatic witchlike qualities. Her and husband have an extremely close bond. However, before the end of the play Lady Macbeth is a lonely, defenceless Queen who takes her own life. How and why does she change?
She is still her evil manipulative self in I.vii Lady Macbeth where pushes her sceptical husband into the murder, “When you durst do it, then you were a man.” She has the guts to go-ahead with the plan while Macbeth doubts.
Macbeth: If we should fail?
Lady Macbeth We fail?
This dramatic moment where Lady Macbeth shares his line in the verse, which intensifies the scene, shows how assured she is that they will succeed that she sees it as questionable that they should even contemplate being unsuccessful. Shakespeare’s repetition of the potent verb ‘fail’ raises the apprehension in the audience to add to the creepy, striking effect. She then goes on to say, “Who shall bear the guilt / Of our great quell?” this is ironic as we soon see the consequences of their actions and how this results in a change in Macbeth’s character.
Macbeth first feels the brunt of blame after he commits the murder, yet the unfaltering Lady Macbeth remains practical and unconcerned. She tells him, “A little water clears us of this deed.” Whereas he claims, “This my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine, / Making the green one red.” These conflicting images show the first break in their relationship by highlighting their completely different opinions of the murder. Lady Macbeth sees water as a way of hiding their guilt, but Macbeth is so traumatised that he can only imagine blood turning all the water in the sea red, portraying that they will never be able to hide their crime for ever.
Their relationship then continues to deteriorate as their schism of misunderstanding widens, as Macbeth loses control and begins to take action without confiding in his wife, for example the murder of Banquo. This is a stark contrast to the relationship that was exceedingly close where they shared all their thoughts and feelings and wrote letters to each other while apart telling each other of the events that occurred to them. “O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!” proclaims Macbeth, conjuring a horrible image of the pain it would be to be constantly stung in one’s mind by your worries. However, he does not confide what his problems are to his wife, saying, “Be innocent of the knowledge” showing he no longer wants Lady Macbeth involved.
Lady Macbeth then gradually begins to bear the guilt “’Tis safer to be that which we destroy / Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.” She says in a soliloquy, which Shakespeare uses to portray her innermost thoughts and he accentuates the point of her regret with rhyming opposites “destroy” and “joy” and the rhythm in the verse stresses the another pair of conflicting words, “safer” and “destruction”.
Lady Macbeth then spends the whole of Act IV offstage. Shakespeare deliberately does this to show us how isolated she has now become from the action. This has dire consequences to Lady Macbeth. Without any direct involvement she loses her power and her chance to manipulate and with isolation and a lot of time to think about her actions she dramatically changes to the woman we next see in V.i. where she becomes a sleepwalking wreck. Her usual verse becomes prose which Shakespeare uses to show a drop in status and to highlight her confused brain. She is so desperate to be with Macbeth that in her “slumbery agitation” she imagines she is there and talks to him often referring back to scenes they shared together in the past. For example her lines “Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so pale,” are similar to II.ii where she says “Get on your nightgown… Be not lost / So poorly in your thoughts.” This highlights how distraught she is that she is so separated from Macbeth that she desperately recalls previous moments when they did share things together. Whereas before she called “Come thick night” now she has a light by her constantly which highlights her difference from being powerful and in control to now being terrified and needing the light as a comfort, where it had originally been a burden against her evil devices, which exposes her vulnerability. The repeated action of washing her hands, “Out, dammed spot! Out, I say!” shows her deep regret and is ironic when compared to II.ii where she claims, “A little water clears us of this deed.” This symbolizes that there is never any way of hiding bad actions or washing away guilt. Shakespeare’s use of moral comeuppance shows the clear message, which was important at the time, that regicide is wrong and unforgivable in a society. This would have also been to please James I. Her guilt is highlighted by her change in attitude, where before she tells Macbeth, “What’s done is done,” in III:ii she now says, “What’s done cannot be undone.” This difference of saying “undone” shows that she wishes she could change it. The repetition of the hard verb “done” also adds stress to the key points of the sentence.
However, Shakespeare also uses this scene to change our attitude towards Lady Macbeth. By using the image of her change from the beginning of the play as an exceedingly powerful, headstrong women turning by the end to this scared, confused and alone ruin, he invokes sympathy in the audience. It is easy to relate to her once she is taken off her high pedestal and is exposed as a human with feeling. We empathise with her despair as her husband slides away from her and we identify with her for her losing someone she loves so much. Once Shakespeare gives her sensitivity and shows kind qualities such as selflessness, for example by the fact she would take her life rather that burden her husband even more with her worries, we too begin to feel for her. Therefore, the audience are deeply regretful and have hatred towards Macbeth when he gives his uncaring, throw-away-lines, in Lady’s Macbeth final mention, which Shakespeare gives him to emphasise her complete loss of authority and an extremely saddening contrast to the courageous, spirited women at the start of the play,
“She should have died hereafter.”