However this section of the play shows that Macbeth found it hard to believe that killing his own cousin was the right thing to do. When going to kill Duncan he sees a hallucination.
“Is this a dagger I see before me?... Come let me clutch thee”
As he moves to kill Duncan, his thoughts are all of evil. Once the bell rings he begins his first act that condemns him. The language between the two here is quick paced and in short sentences, to show that they are nervous and want to keep quiet what they have done.
“I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry.
Did not you speak?”
“When?”
“Now”
“As I descended?”
“Aye”
In the next scene Macbeth is written to be acting. He is calm and collected, yet lets Macduff find the king dead. Maybe this is because Macbeth cannot face to see him lying there dead as it might break his cool. Macbeth remarks that the death of Duncan takes meaning from the world. Trying to remove himself from any suspicion he kills the guards but before he explains why he did so, Lady Macbeth ‘faints’
“Help me hence, ho”
This distracts everyone from Macbeth and they rush to her aid.
Macbeth now feels as the king of Scotland that he has gone too far now to turn back, so he orders the murder of Banquo and his son Fleance. While talking to the murderers he uses speech that taunts them,
“Ay, in the catalogue ye go for men.”
“As hounds, and greyhounds, mongrels, spaniels, curs…are kept all by the name of dogs”
He tells them that the world is against them. Banquo is their enemy for he has made their lives like this.
“Both of you know Banquo was your enemy?”
As he gets people to carry out the murder for him, he either cannot face killing Banquo and getting caught, or he has more important matters to attend to .i.e. the banquet.
This is an example of a ‘butcher’ someone who kills and does not think twice about the death of the person.
Act 3 Scene 4: Macbeth is in the banquet hall. He is overcome with guilt and sees Banquo’s ghost.
“Prithee, see there! Behold, look, lo! How say?”
Macbeth now begins to speak of the events that happened, about Banquo’s murder and talks about Banquo’s ghost. This shows that he feels guilty about what he has done.
“That when the brains were out, the man would die, and there an end….But now they rise again with twenty mortal murders on their crowns.”
After the banquet in Scene 5, Macbeth seeks out the witches, where he learns that he will now be defeated till
“Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill”
Macbeth is filled with confidence by this. Macbeth believes that he is undefeatable. But he demands to know more of the future. A procession of Banquo’s family appears. This makes Macbeth more cautious about what he does, and this is probably what leads him to the massacre at the Macduff family castle. This is the biggest act of ‘butchery’ in the play. Scotland would be in dark times at the rule of Macbeth if people are willing to kill for a tyrant.
Act 5 Scene 5, Macbeth feels no fear and tells his men to
“Hang out our banners on the outward walls…Ours castle’s strength will laugh a siege to scorn.”
Macbeth defies the siege and wants to stand his ground and face his enemies. After Macbeth has commanded his men what to do, he is told that his wife is dead. Macbeth still feels no fear he just meekly replies that she should have died “Hereafter”
The last man that he kills is Siward, Act 5 Scene 7
“Thou wast born of woman. But swords I smile at, weapons laugh to scorn, brandished by man that’s of a woman born.”
As Young Siward is born naturally Macbeth feels no fear when he fights him. At last Macduff finds Macbeth,
“Macduff was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped.”
This makes Macbeth feel fear, he refuses to fight Macduff. But when he is threatened of being placed in captivity he fights, and is slain.
Macbeth does progress throughout the play from a Scottish nobleman to a butcher. Yet many times in the play he does have moments when he is fearful. But the way he commits and organizes the murders, including the turmoil that would have been happening in Scotland at the time of his reign concludes that he was a butcher. He held an unjust rule over Scotland and abused his power.
Lady Macbeth is depicted as a fiend-like queen by Malcolm and at the beginning of Act 1 she is. But as the play progresses she begins to reconcile on her exspression and eventually kills herself owing to her guilt.
Act 1 Scene 5, when she has read heard of Macbeth’s scheme, she thinks Macbeth is too kind-hearted to commit to kill Duncan.
“Full o’th milk of human kindness.”
Due to her yearning for Macbeth to take Duncan’s life, she calls on evil spirits to assist them in her scheme
“Under my battlements, come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.”
‘Unsex me here’- to remove all her womanly feelings.
Telling Macbeth to hide his true intentions is sly and cunning, as this also adds to the fact that Macbeth wouldn’t have committed to killing him without Lady Macbeth’s help and her devilish plans. Lady Macbeth is good at deception; her nature in the first acts is one of a fiend-like queen. When Macbeth refuses to kill Duncan
“We will proceed no further in this business”
Lady Macbeth uses her wits and questions Macbeth’s manliness, calling him a coward
“…live a coward in thine own esteem, letting I dare not wait upon I would like the poor cat l’th’adage?”
This greatly affects Macbeth and he reinstates his intention to kill Duncan.
After the murder has done Act 2 Scene 2, she calms Macbeth, telling him what to do and makes up an alibi for them.
“Get on your night-gown lest occasion call us…to be watchers.”
Without Lady Macbeth, Macbeth would have broken down before he had murdered Duncan. This shows just how much of a grip she had on him. At the banquet after he has seen Banquo’s ghost, Lady Macbeth makes up an explanation as to why her husband is acting so strangely.
“I pray you speak not; Question enrages him, At once good night. Stand not upon the order of your going but go at once.”
At this point of the play, Macbeth is more in control of himself and orders the murder of Banquo with no help from his wife. Lady Macbeth still has the wit to lie to the guest at the banquet using her deception yet again to great effect.
In Act 5 Scene 1, Lady Macbeth is seen sleepwalking-which in itself for a woman who has never sleepwalked before is evidence of a psychological problem. She is also seen trying to wash imaginary blood from her hands.
“Out damned spot! Out I say!”
She repeats her speech from the nights of Duncan’s death.
“To bed to bed there’s knocking at the gate”
All of these are signs of psychological trauma. In her case she has a heavy heart, full of guilt. Shakespeare never mentioned how Lady Macbeth comes to face her sins. Macbeth hears woman’s cries and is told.
“My lord the queen is dead.”
So to some extent Malcolm was right. Macbeth, even though once loyal 6to the king, did order many people to their death. Also Scotland at the time would have been in utter chaos under his rule. Lady Macbeth was throughout the play a fiend-like queen because with her sly tongue, she started the ‘epidemic’. In my opinion the description is just.
