'look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't.' which is an example of the recurring theme of the difference between appearance and reality. Again she makes it difficult for him to disagree by telling him to do something rather than suggesting it or asking. She is acting to move events forward as quickly as possible and now she has made up her mind she will not let anything get in the way of her ambition. She says, 'you shall put / This night's great business into my dispatch;' and when Macbeth tries to suggest that he does not want to go ahead with the scheme and says, 'We will speak further,' she ignores him and says 'leave all the rest to me.' In this scene Shakespeare makes it quite clear that she is in control of her husband and the situation and shows more of the strength of her character. It also seems that Macbeth may be a bit afraid of Lady Macbeth when she says 'We will speak further', he doesnt answer back or say what he thinks but instead puts the conversation off.
Lady Macbeth finishes with the line 'Leave all the rest to me' suggesting that he should step aside and let her deal with the rest in case he ruins her plans. She is definately the more dominant character, and seems a very strong woman to take the role that the man usually plays.
When Lady Macbeth greets Duncan as he arrives in her castle, she acts very welcoming and promises Duncan that the people of her castle remain nothing but people who can pray for him, for they can not pay him in any other way, as shown in Act 1 sc 6; 'We rest your hermits'. She uses this act to cover up her feelings, mind you without Macbeth, Lady Macbeth wouldnt be feeling this way. Lady Macbeth is planning the murder for their benifit and not just hers. Like in the letter, she still feels they work together for each other (Although she is taking the deed into her own hands)
Lady Macbeth seems much more kind and sweet in this scene, compared to how she was in scene 5.
In act 1 sc 7, Lady Macbeth is seen in a new light. She spends most of the scene trying to pursuade Macbeth to agree with her plans. The most reasonable explanation for this behaviour is that now she has met Duncan along with his fellow Lords and all that are there with him, and realised what a kind character he is, some of the evil has drained out of her and she is now realising what she is going to have to do in order to get the crown for her husband, seeing as she is taking it into her own hands.
Once Macbeth has decided in his soliloquy not to kill Duncan, he tries to be assertive in communicating this to Lady Macbeth and says, ‘We will proceed no further in this business.’ However she scorns him, suggests he is a coward and undermines his manliness. She says,
‘Woulds’t thou have that … (you) live a coward in thine own esteem, Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would”?’ and, ‘When you durst do it, then you were a man;/And, to be more than you were, you would/Be so much more the man.'
Lady Macbeth is trying to convince Macbeth that the murder can be done. Here, her attitude has changed completely from where she first told Macbeth that the murder was going to happen. Macbeth is hailed by Duncan as 'Worthy Macbeth' and is obviously seen to have manly qualities such as bravery, but this does not satisfy Lady Macbeth whose vision of manliness involves putting ambition first and doing everything possible to make ambition reality. As a woman in this society she is expected to be gentle and fade into the background behind her husband and so any power she can have must be through Macbeth and the knowledge of this is what drives her to her dominance over him in private. Macbeth knows what her view of a man is and that he has to satisfy it and so Lady Macbeth manages to manipulate him by suggesting that he is not a man in her eyes.
Lady Macbeth is a very pursuasive character, and is obviously very impressionable because the murder does take place in the end.
With all the panic and desperate excitement of the murder, Lady Macbeth still seems to be in control. It isnt actually Lady Macbeth who drives Macbeth to commit the dreadful crime, Macbeth has visions as he is walking about the castle in the dark. The dagger he sees before him leads the way to the King.
After the murder, Macbeth appears shocked and afraid. Lady Macbeth comforts him and assures him he has done well. Lady Macbeth was really there as the power of the plan. She told Macbeth what to do, and he reported back to her when he had completed the task. The result was to share between them, so they worked together. Lady Macbeth although she seems evil, is actually a loving wife. She cares what Macbeth feels after he has killed Duncan, and stays with him as he washes his hands, instead of leaving to go to bed. They go together. Shakespeare has portrayed the two of them to be totally dependent upon one another and to complement each other perfectly.
After the murder of Duncan has been committed, it is Lady Macbeth who tries to convince the remorseful and ashamed Macbeth that 'what's done cannot be undone' and that there is no need to feel guilt. She says,
‘These deeds must not be thought/After these ways; so it will make us mad.’
She is uneasy and tense and is worried when Macbeth says that he thinks he has heard voices but she hides this concern and takes control of the situation, trying once again to spur Macbeth on and taunt him with suggestions that he is weak and unmanly. She says, ‘You do unbend your noble strength to think/So brainsickly of things’ and calls him ‘infirm of purpose’.
It is vital that one of them remains in control and even though she is anxious herself, it is Lady Macbeth. She is the collected one of the pair and the one able to conceal her feelings and keep her calm.
The first turning point of the relationship comes in Act Two Scene Two when Lady Macbeth asks Macbeth to do the deed of killing Duncan. She says, ‘Had he not resembled/my father as he slept, I had done’t.’. This is the first indication Shakespeare gives that Lady Macbeth has a conscience and is not pure evil.
The morning after the murder, Lady Macbeth performs her eye-catching faint. This is either because she is actually quite nervous now that everyone has found out that the king has been brutally murdered, and is finding all the accusations quite hard to take in or is trying to get the attention on her. She may think that Macbeth might say something, and that the people around him will see through him and find out who actually killed the king.While Macbeth is talking so much, Lady Macbeth is almost silent. It is possible that she is trying to assume the expected role as the lady of the house and therefore tries to be ladylike and gentle, but it could also be interpreted that Shakespeare is showing her to be uneasy about the murder and the beginning of a reversal of the roles of herself and Macbeth as he takes over. I think its a genuine faint, because ever since the king arrived, Lady Macbeth seemed to get weaker, especially as she pictured her father after the murder of Duncan.
Now that Macbeth is king, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth seem to be drifting further apart. The breakdown in communication between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth is illustrated in Act Three Scene Two where Lady Macbeth has to ask permission to speak to her own husband. She says to a servant, ‘Say to the king, I would attend his leisure/For a few words.’ This formality is probably partly due to Macbeth’s rise to th throne, but this and the impersonal use of ‘the king’ rather than ‘my husband’ or his name suggest a drift between the two characters. In Lady Macbeth's four line soliliquy, she says; 'Nought's had, all's spent/Where our desire is got without content'
Here she is saying that nothing is gained, everything is lost when what they had wished for was brought without hapiness. She is basically saying that she is not content with what is going on between her and Macbeth. They are drifting apart and she knows it, although he may not. She still supports him; She says, ‘Be bright and jovial among your guests tonight:’ and tries to be cheerful herself. Macbeth is seeing himself to be superior to her. He says, ‘Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck,’ which is an example of the patronising language he is beginning to use. Macbeth speaks far more than Lady Macbeth in this conversation and is certainly becoming more dominant which shows a role-reversal from previous scenes where she has dominated him.
Lady Macbeth really shows her caring side at the banquet, when Banquo's ghost arrives. As soon as Macbeth starts seeing Banquo in his place, Lady Macbeth reassures the guests that Macbeth is having a fit and that he has been having them since he was a child; 'The fit is momentary.....' Even though she doesnt really know whats happening, and what he is really seeing, she still supports him. She knows that their marriage is breaking down, but she doesnt hesitate to help him out and avoid embarrassment, because she still loves him and hopes for their marriage to continue.
Lady Macbeth is suddenly portayed as a more caring character-a major comparison to when she was inviting the evil spirits to enter her, in Act1 sc 5. She notices that he hasn't his full strength here, so slips in a word or two to get him to his feet. She knows that her pursuasion was successful before the murder, so she uses it here. 'Are you a man?' she demands. He says he is and she replys; 'O proper stuff!' in other words, Rubbish! Lady Macbeth talks more than she usually had in this scene. Its mainly because Macbeth is so weak that he can't reply so strongly. The ghost finally disappears, and Lady Macbeth orders the guests to leave so that Macbeth has space and time to recover. She has been quite motherly in this scene, as though she has got her old Macbeth back at last, and its the only time that the two of them have a reasonable conversation together after he became king.
Lady Macbeth starts to lose her mind in Act 5 sc 1 when she sleepwalks while being observed by the doctor and gentlewoman. In this later scene, Lady Macbeth has lost all of her control and this is immediately shown by the breakdown of her sentence structure. She is speaking in prose rather than verse and the sentences and ideas do not appear to be linked. For example she says, 'Out, damned spot! out I say! One; two; why then ‘tis/time to do’t. Hell is murky! Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier/and afeard?’ She seems to be hallucinating and is obsessed with blood and washing her hands (of guilt). It appears that she feels guilty for all of the murders that have taken place even though it was Macbeth and not her who committed them. She refers to the scenes after the murder was committed, and we suddenly realise that she wasn't all that evil, as these memories have stuck in her mind, and must have affected her in some way. We were thinking that Lady Macbeth was heartless to have murdered a living being, and not felt too ashamed, but all along she was hiding her guilt and trying to act strong. Without Macbeth she can have no power and her ambition for him made her the strong woman she was. Gaining power for Macbeth was the meaning of her life and what she dedicated her whole life to. Now she and Macbeth are distant, she is powerless, has no reason to be strong and has lost the meaning of her life, which has led to her breaking down.
Now that her marriage was breaking in two, Lady Macbeth was having all these nightmares of all the things that she had done with Macbeth and the fact that they were her fault when they weren't.
Lady Macbeth is a very loyal character seeing as even though she drove herself to this madness, she has always stood next to Macbeth and protected him, and know she's blaming herself for all the things that he has done. She loves him so much, and this is shown in all scenes, but especially in this one.
Lady Macbeth is finally driven to taking her own life by the confusion and heartbreak that is caused.
Malcolm refers to her as a 'fiend-like queen' This tells us that although she tried so hard to convince people that she was a harmless quiet woman, her power showed through. I don't think fiend-like is a good description of her, as she was only trying to find power for her husband in the first place.
Lady Macbeth’s madness shows how incomplete she is without him by her side and I think that he is also incomplete without her. In the beginning of the play Shakespeare shows how well they work together, how they complement each other’s characters and how much he needs her. Although he believes he can work alone, once she is dead it is inevitable that surely he must die too. Much of the play shows events turning full-circle and so because she fell from being a strong character and he now appears to be the strong one, he too must be expected to fall. I believe that the breakdown in communication and distance between the Macbeths is a significant cause of the tragic ending to the play as each of them is one of a pair and when the pair is broken neither of them can function properly or cope alone.
You can see at the beginning of the play, that Lady Macbeth is very close to her husband and wishes for them each to share their success together, but her character completely changes through the play. At the start, she is a single-minded, strong character and uses strong, clear,emphatic language. Definately the stronger of the two, her ideas are focused unlike Macbeth.
She has a very masculine side to her character in some ways. She bemoans the fact that she is a woman; 'unsex me here...' and wishes for 'direst cruelty' to help her towards her goal.
Lady Macbeth knows that Macbeth isnt very strong minded so she is very critical of him all the way through the play, but not nastily. She treats him like a child as if its a motherly instinct she has picked up, which shows her more feminine side, and helps Macbeth murder Duncan for ambition and for her husband instead of just for her.
Lady Macbeth is also a good actress, welcoming Duncan and concealing her feelings. Most importantly, she is always in control.
After the murder, her character starts to change, becoming tense and uneasy, as if she has finally realised what her ambition has done. Once Macbeth is King, Lady Macbeth starts to adopt a less dominant role as if she has swapped roles with her husband.Her language reflects this when she asks to speak to Macbeth instead of just walking in on his privacy. She seems a little unsure of herself and has doubts about their relationship. She is still supportive though, as shown when Macbeth sees Banquos ghost at the banquet. She still seems anxious as she makes excuses for his behaviour, saying he has had fits like this ever since he was young.
Lady Macbeth is more caring towards Macbeth through this scene, but still taunts him about his masculinity. Her character starts to deteriorate with the sleepwalking scene and she begins to lose her reason, with disjointed ideas and speech. She is apparently now haunted by guilt where before she was prepared to commit murder. She may be afraid that Macbeth doesn't need her and this adds to her insecurity. Now that her ambition fo her husband has been forfilled, she feels unwanted and alone. She is in effect incomplete without him, and drives herself to suicide.
