In an essay of about 2 pages, show how the character of Lady Macbeth changes and develops throughout the course of the play.

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In an essay of about 2 pages, show how the character of Lady Macbeth changes and develops throughout the course of the play.

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When we are first introduced to Lady Macbeth in Act I, scene v, she is at once perceived as a rather hard, ambitious individual who will stop at nothing to get what she wants. However, throughout the play her character undergoes many changes and in the end she goes insane, because of her heightened sense of guilt, and kills herself.

 

Lady Macbeth’s first 2 soliloquies in Act 1 reveal her character very well. The way she speaks of Macbeth’s character makes it quite clear that hers is very different. She does not feel that she has to achieve things respectably or honourably, and is quick to seize opportunities, unlike Macbeth, as is shown by how she immediately connects the prophecies with the king’s visiting her castle.

‘...The raven

 Himself is hoarse

 That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan

 Under my battlements’.

(Act I, scene v, lines 36-8)

As soon as the messenger leaves, Lady Macbeth calls upon the spirits of the Underworld to fill her with ‘direst cruelty’ and to let ‘no compunctious visitings of nature shake her fell purpose’. She thinks womanhood and femininity weak, and through this we see her hard, cold, remorseless side, that will do anything to fulfil her desires and ambitions.

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In Act I Lady Macbeth is only talking about and planning the murder- in Act II we see her spring into action. She is the one behind it all, pushing her weak and unwilling husband to do the deed. In this act it is seen even more clearly that Lady Macbeth has no conscience, or if she does it is lying dormant. Every time Macbeth begins to express his guilt and dismay, his wife cuts him off and says something like ‘These deeds must not be thought/

After these ways: so, it will make us mad.’ (Act II, scene ii, ...

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