His guilt and conscience are emphasised greatly when he appears to imagine a dagger floating and leading him to the bedroom in which King Duncan lay asleep before he was murdered and at the banquet he sees the ghost of Banquo. This proves that Macbeth has a guilty conscience that worries him. It is Lady Macbeth that rescues him from these hallucinations, appealing to his manhood once again.
When Macbeth hears that Macduff has gone to England to find and help Malcolm, this infuriates him and he orders people to go and murder Macduff’s family. The reason being that he is tormented by the fact that Macduff’s children may one day be kings. However, when he’s about to fight Macduff, he shows an incredibly guilty conscience when he says, “my soul is too much charg’d with blood of thine already”. From this, the audience can assume that the only reason he has acted the way he has during the play is because his wife, Lady Macbeth, has influenced him. This shows an enormous amount of vulnerability, which may be considered as another reason why he gets audience sympathy a lot nearer the end of the play.
Macbeth approaches situations and murders by thinking about them first. He uses a very logical and analytical method that even he is shocked about when he realises this. It is also shocking to think of what Scotland would have been like with all these murders occurring one after another. The audience, understandably, are very surprised when they realise the hardness and willingness of Macbeth’s character. He, eventually, is unable to show even his wife any emotions so distancing himself from her. Yet, on the other hand, we know that if Macbeth was really a “butcher”, he would not be interested in any of the murders he has committed proving he is a much more complex character.
When meeting Macduff, he realises the witches have been misleading and Macbeth describes them as “juggling fiends” and is now determined to prove the witches wrong in their prophesies. It is mainly because of the witches that we felt for Macbeth in the first place as the main reason he was performing these murders was because of what the witches foretold.
It is Macduff’s final taunt that pushes Macbeth to his fight to death. This is evidence that Macbeth’s character needs to be constantly proving itself, which he identifies as being ‘manly’. Macbeth is physically strong, however emotionally he proves weak and cowardly. Being a coward is quite ironic because this shows the audience that his character is having to compromise. We not only saw this in the final scene with Macduff but also when he agrees to murder King Duncan. This was not only a treacherous act but also a cowardly one.
When analysing Macbeth, the changes he has made with his personality should be considered. He begins as a god-like hero, with a firm, strong and loyal character but soon develops into a “tyrant” because he has allowed his ambitions to suppress his good qualities. By the end, he is also described as a “dwarfish thief” by Angus and a “hellhound” by Macduff. Macbeth’s character degenerated from “Bellona’s bridegroom” to “this dead butcher”.
Malcolm describes Lady Macbeth as a “fiend-like queen” and as an audience we can relate to that statement. Firstly, we know that she calls upon dark and evil spirits to help her. She also makes comments that only a “fiend-like queen” could make, “unsex me here”. She uses very dark and evil imagery, which confirms the height of her unfeminine character.
We are also able to notice the difference Lady Macbeth has been able to create in Macbeth’s character by appealing to his manhood. When we first meet him, he is a “brave” soldier, but she soon turns him into a murderer. When in front of Macbeth, she acts very collected and dominant and talks of killing a baby. This plays upon Macbeth’s mind as she is willing to kill the baby Macbeth is unable to give her.
Lady Macbeth is also quite scheming, as when Malcolm arrives at Macbeth’s residence soon after King Duncan’s death, she is a smiling and kind hostess, even though we know she is a woman of treachery.
Whenever Macbeth may falter, Lady Macbeth is always there. She had the courage to return the dagger after the murder of King Duncan, faint to distract attention from Macbeth and to dismiss the banquet. However, her character showed a certain weakness when she was unable to kill the King because he resembled her father “as he slept”. After this, we found out she needed a drink and called upon dark spirits to help her.
It is moments like this that indicate to us that she is not as cold and inhuman as she appears. This is what makes her breakdown seem even more inevitable.
The end of the tragedy watches Lady Macbeth sleep walk and talk of all the murders that she has been involved in. The Doctor and a Gentlewoman hear her speak of the letter from her husband about the Witches and about the killing of the Macduff family. She seems weak, lost and vulnerable in this scene, as she looks at her “little hand” which shows just how pathetic she has become since the start of the play. She is now alone without a husband to comfort her, as he is too preoccupied with his own role to give support to her. The audience, by the end, notice she is nothing like a fiend as she once appeared to be not so long ago. This is shown while she was sleep walking and she expresses that she is being tortured by the fact of what a woman like Lady Macduff had to go through even though this is one murder she had nothing to do with.
Therefore, it is ironic that Macduff on first meeting Lady Macbeth refers to her as a “gentle lady” and one too sensitive to even hear the word ‘murder’, but by the end of the play she is recognised for what she wanted to appear, a “fiend – like queen”, a strong woman.
Overall, it is clearly reasonable why Malcolm used these words to describe Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as he realises that it was they who killed his father at the beginning of the tragedy, which then led on to so many other murders. However, as an audience we can sympathise with the characters as we realise it is not them directly, who perform such horrific deeds. We realise Macbeth is doing it as he feels compelled to by Lady Macbeth and then feels that to gain his desire of being King he has to murder others. This fact cannot be excused and for that reason we too, also believe he has behaved similarly to a butcher, but not as ruthless. Although Lady Macbeth appears strong, ruthless and evil, her true character is revealed during her sleep. She is really weak and is being tortured by the murders that have been committed.
