Is Lady Macbeth a fiend-like Queen?

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Will Miller                                                                        12.03.01

Is Lady Macbeth a fiend-like Queen?

        While one may argue that Lady Macbeth is a fiend-like queen, she obliviously possessed many feminine qualities. I start my essay like this for one reason only, I do not believe that she was a fiend-like queen although she had many evil characteristics.

        One of the main qualities of Lady Macbeth that I have noticed throughout the play is the fact that she admired and loved her husband. From her first real words after reading her husband’s letter, “Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be what thou art promised”, her ambitions for her husband are very evident and she intends to help him achieve his aims. As his wife, she knows Macbeth’s weaknesses and is going to help him overcome these problems:

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                                                Hie thee hither,

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear

                        And chastise with the valour of my tongue

                        All that impedes thee from the golden round    (1.v.23-25)

        

People may argue that her chanting incantations as shown above only enhance the fact that she is evil and I agree with them. A great example of her “spell like speech” is from Act 1 scene 5 lines 35 – 50. Of these 15 lines, the most disturbing and thought provoking are:

                                                Unsex me here

                And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull

                Of direst ...

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