“Look the innocent flower
but be the serpent under’t.”
Lady Macbeth is aware that Macbeth is unsure, so she requests that he “leave the rest to me”. Already we can see that she has a good understanding of her husband’s personality and she does have persuasive powers over her husband as he already contemplates the plan, and does oppose any opposition to it.
Upon Duncan's arrival, Lady Macbeth takes her own advice and praises Duncan and lures him into a false sense of security, which does show us just how cunning she is.
“Your majesty loads our house: for those of old,
And the late dignities heaped up to them,
We rest your hermits”
However Macbeth does attempt to confront his wife while Duncan is eating, as he realises that Duncan has many virtues and that he is a good king; “Duncan hath borne his faculties so meek…” Lady Macbeth doesn’t take Macbeth’s change of heart well and she starts to insult him, and taunt him calling him a coward.
She suggests that he is afraid to act on his desires:
“Art thou afraid to be the same in thine own act and valour,
As thou art in desire?”
By using quite horrific imagery she tells Macbeth that she would have killed their child (presumably now dead) had he asked her to, and yet he won’t agree do this for her.
“I would while it was smiling in my face,
Have plucked my nipple from its boneless gums,
And dashed its brains out, had I so sworn to you”.
The language and description used here by Shakespeare makes us feel nothing but hatred for Lady Macbeth as uses the memory of her own dead child to persuade Macbeth to get her way. It does show how desperately she wants to be made queen; if she can declare that she would have killed their child if he so wished., which results in a change of heart from Macbeth, who now worries about the consequences of being caught This does show how well she knew her husband as using the memory of her dead child in such a way could have resulted in a very different outcome. Lady Macbeth in her answer to her husbands question seems startled that he would even think that they would fail; “We fail?” which shows just how confident she is her own planning, and how devious she is overall. By the end of the scene it appears the she has fully convinced her husband into doing her will as he says “I am settled.”
On the night of the murder it is apparent that Lady Macbeth played an important role in the murder, by drugging the guards and leaving their dagger out for Macbeth. Although she herself was in Duncan’s room, and had an ample chance to kill him she has the feeble excuse that:
“Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t”
This seems completely out of character as until then she appears as being strong and confident. It is soon obvious however that she is panicking in a conversation she has with Macbeth. However, when Macbeth realises what he has done by saying “This is a sorry sight” she immediately regains her previous state of mind and scolds him like a child: “A foolish thought to say a sorry sight”. While her husband begins to talk nonsense, Lady Macbeth realises the effect the murder could have on them mentally and tells her husband
“These deeds must not be thought
After these ways so: it will make us mad.”
The ironic context of this statement shows us just how over confident she was of herself, as ultimately it was her who went mad, and it does make us feel some sympathy for her as she clearly misjudged the affect the murder would have on her.
While her husband remains quite panicky, she is relatively calm and collected and it is she who realises that Macbeth forgot to incriminate the guards. Macbeth himself is unwilling to go back into Duncan's chamber so she decides to do this herself. When she comes back with bloody hands, she further insults her husband:
“My hands are of your colour but I shame to wear a heart so white.”
Here also Lady Macbeth does fit the description of a “fiend like queen” as she shows no emotion whatsoever for the two servants who she has just framed of the murder, and she further insults her husband when it is evident he is feeling remorse for the crime he has just committed.
She also is naïve enough to say
“A little water clears of this deed”
When it is she who later remarks “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand” after the memory of the murder has drove her close to insanity. She also does not appear to be able to foresee any problems or complications that they might have mentally.
In act three, after Macbeth has been crowned king they realise that they have no peace of mind, and they are constantly waiting for someone to realise that it was they who murdered Duncan. It was Lady Macbeth who realised this:
‘T is safer to be that, which we destroy,
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy”.
It was ironic that she was the one to point this out, as until then she had told her husband “what’s done is done”, but now it is she who realises that the murder is going to haunt them for the rest of their lives. We do feel some sympathy for Lady Macbeth her as she only realises now that she is to spend the rest of her life waiting for another chance for them to be caught out.
In the banquet scene it is evident that Lady Macbeth’s power over her husband is diminishing as she is unable to readily stop him, instead she is forced to improvise to try and stop Macbeth giving it all away. In this scene Macbeth, the only person aware that Banquo is dead (as he arranged it) is also seeing his ghost which in Shakespeare’s time was a sign that you were involved in that person’s death. Macbeth makes a scene of the sight he is looking at, so Lady Macbeth, unable to control him is forced into improvising by saying;
“My lord is often thus,
And hath been from his youth”
She continues to try and make him see sense until the point he nearly says that he sees Banquo’s ghost, when asked “What sights my lord?” So Lady Macbeth is forced into asking the thanes and lords to leave. It is ironic that she does all she can to cover up here, while in the end it is she who ends up giving it away when sleepwalking. In this scene not only do we see how cunning she can be but also a caring side that hasn’t been seen previously, when she gives advice to husband:
“You lack the nature of all things; sleep.”
This no longer suggests that she is a wicked person as it is evident that she does care for her husband’s well being, which wasn’t evident when she was planning the murder itself.
In the sleepwalk scene in act five, she is the opposite of how we had seen her before and directly after the murder. The murder which appeared to not affect her has had an adverse effect on her sub conscious, and has caused her to sleepwalk. Her sleepwalk begins with her writing on a piece of paper, which was viewed in Shakespeare's time seen as a sign of a guilty conscience. Also she constantly checks her hands for spots of blood upon finding it she attempts to get rid of it; “Out, damned spot!”
From the onset of this scene it is very clear how distressed she is of the events of the murder. We feel a lot of sympathy for her in this scene as presumably she has been living the events of the murder through in her sleep for quite a while.
Ironically she says that:
“All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
Which is quite the opposite of what she old her husband at the time, “a little water clears of this deed.” In her sleepwalk she ends up revealing all to the doctor and gentlewoman who are there, even though it was she who stopped Macbeth revealing the truth in the last three acts. In her ramblings she says:
“Yet who would have thought the old man would have so much blood in him” and
“The Thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now”
It is quite clear that she does regret the death of the wife of the thane of Fife, an act which her husband carried out without her knowledge, yet she feels guilty for his actions. We do pity Lady Macbeth as it is clear she is traumatised by the murders committed on her behalf. However, she had incriminated herself to the doctor and nurse who watched her sleepwalk. The doctor’s prognosis was
“More she needs the divine than the physician”.
Therefore the only way Lady Macbeth was going to be cured was through death which made us feel more sympathy toward her, as it showed although she had accomplished what she had wanted she had no real future.
Considering the important role that Lady Macbeth had, her death is announced in a very bluntly; by Seyton an previously unmentioned character.
“The queen my lord is dead”.
The only information about her death is given by Malcolm at the end of the play:
“Who, as ’t is thought, by self and violent hands
Took her own life”
After Macbeth has been killed, Malcolm refers to them as “the dead butcher and his fiend like queen.” Personally I only partly agree with this statement, as I feel that the acts that Lady Macbeth committed were out of the love for her husband, and wanting what was best for him. I believe after she asked evil to take her she was no longer herself, until near the end of the play, and then she so overcome with guilt, not just with actions her husband had done of her behalf but also those he had done by himself, like the murder of the thane of Fife’s wife and children. In the end she only wanted to be relieved from the guilt she felt so she took her own life. I don’t think her actions credit her with the title of fiend-like queen as she did feel remorse for the atrocities committed, and by killing herself she tired to make up for it.
The question that that Shakespeare makes us ask is had the witches not confronted Macbeth would he have been made king without the murder of Duncan? I personally think the answer to this would have been yes, and it that is the nature of evil, to want something so badly that you will do anything to get it, and it was the witches that created that want.
