The play starts with the witches casting a spell” fair is foul and foul is fair, hover through the fog and filthy air”, I believe Shakespeare put this at the beginning to leave you guessing what going to happen next and the witches beginning the play gives you a very good idea that they will be a very important character in the play. When the witches cast the spell this just before Macbeth comes and the witches tell him and Banquo there prophecies these truthful tellings causes mystery and excitement which begins to provide Macbeth with greed and hunger for them to come true this is what causes him to commit a dreadful deed and causes the witches prophecies to come true but in a dishonest way.
Macbeth starts to lose control of his mind his immediate response to killing Macbeth is losing his common sense and his ability to think straight. On the return journey, Macbeth also hears a voice cry, "Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep." This means that Macbeth murdered a sleeping King, and that Macbeth murders the innocent. He will never be able to sleep again in the rest of the play, if he does, he will feel better in the morning. Macbeth says that sleep is the "Balm of hurt minds." His conscience eats at him; the thought of killing the king plays on his mind, and stops him from getting the bliss that sleep offers. Macbeth returns to the chamber with his hands smothered in blood. Lady Macbeth orders him to, "Wash this filthy witness from your hand," but Macbeth retorts "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand?" and he says that the blood on his hands will stain all of the seas, "Making the green one red." Only after killing the king does he realize what he has done. Still, Lady Macbeth bears no guilt and says, "A little water clears us of the deed."
After Lady Macbeth's entrance, Macbeth lets her know almost immediately that "we will proceed no further in this business," and gives his reasons. He has won "golden opinions from all sorts of people," and the king himself has "honored me of late," and he does not want to jeopardize the enviable position that he has climbed towards. Lady Macbeth picks up on this on this immediately and turns it around on Macbeth, screeching, "Was the hope drunk, Wherein you dressed yourself." This shows Lady Macbeth to have great intelligence, and will make Macbeth feel foolish. Even this adds to Lady Macbeth's overpowering of Macbeth. She then emotionally blackmails Macbeth with the words "From this time such I account that love," and is telling Macbeth that she will assume Macbeth's declaration of love for his wife was out of drunkenness. Staying with the theme of drunkenness, she says to him he "looks so green and pale At what it did so freely." She is accusing him of not being able to hold his "drink", or hold his courage, and is basically stating that Macbeth is not a man, and he is like the cat that did not want to get his paws wet.
Lady Macbeth is a controversial figure. She is seen by some as a woman of strong will who is ambitious for herself and who is astute enough to recognise her husband's strenghts and weaknesses, and ruthless enough to exploit them. They see her in her commitment to evil and in her realisation that the acquisition of the Crown has not brought her the happiness she had expected, and finally, as one who breaks down nuder the strain. Others see her as a woman ambitious for her husband whom she loves. She recognises the essential good in him, and feels that, without her, he will never win the Crown. She allies herself with the powers of darkness for his sake, Towards the end it all changes as her weakness is shown. But this success did not bring her happiness she was expecting control and love and happiness but all it brought was pain and strain which drove her to madness I believe this was caused when she realizes she has no power over her husband she has lost her stability which was the control over her husband and when she lost it this drives her to insecurity and madness.
Lady Macbeth as a wife is very loving and caring and in the beginning we can see her and her husband have a very good connection and keep in touch write letters to each other and we can also see that she is very ambitious and had ambitious plans for her and her husband leads their downfall but during the play you can see her concerns for her husband their future, lady Macbeth in many scenes we can see how she takes over when her husband breaks down which is because of his guilt. The first time the meet Lady Macbeth, she is reading the letter that Macbeth has written to her about the predictions of the witches. The letter itself it tells us something about Macbeth when he says "I have learnt by the perfect'st report, they have more in them than mortal knowledge," which means that he has conducted some type of research into the validity of the witches predictions, and what he has found out would suggest that the witches are telling the truth. This has confirmed for him his initial thoughts of his future role in the country, giving him stronger faith in the witches and his destiny, and also may have acted as more firewood for his already blazing ambition. This is why later on in the play, there is no question or doubt in either Macbeth's or Lady Macbeth's mind that the witches may have been lying. Before Lady Macbeth has finished reading the letter, I think the audience may hope that she will see through the deceit of the witches, and will be disappointed that she believes the witches too, and thoroughly disheartened to find out that she will be the one to drive Macbeth to kill the king.
In many ways you can see Lady Macbeth as a witch. She is very controlling, vain but she is also a loving person though she shows no feelings when she commits the murder but she later shows feelings towards the crime she did, she begins to sleepwalk and talk about the crime she did. In many ways she is a witch but her feelings count her as a human who went astray and soon paid for her dreadful deed. She is one of the powers of evil which caused Macbeth to commit the crime but it was her ambition that got out of hand. In between the time the messenger leaves and Macbeth arrives she does something quite unexpected. Although there is never any indication of her being a witch, she tries to cast a spell upon herself to make herself a more cruel person. She asks the "spirits That tend on mortal thoughts…fill me…top full Of direst cruelty" and makes some other morbid demands, such as "take my milk for gall," which means that she is asking to become bitter and poisonous. Another request that she makes is for the "murdering ministers" to "unsex me here."
I have come to the conclusion that lady Macbeth was a loving and caring person though ambition lead her to her downfall and as we have seen in the play she will even sell her soul just to have the security that she has power I believe lady Macbeth contains features of a witch though towards the end we can see that’s she loses control and her mind so I am In the middle when it comes to lady Macbeth being a witch in many ways but sometimes you can see her with human characteristics though she played a big part in the murder of King Duncan it was the hunger of power that lead her and her husband to do evil and wrongful deeds
Fahima abdi 9x4
