Upon hearing of the witches prophecies, Lady Macbeth instantly conspires to speed up events so that Macbeth becomes king quickly. She believes that she is speeding up fate, but all she is in fact doing is playing out the prophecy exactly. He lacks the necessary ruthlessness that accompanies ambition- “Thou wouldst be great,
Art not without ambition, but without
The illness should attend it;”
but she can supply that for him. She is fiend–like in the way she manipulates her husband, a shrew brow-beating him into these acts. He is merely her instrument carrying through her plans. At the moment, she is the power behind the throne. At face value, she is ‘egging on’ her husband for what looks to be his own gains, but it is her ambition to be the most powerful woman in Scotland. She is furthering her own ambitious plans perhaps wanting to rule the country through Macbeth. It is ironic when she says,
“Look like the innocent flower
But be the serpent under’t”,
as she herself is the ‘serpent’, the brains behind the plan. He slavishly does her bidding despite having some misgivings,
“ We will proceed no further in this business:”. She undermines his manhood using it as a weapon against him,
“When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man.”
She adopts the masculine characteristics of courage, strength and determination and encourages him to proceed with the actions. She bolsters his frail ego. Although he has slain many people in battle, he is known to be a loyal servant and is afraid of being branded a traitor. He recognises Duncan’s valued opinion of him,
“He hath honoured me of late;”,
but with his wife’s repeated charges of being thought a coward he, like a hen-pecked husband, agrees to her plan.
It is really after Banquo’s murder that his mental frailty is displayed. His visions of the mutilated corpse, that are only visible to him, unhinge him, but he shows perception in recognising that his murderous behaviour is out of the norm for him when he states,
“My strange and self-abuse
Is the initiate fear that wants hard use:
We are yet but young in deed”.
He views himself as an amateur, but believes that with more murderous experiences the terrible visions will disappear. This is the crucial point at which the led becomes the leader. Macbeth now takes control of his own destiny while Lady Macbeth becomes the dependent casualty. From this realisation, Lady Macbeth assumes a lesser role in the play and fades into the background. Her rampant ambition and calculated plans have brought her no lasting joy or pleasure. Although she has achieved her dreams of being queen, her mental state is now of a tormented soul; she suffers from insomnia, is haunted by ghastly visions of the dead, performs an obsessional washing of hands,
“What, will these hands ne’er be clean?”
and suicidal thoughts dominate her existence. It is here that she loses the tag of ‘fiend-like queen’ and becomes more human in her inability to cope with what she has seen. Although she put in motion the sequence of events, she is now unable to cope with the consequences. The once proud, domineering woman has become a shadow;her spectral appearances in a nightgown carrying a candle show her changed into a waif like creature inhabiting the darker recesses of a turbulent mind. It’s difficult not to feel some sympathy for her “slumbery agitation”. This is no fiend but a troubled soul whose only hope of peace is death.
While neither character is portrayed in an attractive light, Shakespeare graphically shows a descent into insanity and the ultimate tragic end in the quest for power. Against one’s better nature, a degree of empathy for Macbeth and his wife emerges so that the label ‘butcher’ and ‘fiend-like queen’ does not seem appropriate at the conclusion of the play.
Huw John
