Lady Macbeth.

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Lady Macbeth.

At the beginning of the play Lady Macbeth is strong, incisive, completely in control, ‘To alter favour is to fear, leave all the rest to me.’ At this point Lady Macbeth is the stronger of her and Macbeth. While he is stricken with guilt, she is in control and ready to do what she has to in order to ensure the fate she wants for herself. She has a masterful scheme and enough power over Macbeth to do this. At the end of the play she is so broken mentally that she kills herself, `Will these hands ne’er be clean?’ After Duncan’s death she loses her determined nature as her guilty conscience comes into play. It begins to overpower her until she is reduced to mere ‘shadow’ of her former self. She can’t even escape it in her sleep and constantly washes her hands in the hope that she can wash away her guilt and Duncan’s blood which she still sees on her palms. She has mentally changed into her husband’s frame of mind when he first killed Duncan except her insanity is more extreme.

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We first see Lady Macbeth when she is reading the letter from her husband about the prophecies of the witches, ‘Whilst I stood rept in the wonder of it came masses from the king, who all hailed me Thane of Cawdor, by which title, before the weird sisters saluted, and referred me to the coming on of time with “Hail King that shalt be!’ At this point she immediately knows that they will kill Duncan, ‘The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements…unsex me here, and fill me from crown to toe ...

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