Lady Macbeth is one of the most striking characters in the play
Lady Macbeth is one of the most striking characters in the play. What are your feelings toward this character and how do they change as the play progresses?
What makes Lady Macbeth so striking in her first few scenes is her manipulative, vindictive nature. She is a very controlling character yet we see her troubled mind reveal itself as the play progresses. Her most famous scene, Act 5 scene 1, allows the audience to see how she has truly been affected by the murders in which she had been involved. She is sleep walking and revealing unconsciously her emotions toward the untimely deaths of King Duncan, Banquo and the Macduff household.
I have little sympathy for this character because if it were not for her driving Macbeth to the murder of Duncan, he most probably would not have become so obsessed with his infatuation of becoming king. As we see in Act 1 scene 5 she is extremely ambitious about the prospect of Macbeth's power increasing. She talks of murder without an ounce of guilt and merely worries over her husband being too gentle to actually commit the execution of the king. She refers to him being "too full o'the'milk of human kindness" and states that he is in fact 'without ambition' and so would not carry out the deed properly. Her personality could, however, be extremely ambitious regardless of the state of power that her husband is in, the situation could have brought out the most of her desire.
In each of her scenes we see a new side to her personality. During Act 1 scene 5 we see her praying to evil spirits in her soliloquy for her to become more masculine and evil, with any feminine attributes and natures to be stripped from her, implying that she also may need a little push to make her ambitious enough to commit the murders. This also suggests to the audience that her conscious would probably not let her commit those crimes alone. She asks the evil spirits to "Come to my woman's breasts/And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers." However, when Macbeth arrives home, he refers to her as "my dearest love" she then immediately sets about manipulating him and goading him into the murder. When she learns of Duncan coming to dinner, she administrates ideas of looking above suspicion. She tells him "look like th'innocent flower/But be the serpent under't." Shakespeare uses very expressive language here with contrasting imagery of a flower (which represents good) and a serpent (which represents evil). This could also be interpreted as a metaphor for Macbeth's relationship with his wife in that when Lady Macbeth is plotting murderous schemes and manipulating her husband, Macbeth is presented in a good and vulnerable light. The same applies for when Macbeth decides to take the murders further and the audience gains sympathy for his wife. Macbeth is left with little to say and is interrupted by his wife on several occasions in that scene, providing the audience with a clear insight into Shakespeare's intentions for the hierarchy within the relationship. That hierarchy being where Macbeth is more or less controlled by what Lady Macbeth tells him to do, almost like a spell of her own. This provides strong evidence for those who believe that Lady Macbeth herself is a witch of some kind.
In Act 1 scene 6 Duncan arrives at Macbeth's castle with other various guests and originally comments on the pleasant air that it gives off, referring to it as "Nimbly and sweet". This presents the audience with a dose of dramatic irony as they know that what really lies inside the castle itself is as evil and twisted as it's inhabitants. He also refers to Lady Macbeth as "Our honoured hostess.- The love/That follows us sometime is our trouble". The problem with Lady Macbeth in this scene is that she is elaborately polite and good natured that it ...
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In Act 1 scene 6 Duncan arrives at Macbeth's castle with other various guests and originally comments on the pleasant air that it gives off, referring to it as "Nimbly and sweet". This presents the audience with a dose of dramatic irony as they know that what really lies inside the castle itself is as evil and twisted as it's inhabitants. He also refers to Lady Macbeth as "Our honoured hostess.- The love/That follows us sometime is our trouble". The problem with Lady Macbeth in this scene is that she is elaborately polite and good natured that it could easily appear to be insincere. She tells Duncan that she has checked and double checked that everything is sufficiently in order. She tells him she will pray for him constantly and speaks of loyalty and gratitude for past kind deeds. Shakespeare is rather repetitive when it comes to Lady Macbeth's lines, she speaks continuously of her homage to him and the effort they are making for him. This is in an obvious bid for her to gain their trust and it does indeed work. Duncan reacts graciously towards this most probably due to his age and gratitude for the effort made.
Act 1 scene 7 sees Lady Macbeth belittling her husband in an attempt for him to agree whole heartedly to killing the king of Scotland. She uses foul phrases with appalling imagery such as telling Macbeth that while she was breast feeding her baby she would: "while it was smiling in my face/Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums/And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn." She tries to come over as very menacing and heartless at this point in the play, making a point of the fact that if she had promised to kill her own child she would do so, however, after the murder of Duncan, she contradicts herself rather strongly as she comments on being able to kill her father.
In Act 2 scene 2, Macbeth returns from killing the king to discuss the event with his wife. Shakespeare uses this as an opportunity for the audience to feel sympathy as we see his grief and guilt. We also get to see a very new side to Lady Macbeth, she admits that if he had not looked like her own father she would have done the deed herself, showing that underneath her hard exterior, there are elements of compassion and guilt that though she expresses little, she still feels them just like any other human being. The audience then sees her snap out of her sensitive phase and channel her emotions into reassuring and controlling her husband. She tells him to dismiss his hallucinations about the dagger and to return them to frame the guards who were guarding Duncan's room. "These deeds must not be thought/After these ways; so, it will make us mad." The audience could consider this as foreshadowing of what occurs as the play progresses as both Lady Macbeth and her husband experience mental disturbances because of the horrific crimes they committed. Hands are used as a metaphor throughout this scene and as an extended metaphor throughout the play. Macbeth refers to his as "hangman's hands" and uses phrases such as "ravelled sleeve of care", whereas Lady Macbeth is far more literal and tells him to "wash this filthy witness from your hand." This could be interpreted as the hands representing guilt and so each character handles the guilt in different ways; Macbeth is very open about his guilt and remorse by using dramatic devices such as personification and metaphors, for example: "Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor/Shall sleep no more: Macbeth shall sleep no more." Lady Macbeth, however, deals with her culpability in a different way in that she pretends to feel nothing towards the situation but it obviously haunts her as we see in her final scene in Act 5 scene 1 where she sleep walks and hallucinates. Shakespeare illustrates this well when Lady Macbeth mocks Macbeth for being so gentle: "My hands are of your colour, but I shame/To wear a heart so white." She also says rather flippantly, "A little water clears us of this deed./How easy is it then! Your constancy/Hath left you unattended." Shakespeare's intention for this scene, I think, was to show us that there is a sensitive, guilty side underneath her shell of ambition and malevolence.
Act 2 scene 3 sees Macduff discovering Duncan's murder with great astonishment. He alerts the whole castle including Banquo, Malcolm and Donaldbain of the king's death and so Lady Macbeth enters. She acts very much "like th'innocent flower" by pretending to be oblivious to what had happened in the previous scene, "What's the business/That such a hideous trumpet calls to parley/The sleepers of the house?" Then with immense dramatic irony, Macduff replies calling her "gentle lady" and commenting on the fact that the talk of murderous deeds is too tender for a woman's ears. The audience would find this somewhat amusing as they know that Lady Macbeth is solely responsible for the murder of Duncan and so would not in any way find the subject too sensitive or painful. She reacts in a way similar to that when she was attending to Duncan in Act 1 scene 6, where she is very elaborate in her efforts to help, creating a suspiciously false air about her. She then dramatically faints and is carried out, she is lucky that the people around her are so affected by the murder that they do not overtly notice her over the top antics.
Lady Macbeth experiences a loss of power and control in Act 3 scene 2, where Macbeth arranges his next murder without her involvement. Shakespeare has her character showing compassion to her husband's 'sorriest fancies' when he complains of insecurity about his dangerous thoughts and deeds. She tries to make him forget what has happened by instructing him:
"Using those thoughts which should indeed have died/With them think on? Things without all remedy/Should be without regard; what's done, is done."
The audience at this moment does not know that Lady Macbeth doesn't practice these ideas herself and in fact reveals her guilt subconsciously. My feelings toward Lady Macbeth at this time are cold and my sympathy leans toward Macbeth as we see him feeling very remorseful and suicidal. He mentions, "Better be with the dead/Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace,/Than on the torture of the mind to lie/In restless ecstasy." However as we see a new side to Macbeth where he is plotting murders without her it does make me wonder would he have killed Duncan without her influence?
Lady Macbeth presents herself as the gracious hostess once more as she invites the lords to dinner in Act 3 scene 4. At the beginning of the scene the audience is presented with the news of Banquo's slaughter. Lady Macbeth suspects this but is not directly informed as her husband has somewhat distanced himself from her, implying that he does not need her influences for villainous thoughts any more, he can do it all by himself now. This scene manages to arouse some sympathy for Lady Macbeth as we see her power lessening downfall. This could be what ultimately leads to her suspected suicide. The audience gets to understand that Shakespeare did not want to present Lady Macbeth as a character who takes pleasure in the sight of bloodshed and gore, but one who craves power and enforces her ambitions upon those she can manipulate. We also see a role reversal here for the second time in the play. She already has upset the natural order of marital hierarchy from the beginning of the play where she presents herself in the dominant role which was extremely uncommon for that period. Then as the play progresses she becomes part of a downward spiral where she loses power and the status within the marriage as she becomes the more recessive figure next to her now dominant husband.
The ghost of Banquo makes an appearance at the dinner table in this scene but of course only Macbeth can see (another one of his deluded hallucinations). He becomes extremely unsettled by this and begins to shout at the ghost with a fiery passion that stuns the rest of his guests. "Thou canst not say I did it; never shake/Thy gory locks at me!" Ross initiates the lords standing up and leaving their new king in peace to rest and collect himself but Lady Macbeth being "th'innocent flower" that she pretends to be assures the lords that he is fine and is just unwell. The audience feel some sort of consideration for her as we can see her husband's mental health deteriorates and her power disintegrate. She snaps at Macbeth "Are you a man?" as she quite obviously feels utterly embarrassed by his reactions to the ghost. She tries to use this as an opportunity to regain her status above Macbeth which is understandable as she feels defeated but is selfish considering her husband's state.
In the most dramatic scene in Lady Macbeth's presence on stage, the audience is given the opportunity to see the REAL Lady Macbeth as her subconscious takes over her physical state. At the beginning of her last scene, Act 5 scene 1, the doctor and gentlewoman are analysing her recent behaviour, "She has light by her continually, 'tis her command." As light is a common metaphor for purity this insinuates that she doesn't want to be considered evil and wants to redeem herself but can't because she is too involved to dig herself out now and so her subconscious speaks the words she cannot.
"Out damned spot! Out, I say! One, two. Why then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear? Who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?"
This is one of the most remembered speeches in Shakespeare's literature and is so because of its quirky formation. Shakespeare has used very disjointed language with punctuation separating every short phrase. This translates to her being very edgy and emotionally unstable. She then reels off a list of other people for which she feels responsible for their deaths as well as her husband. She refers back to the common theme of hands which has occurred throughout the play. "What, will these hands ne'er be clean?" "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. O, O, O." She still refers to her hands as being "little" and the need for them to be 'sweetened' and so this indicates the want for her to be filled with good and that she is feeling genuine guilt and mental anguish. This anguish finally leads to her suicide by unspecified means. Shakespeare probably chose not to present the death of Lady Macbeth on stage to add to the impact of her exit and last scene and also to be slightly ambiguous. I think a dying scene would have been effective for Lady Macbeth's last scene, she could perhaps have given a soliloquy explaining how she truly was feeling.
To conclude, it is evident that Shakespeare had Lady Macbeth's emotional state disintegrate as the play proceeded to in effect show the downfall of a control freak. It is undecided whether or not she is pretending to be the controlling evil person which her persona appears to be but that is in a way irrelevant as it was certainly influential enough to drive her husband to multiple homicides. She was certainly a brave character for going against the 'Chain of Being' in which God was considered to be ultimately at the top with monarchs under that and other members of society such as lords and townsfolk following after, but at the bottom were women and so she was courageous to consider herself to be above even monarchy! Though wrong it is admirable, especially considering what was said if the chain of being was to be disrupted, that chaos would arise, disrupting the natural order of life on earth and in the heavens which is seen as inexcusable. I personally think that Lady Macbeth was blamed for a lot that wasn't entirely her fault. It is implied that because Macbeth ended Banquo's life and slaughtered Macduff's wife and children in a desperate bid for the throne, he was emotionally capable of murdering Duncan all by himself. In the first two acts we have little sympathy for Lady Macbeth as Shakespeare only provides the audience with her vindictive exterior, at this time we cannot see what she is truly thinking and feeling. It is only as the play progresses that we understand WHY she turns out to be the way that she is, that she has a very ambitious character and so enforces that upon her husband. She feels that Macbeth becoming king will benefit them both and sees killing the existing king as the fastest way to get to the throne. She then becomes gradually defeated as Macbeth's ambition and obsession with becoming king begins to soar and spiral. She is then over-ridden with guilt and eventually feels that she cannot bear the guilt that torments her troubled mind and so decides to end it all.
Emma Merritt 11.1
