"Lady Macbeth is the real driving force behind the murder of Duncan" Do you agree?

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“Lady Macbeth is the real driving force behind the murder of Duncan” Do you agree?

We first encounter Lady Macbeth’s character in Act 1 Scene 5 when she is reading a letter that has been sent to her by her husband Macbeth. Macbeth tells his wife of his encounter with the three witches and what they said to him. After this, lady Macbeth shows herself to be extremely confident and ambitious. She is very strong mentally but weak physically. We find out about her being weak physically because she finds herself unable to kill Duncan because he resembles her father. So, she is able to talk about murder and make plans but she is not able to carry out the task.

 

When she reads this letter she immediately decides that Macbeth will be King and there is only one way to make that happen and that’s murder. This sort of proves that she is a driving force because she is the one who actually makes plans for the murder and comes up with the idea in the first place. But the people that first came up with the kingship suggestion were the witches.

The witches were used in this play for two reasons. The two reasons were that they were used as people to start a chain of events in the play. For example, Duncan’s murder and the suicide of Lady Macbeth. The other reason is that the witches were used in the play to set the theme of evil and the supernatural theme to the play. At the time when this play was written, witches were seen as very evil creatures. The play was written for King James I who was extremely against witchcraft. Because the King thought that witchcraft so did everyone in England, so they believed that witches could cast spells and do evil things. The witches encouraged Lady Macbeth and Macbeth to think of Macbeth becoming king in the first place. Perhaps if it weren’t for these revelations by the witches then they might have never even considered killing the king. The words, which set off Macbeth’s ambitions, were the words of the witches. They said, ‘All hail Macbeth! Hail to thee Thane of Glamis!’ ‘All hail Macbeth! Hail to thee Thane of Cawdor!’ ‘All hail Macbeth! Thou shalt be king hereafter.’ The witches made Macbeth believe what they had said by the first two things they said. The first statement made Macbeth think that maybe the witches knew him due to their supernatural powers, and then the second statement convinced Macbeth because he himself only found out about becoming Thane of Cawdor after the witches had gone.

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Even though the witches had put these ideas into his head in the first place, it was his own ambition, which turned these thoughts into thoughts of murder. He was the first person to think of murder. We know this by what he says in his soliloquy. He says ‘ why do I yield to that suggestion whose horrid image doth unfix my hair and make my seated heart knock at my ribs, against the use of nature?’ he also uses the word ‘yield’ which gives us the impression that Macbeth doesn’t want to think of such horrible things. ...

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