Lady Macbeth is the spur to prick the sides of [Macbeth's] intent in act 1 scene 7. Discuss.

 Now we find Macbeth’s mind turning to thoughts of how his actions might affect those around him in the mortal world, and whether his actions might serve as a lesson to his peers ‘which being taught, return to plague th’inventor’ these are feelings of cowardice shown for the first time by our brave hero and gives us the impression that he already is beginning to doubt his success in his plan. When he says ‘this blow might be the be-all and end-all—here’ he is trying to disguise himself from the fact that the sacrilegious murder would have a consequence in the after-life and this would have been obvious to the Christian audience of the Jacobean time.

Macbeth thinks about his duty to his king as both ‘his kinsman and his subject, he is once again related to the noble-hearted Macbeth seen by the audience at the start of the play as we can see Macbeth fighting with his feelings of loyalty towards his noble king and he also sees himself as a kinsman, a peer, to his king he feels it is his duty as a subject to ‘against [Duncan’s] murderer shut the door’ and to protect his king. Macbeth already seems convinced that his plan is a perilous idea and is losing any spurring ambition that he might have had.

Macbeth’s mind is emotionally full and imbalanced as he now talks, surprisingly, about religious traits of his king, and he starts to seem over-sentimental, as we will see further in the play in the scene after the killing of the king, he says ‘his sliver skin lac’d with his golden blood.’ Macbeth talks about Duncan having earned his crown through ‘faculties so meek’ and through his noble virtues, and that taking the crown through murder would completely juxtapose against the earnings of Duncan, Macbeth’s king deserves to live.  Through thinking this Macbeth has turned another portion of his mind against the regicide of his holy king.

Macbeth now speaks of ‘angels trumpet-tongu’d against the deep damnation of [Duncan’s] taking off’ if the king were to be murdered, the heavens would be in turmoil and the sky would open to reveal cherubs and angels to be saddened by Duncan’s death. Shakespearean plays revolve around the temperament of nature, when Macbeth says ‘…tears shall drown the wind.’ He is talking about going against natural causes to kill Duncan, this would indeed be an enormous natural disaster and would have the same catastrophic effect in the play.

Macbeth ends his soliloquy saying ‘I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent but only vaulting ambition’ it could not be more clear that as there is no such spur against Macbeths nobility, as he has already disapproved against his vaulting ambition throughout the course of the soliloquy, that it can only be lady Macbeth who can spur her husband to commit such a ‘foul’ deed.

It is extremely ironic, that Lady Macbeth should enter at the exact moment when Macbeth states to himself that he has no spur; this immediately sets doubt into the audiences mind as to whether Macbeth will be able to stand by his statement. He says to his lady, assertively and with conviction, that ‘they will proceed no further in this business’ and expects her to succumb to his manly authority; as the Jacobean audience of the time would expect the man of the house to make all the decisions. Lady Macbeth; however, responds with an echo of her previous convictions of manliness when she earlier demanded the spirits of the night to ‘unsex me here.’ She is already mocking his authority and ‘vaulting ambition’, as the cunning lady knows her husbands every ways and is using taunts against Macbeth’s most prided possession, his manliness, to force her husband to respond with anger and foolishness and agree to her plans, this is indeed a great act of intelligence and shows the audience of what great a spur lady Macbeth can be.

Lady Macbeth goads Macbeth and mocks his hope and his love when she says ‘such I account thy love’ and compares it to how quickly he changed his mind about the plan it is deeply moving to Macbeth as love and loyalty are both part of Macbeths arsenal and he prides his nobility; so for his own wife to tell him his love for her is only a drunken passion would be extremely hurtful. She does not care for hurting him as long as he will succumb and fall before her taunts, this shows us how evil lady Macbeth is indeed.

Lady Macbeth challenges Macbeth’s most prided emotion, his ambition, in attempt to completely turn his mind, when she says that he had ‘dressed himself in borrowed’ robes of hope, this echoes earlier events in the play when Macbeth himself talked about the title ‘thane of Cawdor’ being, borrowed robes’ she is challenging all his earnings and shows how she would do anything to achieve her goals, even cause her husband to doubt his own manliness and ambition. These acts that Lady Macbeth commits in order to turn her husband can only help prove to the audience of her immoral and manipulative strengths

Their talk now moves on to manliness as Macbeth says he is all a man can be and cannot do any more than possible for a man, these are brave words as he was the one that first decided to assassinate Macbeth so he is contradicting himself and this shows that lady Macbeth is already winning the fight. She refers to her own womanliness and how she would ‘pluck’d [her] nipple from [the baby’s] boneless gums and dash’d the brains out’ this is an extreme use of imagery and it shows what lengths lady Macbeth would go to get her way with her husband.

Macbeths is finally broken down to ask the question ‘if we should fail?’ lady Macbeths manipulations have already worked on her husband and all that is left for her to do is to spur him on and assure him that there will be no failure she lays out an extremely simple plan and even manipulates Macbeth into adding to her ploy and convincing himself entirely that his plan is foolproof. The dialogue between husband and wife ends with strange words of praise from Macbeth; he says ‘bring forth men-children only’ and this is complimenting on the gritty manliness of his wife. The conversation ends with Macbeth completely satisfied with his wife’s plans while moments before this strong-willed character was convinced he had no spur that could change his mind.

To conclude, it is doubtless now that there is only one ‘spur to prick the sides of Macbeths intent’ and this is his wife; there is not other reason stated throughout the play that could have spurred him on to commit such a sin of sacrilegious regicide. Lady Macbeth knows everything about her ‘strong-willed’ husband to successfully manipulate his decisions and she uses trickery and mockery to spur him into joining her plans. There can surely be no other spur.