"Macbeth kills the king due to pressure from external influences" Discuss

The second influence is Lady Macbeth. At the start, she and Macbeth share a very close relationship. He refers to her as “my dearest love” and it is very apparent that he feels he can tell her anything. Their relationship is so close that he sends a letter to her explaining his encounter with the witches even though he is already on his way home to her. Even though their relationship is a close one, it is also clear that Lady Macbeth is the dominant partner.

   Upon hearing of the witches’ predictions from her husband’s letter, she immediately knows what she has to do. She knows how to persuade her husband, and is preparing herself to persuade him by the only way she knows, murder. She knows her husband too well “Art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it” and “I do fear thy nature, it is too full o’th’milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way” She is more than aware that her husband has great ambition, and that he wants great things, but does not want to do anything about it. The comments she makes states her ambition. Some may argue that her ambition is purely for her husband, but she over-steps the mark in her following comments – “chastise with the valour of my tongue all that impedes thee from the golden round” – she wants to take all the goodness out of Macbeth so nothing will hold him back from killing the King. Is this her ambition being brought to the surface through her husband? Then she calls on evil to “unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe topfull of direst cruelty”….”stop up th’access and passage to remorse that no compunctions visitings of nature shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between th’effect and it.” It could be argued that this is a sign of Lady Macbeth’s evil side. Or that she is willing to sacrifice all of this for her husband.

     It is clear to her what she has to do; she knows that without her persuasion her husband will not commit the deed. And so, in line 54 she plays with kingship by calling her husband “greater than both by the all-hail hereafter”. Then she puts her deceitful plan into action, in line 59 she states ”oh never shall the sun that morrow see”. In other words, we are going to kill him tonight. And in line 64 she instructs her husband to be deceitful “bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue”. She is most definitely in charge.

    Scene 7 is where Lady Macbeth really tests her husband. She challenges Macbeth’s conscience. The good versus the evil inside him, and he rose above his evil self but she influences him further. She knows what to do. She questions his manhood by calling him a “coward” and telling him “when you durst do it, then you were a man. And to be much more than you were, you would be so much more the man.” His identity is built up on his bravery, his bravery on the battlefield and his masculinity in general. When she calls him a coward and questions him manhood, she is questioning everything he stands for. She is very manipulative and even questions his love for her, the ultimate persuasion – “from this time, such I account thy love”. She doubts his love for her, this is a total contrast to the relationship they had at the beginning of the act. And then finally comes the ultimate reason, which finally pushes him into carrying out the deed. She says to him “ I have given suck and know how tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me :I would, while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I sworn as you have done to this”. She is challenging him to be braver than her, and bravery is really important to Macbeth, and his wife knows this.

Macbeth’s actions, however, are not just due to pressure from external influences. He is largely responsible. He has weaknesses; his first words in the play are “ So foul and fair a day I have not seen” and the witches say “fair is foul and foul is fair” He speaks in riddles like the witches. This could be a possible link between them. Also, the witches didn’t tell him to kill. He simply came up with that conclusion on his own. In scene 4, line 21 Duncan says, “ More is thy due than more than all I can pay”. This shows the great closeness in their relationship, but then the King diverts his attention to Malcolm, and Macbeth’s thoughts suddenly turn to killing Malcolm. This is a repeat of the witches influence. This is shown clearly in line 49, “The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’erleap, for in my way it lies.” – he is definitely contemplating the murder of Malcolm at this point, without any persuasion from anyone else. “Let light not see my black and deep desires” – this shows effect the witches word have on him.

If he was as brave as everyone made out, and that he really did not want to kill Duncan and was happy with his position in Scotland, then he would have been able to stand up to Lady Macbeth. He must have wanted it, Lady Macbeth was just the final push..

In my opinion, I think that Macbeth’s killing the king was largely due to pressure from external influences. However, I think that to actually commit the deed, Macbeth must have secretly wanted to be King. He held the dagger in his hands and committed the deed, and we have proved that Macbeth was certainly linked with evil from the very beginning. Therefore, my conclusion is that yes Macbeth was pressurised and indeed influenced, but at the end of the day, he held the dagger in his hand and committed the awful deed totally by himself.