“What thou wouldst highly, that wouldst thou holily”,
As we read on, we can see her courage, her will power and her thirst for greatness. We hear how she plans to persuade her husband to go along with her gruesome plan,
“That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, and chastise with the valour of my tongue all that impedes thee from the golden round”,
Lady Macbeth goes on to break all bonds between herself and the human nature; she dedicates herself to superhuman evils. She cries out and pleas to evil spirits to come and strip her of her conscience and everything kind and feminine about her,
“Come you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from crown to the toe top-full
of direst cruelty”.
Lady Macbeth knows precisely what she must do, she wants these evils spirits to deaden her conscience and harden her heart,
“That my keen knife sees not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry ‘Hold, hold!’”
She imagines herself committing the murder. She is relentless and prepared to bend every fibre of her being to accomplish the task. What she does not know is that, by crushing out of her heart every vestige of pity for the gracious king, and by stamping upon her own nature, she is doing untold damage to her mental stability.
In the stage performance, the first encounter with Lady Macbeth is centre stage on a bed as she reads the contents of Macbeth’s letter. The scene is set in the Macbeths bedroom with the bed being the only prop on stage. Lady Macbeth appears as a tall, attractive young woman dressed in a long, deep red gown. She is engrossed in the contents of this letter. Her internal thoughts as she reads the letter are presented by a voiceover from Macbeth until the end when she takes over the reading.
She flings the letter on the bed and moves to the front of the stage to begin her soliloquy. A breathless servant arrives to tell her of King Duncan’s imminent arrival and her plans of murder rapidly become clearer. She then comes forward to deliver her soliloquy. She kneels down as if in prayer, as she appeals to evil spirits to soak her with “direst cruelty”.
A red light covers Lady Macbeth throughout her soliloquy, which makes her look evil and possessed because of its sheer intensity.
As soon as Macbeth enters the room immediately, she hails him,
“Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor”.
Lady Macbeth seems very excited and over enthusiastic, as she prepared herself for the forth-coming events. From the moment Macbeth arrives, she begins to play on his emotions and his weaknesses. Lady Macbeth sees his goodness ultimately as a weakness. She is extremely determined, and uses her knowledge of her husband’s character to manipulate him.
“I fear thy nature, It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way”,
Yet, she knows that he has ambition,
“Art not without ambition”.
When his face shows his troubled mind, she warns him to hide his feelings,
“To beguile the time, look like the time; bear welcome in your eye”,
She tells him that they must now resolve to kill Duncan. She urges him to hide his feelings and leave everything else to her. She knows that through the strength of her personality she can overrule her husband,
“Only look up clear; To alter favour ever is to fear Leave all the rest to me”.
Macbeths meeting with his wife shows the sheer intensity of their relationship. She has a powerful hold on him. She focuses all her resources of mind and heart on the matter in hand and this allows her to bend him to her will. He shows he is troubled but still, he does not reject her plans, a menacing sign for the future.
In the stage performance, we see Macbeth enter the bedchamber, where Lady Macbeth greets him enthusiastically. The actors portray a young couple who are very much in love. We then see a passionate embrace and strangely watch Lady Macbeth, not Macbeth, take the lead. Whilst she speaks, she slowly removes her husband’s sword from its sheath and then his armour. They romantically fall onto the bed.
She is clearly presented as the dominant partner and her height is used to an advantage in this scene. Those few inches are vitally important as we see Macbeth appear helpless with Lady Macbeth towering above him with sheer might and authority. She co-ordinates all Macbeths physical movements, a reflection of how she influences his mind also. She physically dominates the relationship, initiating the embrace and kiss; she cups his face in her hands. Macbeth is overwhelmed and the scene ends with a final embrace.
While everyone else is enjoying the feast held to celebrate the Thame of Cawdors victory, Macbeth seeks a moment alone to wrestle with his conscience. He considers both arguments, for and against the murder and tries to weigh them out. Macbeths soliloquy reveals a man struggling with doubts and scruples. Lust for power and “vaulting ambition” are inspiring him to go forth and commit this horrendous murder but he himself is not convinced that this is enough to spur him on. He worries about the consequences, both here on earth and later in the next life. His dread is of early retribution for the crime, with “bloody instructions” returning “to plague the inventor”. He knows that for such crimes, “we still have judgement here”.
He recognises the terrible evil of murdering Duncan and he is acutely aware of the duty which he owes to him,
“He’s here in double trust:
First, as I am his Kinsman and his subject,
Strong both against the deed; then as his host,
Who should against his murder shut the door,
Not bear the knife myself.”
Furthermore, he realises that the King has been generous, lavishing favours upon him.
These are profound reasons for curbing his ambition, but Macbeth continues the soliloquy. He knows that to destroy a King with such great virtues would be a crime against heaven,
“Besides, this Duncan hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been so clear in his great office, that his virtues will plead like angels, trumpet tongued against the deep damnation of his taking-off.”
Before Lady Macbeth comes on to the scene, Macbeth has won a great victory over himself, and he is almost triumphant when he tells her,
“We will proceed no further in this business”.
At this point the audience realises that Macbeth unlike his wife has a conscience, he recognises wrongdoing and the danger of his ambition and seems fully aware of his own weaknesses. Essentially they realise he is a good man, which makes the events to follow all the more tragic. The ferocious warrior who could unseam his enemy “from the nave to the chops” is “too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness” to perpetrate such a crime.
Lady Macbeth furiously accuses her husband of being a coward, afraid to act and more still, to want but not act. She frantically accuses him of being a coward and mocks him, challenging his courage.
“Was the hope drunk wherin you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since? And wakes it now to look so green and pale at what it did so freely?”
At this point she is the stronger of the two. Lady Macbeth’s taunts show her supreme knowledge of her husband’s character as she viciously attacks his decision, dismissing it as folly. Macbeth cannot resist her accusations that he is a coward, lacking in manliness, or a traitor to his word. He surrenders to her, and in order to prove himself a man in her eyes, submits to a woman’s guidance. She has weakened her husbands will to resist by condemning him and Macbeth gives in.
One final chilling image is all it takes to waver him as she questions his love for her,
“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”.
Her function in this scene is mainly to turn logic upside down in a final effort to convince her husband to kill Duncan. Her arguments are a combination of emotion, irrationality, moral blackmail and question begging. Macbeth now believes that he must kill in order to prove himself a man.
The crucial turning point is when he finally surrenders and asks,
“If we should fail?”
Now Lady Macbeth makes it all seem simple; Macbeth accepts her plan and praises her courage,
“Bring forth men-children only, for thy undaunted mettle should compose nothing but males”
Macbeth’s motivation has changed, before his only motive to kill was his “vaulting ambition” but now it seems he is acting in a state of bewilderment and desperation, seeking relief from the taunts of his wife.
Resolved at last, they return to the feast as partners in crime, hiding their chilling intentions behind a smiling face,
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know”.
As Lady Macbeth comforts and reassures he husband, we recognise that the balance of their relationship has changed. The joy and eagerness seen at their first meeting has been replaced with tension and anxiety. Lady Macbeth is emerging as the dominant force here, with Macbeth unable to resist.
This impression of inequality translates easily to the stage performance. The scene opens with Macbeth sitting at the bottom of the bed wrestling with his conscience. He clasps a goblet of wine, and appears physically exhausted. His clothes are unkempt, suggesting that he is frustrated and instead of looking his best for the King, he is alone and confused. His words and tone of voice present to the audience a man who is clearly distressed and disillusioned. His movements are jerky and suggest a feeling of guilt, that he is afraid and uneasy.
When Lady Macbeth enters, a rushed and urgent exchange of dialogue heightens the tension. Macbeth stands defiant to his wife, “We will proceed no further with this business”. Lady Macbeth’s fury is clear, she grows aggressive grabbing him by the hair and jerks his head back, she is furious and feels betrayed by him. She speaks in urgent whispers as she criticises his hesitation, she takes the goblet from him and proceeds to manipulate him physically and emotionally. The actress falls to her knees as she shrewdly twists her husband to her will.
Macbeth appears visibly shaken as he gives in. His words here after seem feeble and false, those of a man who has given up and been defeated not those of a ferocious warrior. Again, the actress’s height seems to emphasise her dominance and is used to an advantage and the deep red gown she wears in a sense reflects her forceful and passionate nature. As she sits beside him on the bed outlining her plan, the physical attraction between them is obvious. She caresses her husband slowly, as if rewarding him. She is pleased with her own success. Macbeth’s final words in this paragraph are spoken confidently and are accompanied by discordant music, “I am settled…”
To conclude, we have seen husband and wife grow apart in those scenes. Macbeth undergoes emotional trauma and often gives rent to his feelings towards murder of the King. The witches provide the spur for his vanishing ambition, but he is appalled at the idea of regicide.
Lady Macbeth however appears to be emotionally stronger than her husband about the idea of murder. She is not sensitive to the nature of her husband’s anguish, which suggests she does not understand her husband as well as she once thought.