The Elizabethans would have considered the murder of Duncan truly horrendous. This crime is called regicide, the worst crime that could ever be committed at that time. This is because they believed that the king was chosen by natural order, by God. If anything interrupted the natural order it would be evil and devastating. There was severe punishment for this. In that period the punishment would be to behead the traitor then put his head on a pole attached to the front gate to show everyone what happens if you commit treason. Throughout the play Lady Macbeth accuses Macbeth of being a coward because his conscience tells him not to go through with the murder.
(1.7.39) “Art thou afraid…” This would make the audience feel sorry for Macbeth but feel angry with Lady Macbeth for insisting on the murder of Duncan. She also blackmails him by questioning his sexuality when accusing him of not being a man. It can be assumed that most men in the audience would not only relate to this but would be annoyed with her for using this ploy and disgusted with her for being a woman and having the audacity to say this to her husband. Again we can parallel the particular allusion in Shakespeare’s writing to modern day writers such as Arthur Miller who used the same ploy to make the male audience dislike the female character.
We do not meet Lady Macbeth until Act1 Scene 5 and by this time Macbeth himself has been established as an honourable, brave soldier albeit an ambitious and cruel one. Our first meeting with Lady Macbeth shows her alone and reading a letter from her husband. In this letter he has told her the prophecy of the witches, and her first reaction is to immediately agree with the prophecy. “Glamis thou art and Cawdor…promised.” She does not question what the witches have said in any way but immediately decides to stop her husband being “full of the milk of human kindness,” and to help him make the prophecy come true. She calls upon the help of the witches. “Come you spirits…of direst cruelty.” She is asking the witches to stop her having female feelings and to make her cruel enough to do what she has to do. She continues by asking the witches to remove all female feelings and weakness from her body, thus making her as strong as a man. As we have already established above, an Elizabethan woman was nothing like a man, was not expected to be like a man and was frowned upon should she act like a man. To an Elizabethan therefore, this would have turned Lady Macbeth into a horrific character. Shakespeare may have done this for the same reason as the makers of today’s horror films, showing us children who have been overtaken by the devil as in the Exorcist. It is a form of sensationalism which attracts audiences and which after all, is what the playwright would have been concerned with. Lady Macbeth concludes this speech by asking that darkness hides her when she uses the knife to kill the King. She also asks that she be given the strength to do the deed. “Nor heaven peek through the blanket of the dark to cry. Hold, hold.” It is important also to note that when a messenger informs her that the King will be coming to stay, rather than relate the glory that this entails and the great honour that the King is bestowing upon them by trusting her and her husband and sleeping under their roof, she can only say, “the raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements.”
The words fatal entrance show that the King will die once he enters her home and the raven w symbolises his death. When Macbeth arrives home the way that she addresses him shows the audience how much she loves and admires him. “Great Glamis…hereafter.” In these two lines she is almost a typical Elizabethan woman because she is hailing her husband as “My Lord” and the average wife would have considered herself very lucky to love her husband the way she loves Macbeth. We must also not ignore at this point that he loves her in the way and trusts her totally. By saying “Thus letters…instant.” We see that he has confided in her and told her all what the witches predicted, he has begun this speech by addressing her as “My dearest love.” She ensures that he kills the King by urging him on and being his strength when he loses his nerve. She is not able however to do the deed herself and tells Macbeth. (2.2.12) “…had he not resembled my father I had done’t.” Giving the audience a rare moment of insight into the fact that she is not as cold and inhuman as she seems. She tells her husband (3.2.12) “ What’s done is done” and this perhaps leads him further along his evil path because he cannot go back and change the fact once he has murdered the King but she goes on to say (2.2.67) “ A little water clears us of this deed” and this seems to play on her own mind because later on in the play she is the one who cannot clean the blood off her hands. (5.1.42) “ What will these… clean.”
Once the murder has been committed and Macbeth becomes King, for some reason he seems to exclude his wife from his future plans. It is this act which has the greatest effect on Lady Macbeth and perhaps the audience’s attitude to her. Possibly it is because he has become King and feels that he should be making his own decisions. He knows what he is doing wrong and does not wish to tell his wife that he is about to commit another murder. She, however, believes that he ceases to love her and this eventually drives her mad. It is possible that this could be an attempt to make the audience like her and indeed she is a very sad character in the sleepwalking scene. Lady Macbeth in actual fact was only instrumental in the murder of the King. She had nothing to do with the murder of Banquo nor the murder of Lady MacDuff or her children. Lady MacDuff almost seems the perfect contrast to Lady Macbeth as she is shown as the typical Elizabethan Woman.
While Lady Macbeth would have been a horrific character for a Shakespearean audience, it cannot be forgotten that she cannot be faulted as a wife. In the scene where Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost, she covers for him, comforts him and tries to make him see sense. (3.4.60) “ This is the very painting of your fear…” (3.4.66) “ Why do you make such faces when all’s done you look on but a stool.” She obviously gave him the courage to carry out the first murder and at the beginning of the play is the epitome of evil but as soon as Macbeth becomes King her role changes and she goes on, to go mad and finally commits suicide. Horrific as she is, she seems to suffer more than her husband does and one of her last speeches shows just how much she must have suffered.
(5.1.48) “ Here’s the smell of blood still all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! Oh! Oh!”
As often happens with Shakespeare’s most horrific and disliked characters, when they are beaten and become pathetic or sad the playwrite allows them to disappear with dignity. Thus we are lead to assume Lady Macbeth has committed suicide.
