“Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here…”
By forgoing her femininity she hopes to have the ruthlessness necessary to commit the terrible deed.
“Stop up the access and passage to remorse…”
She wishes to feel no guilt
“Come thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes…”
Her thoughts and actions must be ‘cloaked’ and secret – beyond interference from any source of reason:
“Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, ‘Hold, hold!’”
Darkness and evil are to have the upper hand and nothing must come between her and her goal. This shows again how close Macbeth and his wife are – she is prepared to sacrifice all that makes her a woman in order to further her husband’s ambitions. When asking the spirits to “pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell” she is asking that her thoughts be hid. Similarly Macbeth spoke “let not light see my black and deep desires”. Neither of them wishes to have a guilty conscience. Shakespeare shows in this how close they are – they even think alike.
When Macbeth returns, both he and his wife understand each other perfectly: murder is what they both have on their minds although the actual word ‘murder’ is not once mentioned. It is as though some kind of telepathic bond exists between the two of them however in this, a subtle secrecy has developed. They have both symbolically called upon the ‘Spirits of Darkness’ to aid them in their dark cause; both are actively considering murder.
At this point in the play, the relationship between Macbeth and his wife appears to be functioning well – they still appear to be the perfect couple, although Lady Macbeth begins to assume a more domineering role. She has taken charge of planning, and exerts her influence over her husband. She “feels the future in the instant”. She has no doubts in what she is about to do, as though she has no conscience – exactly what she asked of the Spirits of Darkness.
By contrast, Macbeth reveals in his soliloquy in Scene VII of Act I as he prepares for the murder of his King, that he has serious doubts: “We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases we still have judgement here”. He realises that there could be difficulties in killing Duncan. Not only does he worry about the consequences but he is unhappy about this ultimate betrayal and disloyalty to his kinsman and King: “strong both against the deed” - these are strong reasons for preventing this murder. He also worries that ambition – his motive for the murder – could prove his undoing: “Vaulting ambition, which o’er-leaps itself And falls on the other”; maybe he will not be up to the job, will land on the horses back only to fall off on the other side.
Lady Macbeth however, is very manipulative and manoeuvres her husband by questioning his manliness: “Art thou afeard…?”, “Live a coward in thine own esteem”. She suggests to her husband that if he cannot face this murder then her opinion of him will alter; she will consider him a coward. She goes as far as saying that she, in order to honour a promise, would even go as far as to kill her own baby: “I would, while it was smiling in my face, have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums, and dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this”. Shakespeare’s language is highly descriptive and uses fierce, graphic, shocking imagery to enable the character of Lady Macbeth to convince and manipulate her husband into committing this terrible deed.
Despite Lady Macbeth’s earlier protestations, we find in Act 2 evidence to suggest she cannot remain as remote from events as she would have liked. Having said that she would have “dash’d the brains out” of her own child in order to honour her promise, she now confesses that she would have done the deed herself “Had he not resembled My father as he slept”. Although she was able to prepare the way by drugging the servants and laying out the daggers, Lady Macbeth lost the nerve to commit the murder herself.
At this point in the play – Macbeth having committed the murder – both characters are very nervous and jumpy and their speech comes in short, anxious bursts:
“Did not you speak?
When?
Now.
As I descended?
Ay.”
True to form, Macbeth is now in something of a state. Being a man of action he was, unlike his wife, able to commit the murder but is now having trouble coming to terms with his guilt. As he looks down at his blood stained hands he describes them as “a sorry sight”. He rambles about the servants waking one another up and imagines that one cried “Murder!” and “God bless us” as if “they had seen me with these hangman’s hands.” He is unable to add “Amen” to the servants Christian prayers, he considers himself in league with the Devil.
Lady Macbeth again takes charge. She is irritated with her husband as he declares that he has heard a voice cry “…Macbeth does murder sleep”. She tells him that he unbends his “noble strength to think So brainsickly of things.” Though unable to murder Duncan herself, she is now able to go to the scene of the murder in order to smear the faces of the grooms with blood and guilt and to replace the daggers that the bungling Macbeth has removed from the scene in his trauma. She thinks that it will be easy for them both to wash their hands of the blood and guilt. She orders her husband to “Get on your night-gown” – she wants to clothe them in the innocence of sleep, something that Macbeth believes he has murdered.
In Act 2, Scene 3 we begin to see a rapid change in the character of Macbeth. Realising that the two servant’s would deny their guilt, Macbeth took it upon himself to murder them both telling Lennox that he did this in his “fury” and that he did “repent” it. He has begun to act independently of his wife. He justifies his actions in a persuasive speech asking “Who can be wise, amaz’d, temperate and furious, Loyal and neutral, in a moment?” In other words, such was his horror at the death of his King that he was unable to control his actions. At the end of this speech Lady Macbeth faints either genuinely from the shock at this unexpected turn of events or perhaps in pretence so as to join in her husband’s deception.
Further on in Act 3, Scene 2 Macbeth plots the murders of Banquo and Fleance and keeps his plans secret from his wife. Macbeth may be trying to protect his wife by keeping this secret or he may be trying to prove to her that he is capable of sorting things for himself. Perhaps he felt emasculated over his wife’s role in the murder of Duncan and this was his chance to restore himself in his wife’s eyes. This might have had more effect if he had murdered Banquo and Fleance himself rather than hiring murderers to do the dirty work for him. Macbeth’s final speech in this scene reveals a lot about how he is feeling at this point in the play. He says that “Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill” – deeds that are started with evil grow stronger with more evil. Later in Scene 4 he compounds these words: “I am in blood Stepp’d in so far, that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er” – he feels that he is now in so deep that he has passed the point of no return.
Becoming King should have been the pinnacle of Macbeth’s life but his relationship with his wife is under great strain. He is keeping dreadful secrets from her. He has terrible dreams and feels that he can trust no one. They both feel threatened especially when Fleance survives the attempt on his life, as they know that Banquo’s descendants will become kings in spite of all Macbeth’s efforts.
In Act 5 we see the final corruption of the lives of Macbeth and his wife. Lady Macbeth becomes obsessed with her guilt and takes to sleep walking, eternally seeking to wash the blood from her hands – something which she had thought so easy to do in Act 2. By contrast, her husband is again a man of action and returns to the battlefield. Lady Macbeth dies a pitiful and guilt-ridden death whilst her husband, although a sad man who considers life pointless: “full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” dies with some dignity as a fearless warrior.
