How does Shakespeare create a sense of horror in act five scene one? Comment on relation to what you already know of Lady Macbeth elsewhere in the play.

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Macbeth

Act Five, Scene One

How does Shakespeare create a sense of horror in act five scene one? Comment on relation to what you already know of Lady Macbeth elsewhere in the play.

As we have seen earlier in the play, Lady Macbeth is strong willed, ruthless, ambitious and potentially psychopathic. In this scene we wonder whether she has lost her sense of humanity, or gone mad from guilt.

Act I, scene v. gives us a glimpse into her earlier state of mind. ‘Unsex me now’ she cries to the spirits. This clearly indicates that she no longer even desires to be human - the very stating of which is psychopathic. I believe that this is also concerned with her feminine side- she would murder Duncan at her own hand, if it was not for her gender. Also, communing with spirits in Shakespeare’s time in this aberrant fashion was frowned upon because of the far more widespread belief of God. When Lady Macbeth is seen to be communing with what appear to be spirits of this darker nature (i.e. not God’s spirits), the audience might have suspected Satanic implications, perhaps even an intimation of later demonic possession.

At the beginning of Act I, scene vii, Macbeth is clearly aware of the psychological implications implicit in regicide.

If th’ assassination

Could trammel up the consequence, and catch

With his surcease, success; …

We still have judgement here, that we but teach

Bloody instructions, which being taught return

To plague th’ inventor.

In Act II, scene ii, Lady Macbeth appears to be seeking an excuse for her own inability to commit murder. This suggests that she is not wholly de-natured yet.

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Had he not resembled

My father as he slept, I had done’t

        Lady Macbeth is obviously aware of the gravity of committing murder. As the play proceeds, we see her increasingly ‘de-natured’ and accepting of the fact that if she is to realise her ambitions (through her husband’s becoming king) she must come to terms with the ‘un-natural’ crime of regicide.

Act V, scene i. displays the price she has had to pay for inspiring the murder, and implies what she will have to pay – i.e. complete mental breakdown.

Throughout the first scene of ...

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