Macbeth’s short sentences show he isn’t quite himself and he can’t believe what he is about to do and that Lady Macbeth he loving wife could have possibly asked him to do this evil deed.
> Macbeth decides he will not murder Duncan but Lady Macbeth uses he malicious words to talk him into it.
He decided not to kill the king because;
‘First I am his kinsman and his subject.’
This shows his loyalty to Duncan and that Duncan trusts him and how he doesn’t want to betray that trust.
‘As his host’
This shows that he is meant to be gracious and welcoming, not a murderer.
His mind is very confused and mixed up after his soliloquy.
After he decided against murder Lady Macbeth talks to him and gets him to do it. Shakespeare did this so the audience could see who had the power at this point in the play.
This makes us feel Macbeth is the gentle, kind one and Lady Macbeth is the dominant, forceful, strong one.
She shows her dominance by proving how strong she is.
‘...and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this.’
Now we see how very manipulative Lady Macbeth can truly be.
She uses emotional blackmail, flattery, insults, importance of trust and violence to get him to commit this unforgivable deed and he poisonous words did the trick and he went through with it.
On stage they would be stood together, with Macbeth looking confused or down at the floor deep in thought, but with no eye contact with Lady Macbeth.
This would change throughout their conversation with her walking about the stage and him still doing nothing but the odd mumble, there should be a lot of physically contact and closeness between them, Lady Macbeth would touch him and talk close into his ear and he would be none responsive, The power would be demonstrated by Lady Macbeth doing all the talking and demanding and him doing nothing but mumbling answers to himself.
> In this scene, the murder has happened and we no see Macbeth guilt and his worries and fears.
Macbeth feels guilty after the murder.
‘This is a sorry sight’
‘I am afraid to think what I’ve done’
These quotes show he can’t bare to think about what he has done and is scared to; also he wants to forget this shocking deed.
‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand?’
The blood symbolises his guilt and how it will never go away no matter how hard he tries to make it disappear from his troubled mind.
Macbeth has two concerns: -
“Macbeth shall sleep no more”
“Innocent sleep”
He is worried he will never sleep again because of his guilt.
“But wherefore could not pronounce amen”
He is also afraid of being found out, for committing this treasonous act.
After the murder Lady Macbeth acts as if it was a dream, like it never happened, or as if the King and the guards just fell asleep and died in their sleep.
“Consider it not so deeply”
This is something Lady Macbeth says to Macbeth when he feels guilty and doesn’t know what to do, so she is being the calm supportive one.
“A little water clears us of this deed”
She is saying here that what they have done can and will all be forgotten soon enough.
Her reaction to Macbeth was snappy and impatient this she her guilt in another way other than sitting feeling bad about it she is trying to act strong but this is making her angry and snappy.
“Infirm of purpose!
Give me the daggers: the sleeping and the dead.”
This shows she wants to forget the deed as fast as she possibly can by clearing up the mess and anything that could prove it was them that killed Duncan.
“My hands are of your colour; but I shame to wear a heart so white”
Even though she didn’t kill Duncan herself she has his blood on her hands, she is a part of it, and she framed the guards and it was all her idea so even though she didn’t kill Duncan herself his death was her fault.
Lady Macbeth has no conscience about killing King Duncan she shows this by how she speaks and how unrelated to him it is and how she seems not to care.
“The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures”
And also she frames the guard by blooding their faces.
“I’ll guild the faces of the grooms”
In this scene the most affected is Macbeth.
Lady Macbeth just doesn’t care well she appears not to.
>Macbeth speaks to the murderer he got to kill Banquo and Fleance and learns how Fleance escaped.
Macbeth reacts to the news in this way,
“But now I am cabin’d, cribb’d, confined, bound in
To saucy doubts and fears.”
This suggests his state of mind is unstable and weak and he is starting to go mad because of his greed for power.
Shakespeare used alliteration and triples to show this because it also semi-rhymes this helps to show his deranged mind.
When Macbeth later sees Banquo sitting at the table with him where he was meant to be that night he reacts in shock and the whole room fears for him.
“never shake
Thy gory locks at me.”
Macbeth is the only person that can see the ghost, his mind created the image from the guilt building up inside him for killing Duncan and Banquo.
On stage Macbeth shall be shouting at an empty place as he appers to go mad.
Lady Macbeth reacts to this behaviour by covering for Macbeth.
“Sit, worthy friends: my lord if often thus,
And hath been form his youth: pray you, keep seat;”
She tries to suggest the her lord suffers from odd turns now and again and he gets them a lot and he has had them since his youth.
Lady Macbeth continues to try and protect Macbeth during his strange behaviour at the banquet.
“I pray you, speak not; he grows worse and worse;
Question enrages him.”
This could be shown as she is looking at him in awe and shock at what her husband has become, but she is telling everyone to carry on with what they are doing and ignore it as it is one of his funny turns.
Macbeth decides to speak with the witches once more.
“I am bent to know,
By the worst means, the worst.”
His feeling have changed throughout the play at the beginning he was not to bothered what the witches had said but it nibbled away at him for so long it cracked him and now he is needing help the witches only give him riddle’s and not proper answers.
> In act 5, scene 1; after the murders of Banquo and the attempted murder of Fleance and the successful murder of Lady Macduff and all her children, Lady Macbeth begins to sleep walk her mind is clearly disturbed by these action due to how she acts and what she says.
As she sleep walks she uses the action of washing her hands as if to re-in act what she did on the night of King Duncan’s murder as if to confess through her sub-conscious mind she continuously repeats this action.
“...Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him.”
Also she writes on a piece of paper from her closet and close in again – she continuously repeats this action also.
“.....unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon’t, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in most fast sleep.”
It is ironic that she needs a light because she is in darkness also she
is scared of what can happen in the dark and at night as she knows she can kill she must surely wonder who else can kill in the night or who could be lurking about in the dark.
The dialogue is written to emphasise her madness in the way that she is speaking in riddles so what she is saying doesn’t quite make sense.
“The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?”
The Thane of Fife is Macduff and his wife – Lady Macduff – was murdered along with her children, this was one of Macbeth’s murders Lady Macbeth wasn’t aware of.
“All the perfumes in Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”
This use of imagery shows that she can smell the blood and see the blood left on her hands from the murder of the King and it will not wash, she is driving herself mad due to the guilt she has been riddled with.
Macbeth doesn’t appear in this scene, it is also the last scene we see Lady Macbeth in, this shows that their relationship is crumbling and isn’t as strong as it was at the beginning of the play.
> In act 5, scene 5 Macbeth hears of Lady Macbeth’s suicide his response make him look as not to care;
“She should have died here after”
All he means by that is she shouldn’t have died yet.
“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”
“Out, out brief candle”
“Life’s.....a poor player
that struts his hour upon the stage and then is heard of no more”
These quote show Macbeth philosophising about the meaning of life and it is him showing how much longer he has to deal with this guilt and how much longer he has to hide and also it makes him appear to be thinking ‘is there ay point to life anymore?’
The audience wouldn’t expect him to respond in this way, they would surely expect him to have the littlest bit of remorse for the death of him wife, whom he claimed to love so dearly.
When he hears about Burnham Wood moving towards Dunsinane, he goes mad and this is something he appears passionate about, he cares more about this than he does the death of his wife, I believe he is so passionate about this because this is something he didn’t expect and he thought he was safe and it wouldn’t happen and it did.
This shows how their relationship has changed throughout the play before if she had died at the beginning of the play he would have been much more bothered about his wife’s death because their relationship was much better and closer and more loving at the beginning of the play.
>Their relationship at the start of the play was very different to at the end of the play.
In the beginning they were very close and loving and at the end they had just drifted apart.
I think Shakespeare wanted the message/moral of this play to be let nature take its course and don’t let power take over you.
