Previously, Macbeth had visited three witches with his accompany Banqo. The witches’ prophesize that Macbeth will soon become king. They recite
‘All hail Macbeth, thou shalt be
King hereafter’
Macbeth had before been told by these witches he would be crowned Thane of Cawdor, which came true a matter of moments later. This gets Macbeth filled with ambition as he yearns for power. He is shocked, as witches in those days were thought to be able to predict the future along with many other supernatural powers. He thinks that as they prophesized he would be Thane of Cawdor, which was later proved to be correct, that when they predict him to be King, it would have to be correct. He feels that the only way he could ever be heir to the throne is by killing King Duncan.
At the beginning, Macbeth is presented as a very brave and loyal character
‘Brave Macbeth, well he deserves
That name’
The captain describes Macbeth by calling him brave and saying he does deserve that name because of his actions in the battle.
During Macbeth’s soliloquy, he gives several sound reasons why it is an unthinkable idea to kill the King. The scene is set in Macbeth’s castle near the Great Hall, and he starts off by questioning himself and questioning his logic.
‘If it were done when ‘tis done, then
‘twere well it were done quickly’
He is having second thoughts about it here as he is saying if he were to go ahead with it, then he should just do it and get on with it. He’s explaining that if he was going to do it, he should not think about it and it should be a quick death. If he strongly believed he would get away with it and was certain it was the morally right thing to do, then he would not be questioning himself throughout the soliloquy, and he would want to get it over with, not just saying he wants to get it over with.
Macbeth is a very selfish character. We see this when he talks about life after death. When the play was set, everyone strongly believed in the after life. Heaven and Hell were accepted to be real destinations and actual places for the souls to go to after life.
‘If th’assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease, success; that but this blow,
Might be the be-all and the end-all – here,
But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
We’d jump the life to come’
Macbeth is saying that he doesn’t care any more about the life to come, and that if he becomes King, he will achieved all he wants to achieve in this life, and doesn’t care where he ends up after death. If he gets away with murder in this life, he would risk going to Hell for it.
As the soliloquy ends, Macbeth seems to resolve not to kill Duncan, but this resolve will only last until his wife returns and once again convinces him, by the strength of her will, to go ahead with their plot.
Lady Macbeth then enters like a hurricane and blows his hesitant thoughts away. She spurs Macbeth to treason by disregarding his rational, moral arguments and challenging his manhood. She dares him to commit the murder, using words that taunt rather than persuade. Throughout the play Lady Macbeth regularly demonstrates strong and leading characteristics, mainly towards Macbeth. When we first see her, she is already plotting Duncan’s murder and she is stronger, more ruthless and more ambitious than her husband. She seems fully aware of this and knows that she will have to push Macbeth into committing murder. At one point she wishes that she were not a woman so that she could do the deed herself. Her husband implies she is a masculine soul inhabiting a female body, which seems to link masculinity to ambition and violence. Under her spell, all of Macbeth’s objections seem to evaporate and he is left only with a weak,
‘If we should fail?’
To set against her passionate challenge.
The idea of a moral order is present in these scenes. Macbeth knows what he does is wrong, and he recognises that there will surely be consequences. As we have seen, his soliloquy reveals his awareness that he may be initiating a cycle of violence that will eventually destroy him. If you go around killing people, maybe one day someone will turn around and kill you. Macbeth is not a good man at this point in the play, but he is not yet an evil one – he is tempted, and he tries to resist temptation. Macbeth’s resistance, however, is not strong enough to stand up to his wife’s ability to manipulate him.
Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband with remarkable effectiveness, overriding all his objections, when he hesitates to murder; she repeatedly questions his manhood until he feels that he must commit murder to prove himself. Of course this cannot be correct as in the battle; Macbeth was described as a ‘brave man’ by the captain. He proved himself in the war where it really matters, and got accounted for being a man. But surely he doesn’t have to murder his ruler to be able to be called a man!
Lady Macbeth’s remarkable strength of will persists through the murder of the King – it is her who steadies her husband’s nerves immediately after the crime has been committed. Afterward, however she begins a slow slide into madness – just as ambition affects her more strongly than Macbeth before the crime, so does guilt plague her more strongly afterward. By the close of the play, she has been reduced to sleepwalking though the castle, desperately trying to wash the invisible blood from her hands. Once the sense of guilt becomes apparent, Lady Macbeth is no longer seen to be as strong on the inside as she makes out to be as she plays an influential role in mentally pushing Macbeth beyond his limits.
Act 1 Scene 7 is dominated by Lady Macbeth, who is probably the most memorable character in the play. Her violent soliloquies testify to her strength of will, and she understands that she will have to manipulate the person she married into acting on the witches’ prophecy, and hence getting the power she is ambitious for.
The plot of the play hinges on Macbeths betrayal of Duncan, and, ultimately, of Scotland. Just as Lady Macbeth will prove to be the opposite of the ideal wife, Macbeth proves to be a completely disloyal subject. In Act 1 Scene 7 for example, Macbeth talks about Duncan’s many good qualities, reflects that Duncan has been kind to him, and thinks that perhaps he ought not to kill the King. This is Macbeth’s first long soliloquy, and also the audience’s first peek inside his mind.
Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies are very strong and powerful, but also very different at the same time. Macbeth’s soliloquy is used to show the audience his innermost thoughts and deepest feelings, while Lady Macbeth’s is used to influence Macbeth into doing the deed. She uses emotional blackmail by calling Macbeth a coward and insulting his manhood. Shakespeare uses both characters with great effect and chooses his language superbly.
