Macbeth Summary - historical context and the main female roles.

Lady Macbeth

• She has an abnormal female identity as she is able to read Macbeth’s letter symbolising her power
• Her domineering personality also breaks social standards  and the witches prophecies display the power of woman’s sexuality
• Macbeth and her have an equal relationship “my dearest partner of greatest” and knows that Macbeth isn’t ruthless enough and so she helps him murder “Shalt be what thou art promised” or “Hie, thee hither that I may poor my spirits in thine ear”. They are on the same wave length
• Her decision to be ‘unsexed’ by evil turns her into more into a witch character over time than a character of masculine power.
• Lady Macbeth is first shown to be stronger, more ruthless and more ambitious than her husband as she plots and persuades her way to the murder of Duncan. She dominates the first meeting showing Macbeth’s dependence on her and the ease that he submits to the plan shows his true ambition. “Look like the innocent flower and be the serpent under it”
• She is pre-eminently cunning with a practical mind to plan the murder
• She wishes that she were not a women so she could murder herself and her husband implies she is a masculine soul inhabiting a female body by linking masculinity to ambition and violence

• Menstrual flow stop: womb equated to the womanly feelings of tenderness
• Milk to gall: denies womanly instincts of birth and suckling child ( would bash in her own child’s head to gain her ambitions) – Antithesis of a maternal mother
• Milk of human kindness while blood is masculine in bedchamber
• She calls on darkness like her husband to hid the truth

• She manipulates Macbeth by questioning his manhood as her ambitions of power have social constraints. He gives in by saying “I dare do all that may become a man; ho dares to do more is none” and “when you durst do it, then you are a man”
• She is like a ‘serpent behind the innocent flower’ as she performs evil behind being a good hostess to Duncan where he even says “Fair and noble hostess, we are your guests tonight” while she plans the “Fatal end to Duncan under my battlements” – she plays the stereotypical women, the perfect mask to get away with murder.
• She is very much involved with the murder as she drugs, leaves out the daggers & smears blood over the guards. She even says, “Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done it “ which is a sign that she is human
• She steadies her husband’s nerves (a little water clears us of this deed) issuing imperative language and commands over what he should do, but slips later into madness as she sleep walks later through the castle trying to get rid of an invisible blood stain – ambition affects her more strongly than Macbeth before so guilt haunts her more strongly afterward
• She is partly responsible for the corruption of Scotland but from the point Macbeth murders the guards unplanned, she slowly slips out of the story
• She is cool self-possession who is courageous enough to faint on the news of Duncan’s murder for her husband and dismiss him from the banquet. “False faith doth hide what do the heart does know”
• Lady Macbeth gets queen which is what she wanted but isn’t any happier as her husband drifts away from her (asks permission of servant to speak to him and is left out of other murders as Macbeth wants her to be “innocent of the knowledge”)
• Just before the banquet, Macbeth takes over as the dominant partner controlling their conversion and it taken Lady Macbeth’s last bit of strength to think of an excuse for Macbeth seeing Banquo’s ghost. It works at first relating back to her masculine coward argument against Macbeth but the second time the ghost comes back, Macbeth is in so much shock that he doesn’t give in to her. Lady Macbeth is then forced to call off the banquet without etiquette. On the plus side, Macbeth goes along with her excuse of his terrors showing their still is trust.
• She is the complete opposite of Lady Macduff who is era standard woman who is a maternal mother & defends husband despite criticism over leaving them. Her death relates back to “Fair is foul and foul is fair” as it’s the good that suffer. The murder of her innocents may have put lady Macduff over the edge.
• Once Macbeth goes away, Lady Macbeth starts to sleep walk and wants a light beside her as she sleeps as there is so much darkness inside her. This scene shows her at her most venerable with “Out damned spot” as she reiterates the whole murder.  She uses irony of “Will these hands never be clean” and hyperbole of “all the perfumes in Arabia couldn’t sweeten this hand” which is a first for her logical mind.
• She now says “what’s done cannot be undone” compared to “what’s done is done” strong minded opinion earlier in the story.
• She apparently kills herself at the end as she can’t cope with the guilt and her character has no further need as Macbeth can’t face her as he sees what deeds they have done.
• Macbeth feels that his life is now over because of her death as he uses a strong soliloquy saying “There would have been time for a word tomorrow” so he goes into battle to die a soldiers death.
• The last words on her were from Malcolm saying “This dead butcher and his fiend like queen “ which could be a biased opinion bit we don’t know how she actually died.
• Her role in the story is vital but supplementary to the work of the witches in tempting Macbeth to evil as she is the one who Macbeth trusts and loves
• The witches and her share similar features in that they lack in human empathy and are ambiguous beings e.g. witches have beards and Lady Macbeth wants to be unsexed.

The Three Witches

• Three “weird sisters” who are the first characters we meet in the play providing dark thoughts and unconscious temptations to evil with their supernatural powers as they play on Macbeth’s ambitions like puppeteers.
• They have beards giving the impressions that they are neither male or female therefore unambiguous
• Each worked with their own ‘familiar’ – an animal of transfiguration (Greymalkin & Paddock)
• The witches appear in thunder and lightning as they control it. They speak in rhythmical paradox (rhyming couplets) “fair is foul etc.” which is echoed by Lady Macbeth and there appears to be an omen over the castle.
• The witches plant the thought, Macbeth thinks it and Lady Macbeth waters it
• The witches words are comical but a clearly the most dangerous characters as they act as independent agents toying with human lives and their prophecies are reports of the inevitable.
• Their effects of temptation are shown in Macbeth as this great military hero is wrapped in a trance, sees visions, is unable to pray and suffers from fear before saying ‘I have almost forgot the taste of fears’
• They could be thought to have controlled Lady Macbeth in her insanity when she rubs at the “damned spot” as they could have been the ones who as she says “unsexed” her
• Shakespeare leaves the witches well outside the limits of human comprehension and only implies stereotypes of the era for the characters
• The witches help no one but themselves, even when Macbeth is helped by their prophecies; there are tricks within e.g. Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane or being killed of a man not born of a woman. (Equivocation is the distortion of truth)