At the start of the play, Lady Macbeth seems to have a very strong character almost stronger than Macbeth's but by the end she is reduced to being afraid of the dark. At the beginning she is Macbeth's 'dearest partner of greatness', but at the end she is his 'fiend-like queen'. She has a lust for power, and it is her goading that leads Macbeth to seize the throne of Scotland by murdering Duncan. Lady Macbeth is unable, however, to confront the evil she has unleashed and is driven mad. She is often seen as a symbol of evil like the witches, but at the end she falls victim to evil just like her husband. After the murder of Duncan, Macbeth increasingly shuts her out of his plans; she becomes an isolated figure, and at the end of the play it is suggested that she has committed suicide
At the end of the play, Malcolm describes her as a ‘fiend-like queen’. Is she therefore evil and ruthless? Is she just a fourth witch? We know otherwise because, in the course of the play, we see her more vulnerable side displayed in some of her soliloquies and conversations with her husband.
An important element in her make-up seems to be her lack of children. She has changed her maternal feelings into ambition.
She shows signs of being possessed by the witches as if she too is cursed by them.
There is a contrast between the hard, determined appearance of Lady Macbeth in her first scenes and the pathetic, conscience-torn woman of the last scenes.
She and her husband are most pathetic when they have become King and Queen and realize that their ambition does not bring them happiness.
Although the witches work on Macbeth, it is Lady Macbeth who finally tips him over into performing evil. She is close to Macbeth, in Act 1, scene 5, they call each other 'dearest partner' and 'my dearest love'. She knows her husband well, and sees his virtues as vices in this scene. She is obsessed with ambition and the 'golden round', the crown, and calls upon evil spirits to unsex her - that is, to make her hard and uncaring so that she can do wicked deeds without an attack of conscience. Ambition to her is more important than womanhood or motherhood: she is prepared to sacrifice her femininity and her humanity to 'give solely sovereign sway and masterdom' to Macbeth and herself. She shows throughout the play that she is a good talker who can talk her husband round and 'chastise [him] with the valour of my tongue'. This shows itself as hypocrisy when she pretends to welcome Duncan in Act 1, scene 7; in all the public scenes in the play she acts 'like the innocent flower', but in the private scenes we see the 'serpent under't'. She can also be efficient and practical, ending act 1, scene 5 with the instruction to her husband to 'leave all the rest to me'. When in act 1 scene 7 he wants to give up the murder plot, she works on him in two ways:
Reproaching him for a lack of the manliness to fight for what he wants.
Convincing him that the practical detail of her plan will make the plot a success.
Macbeth is dominated by her and is finally convinced - we see his feeble questions and attempts to draw back smashed aside by counter questions and a mixture of violence and practicality.
At the murder scene, she for the first time shows a softer, more vulnerable side to her nature, she is jumpy and nervous and she is worried that Duncan looked like her father when he was asleep, and 'Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't'
She tries to console Macbeth in act 2 scene 2, by flattering him, telling him off for panicking, like a mother would by being practical by putting things into perspective 'The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures,' she says, and 'A little water clears us of this deed'.
She pretends to faint after hearing of the murder to try to save Macbeth from suspicion.
In act 3 scene 1, she enjoys very brief satisfaction at being Queen and acting as the grand lady and hostess.
By the following scene, act 3 scene 2, she is overcome by a feeling of dreary unhappiness and continuous discontent: 'Nought's had, all's spent. Where our desire is got without content,' she says. She is envious of the dead Duncan who seems happier than they do. For the first time it is she who asks her husband, 'What's to be done?' She does not know of Macbeth's plans for Banquo; planning has passed from her hands to his.
In the banquet scene, act 3 scene 4, she at first delights in being the hostess then scolds her husband for disturbing the party, reproaching him for his lack of manhood and for giving way to fantasy. Finally she despairs at the way he has wrecked the feast and seems exhausted yet respectful and concerned after the guests have gone. She does not attack him, making only three tired comments: 'Almost at odds with morning, which is which.' 'Did you send to him, sir?' 'You lack the season of all natures, sleep.'
After the feast, she appears on stage only more time. Lady Macbeth is increasingly cut off from her husband and retreats into growing madness as she sleepwalks and confesses aloud her anxiety and guilt.
In the sleepwalking scene, act 5, scene 1, Lady Macbeth, like her husband, is cursed with lack of sleep. She both writes and speaks aloud her feelings of guilt. She worries especially about the blood of the first murder and mixes the murders of Duncan, Lady Macduff and Banquo together. She also hates darkness, the symbol of evil, and has light by her all the time. Macbeth, who started from a weaker position, has had some release in his own imaginings; he has confessed to the ugliness of his deeds and has gradually come to accept his precarious stance. His wife has only once in our hearing suggested that her contentment is incomplete. Gradually, in her case, her repressed conscience and her knowledge that the 'sovereign sway and masterdom' have not materialised have forced themselves into her dreams so that now, as the doctor says, she re-enacts the murders in her mind in sleep. The contrast between her curt assurance in act 2 scene 2 and her foulness in act 5 scene 1 is ironic.
Her suicide, act 5 scene 5 is greeted with near indifference by her husband, who is now disconnected from human feelings. It is the final desperate act of the mind seeking to cleanse itself ‘Tis safer to be that which we destroy, than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy’.
