Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth

What makes Lady Macbeth so striking in her first few scenes is her

manipulative, vindictive nature. She is a very controlling character

yet we see her troubled mind reveal itself as the play progresses.

Her most famous scene, Act 5 scene 1, allows the audience to see how

she has truly been affected by the murders in which she had been

involved. She is sleep walking and revealing unconsciously her

emotions toward the untimely deaths of King Duncan, Banquo and the

Macduff household.

I have little sympathy for this character because if it were not for

her driving Macbeth to the murder of Duncan, he most probably would

not have become so obsessed with his infatuation of becoming king. As

we see in Act 1 scene 5 she is extremely ambitious about the prospect

of Macbeth’s power increasing. She talks of murder without an ounce

of guilt and merely worries over her husband being too gentle to

actually commit the execution of the king. She refers to him being

“too full o’the’milk of human kindness” and states that he is in fact

‘without ambition’ and so would not carry out the deed properly. Her

personality could, however, be extremely ambitious regardless of the

state of power that her husband is in, the situation could have

brought out the most of her desire.

In each of her scenes we see a new side to her personality. During

Act 1 scene 5 we see her praying to evil spirits in her soliloquy for

her to become more masculine and evil, with any feminine attributes

and natures to be stripped from her, implying that she also may need a

little push to make her ambitious enough to com...

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...capable

of murdering Duncan all by himself. In the first two acts we have

little sympathy for Lady Macbeth as Shakespeare only provides the

audience with her vindictive exterior, at this time we cannot see what

she is truly thinking and feeling. It is only as the play progresses

that we understand WHY she turns out to be the way that she is, that

she has a very ambitious character and so enforces that upon her

husband. She feels that Macbeth becoming king will benefit them both

and sees killing the existing king as the fastest way to get to the

throne. She then becomes gradually defeated as Macbeth’s ambition and

obsession with becoming king begins to soar and spiral. She is then

over-ridden with guilt and eventually feels that she cannot bear the

guilt that torments her troubled mind and so decides to end it all.