Lady Macbeth in William Shakespeare's Macbeth

Lady Macbeth in William Shakespeare's Macbeth

At the beginning of the play Lady Macbeth is strong, incisive,

completely in control, ‘To alter favour is to fear, leave all the rest

to me.’ At this point Lady Macbeth is the stronger of her and Macbeth.

While he is stricken with guilt, she is in control and ready to do

what she has to in order to ensure the fate she wants for herself. She

has a masterful scheme and enough power over Macbeth to do this. At

the end of the play she is so broken mentally that she kills herself,

`Will these hands ne’er be clean?’ After Duncan’s death she loses her

determined nature as her guilty conscience comes into play. It begins

to overpower her until she is reduced to mere ‘shadow’ of her former

self. She can’t even escape it in her sleep and constantly washes her

hands in the hope that she can wash away her guilt and Duncan’s blood

which she still sees on her palms. She has mentally changed into her

husband’s frame of mind when he first killed Duncan except her

insanity is more extreme.

We first see Lady Macbeth when she is reading the letter from her

husband about the prophecies of the witches, ‘Whilst I stood rept in

the wonder of it came masses from the king, who all hailed me Thane of

Cawdor, by which title, before the weird sisters saluted, and referred

me to the coming on of time with “Hail King that shalt be!’ At this

point she immediately knows that they will kill Duncan, ‘The raven

himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my

battlements…unsex me here, and fill me from crown to toe top full of

dearest cruelty.’ This is the point at which Lady Macbeth decides to

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...eth is telling her not to worry about things, that she doesn’t

need to know about it because he will deal with things. Character

wise, there has been a complete reversal between Lady Macbeth and

Macbeth and now with the use of chuck, he is almost patronising her.

There has been a change of roles in their relationship and now he is

the more decisive of the couple. Before the murder of Banquo she

recognised that they have not gained happiness, ‘Nought’s had, all

spent, where our desire is not go without content (Act 3, Scene 2). At

this point she recognises that although they have gained the crown

they have lost everything else, therefore suggesting that she now

thinks what they had before was better than being king and queen of

Scotland This evidence that she had lost her hunger and desire for

power, which she once had.