Lady Macbeth's Influence Upon Her Husband in William Shakespeare's Macbeth

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Lady Macbeth's Influence Upon Her Husband in William Shakespeare's Macbeth

William Shakespeare wrote Macbeth the theatrical production in a

period of time when there was an intense outbreak of superstition

coating Britain. Witches, devils, and demons were all deliberated to

be present in civilization and there was a fervent conviction that

they were constantly plotting against all that was considered to be

good in the world. Macbeth was perceptibly written for an audience

that was keen to believe in these false notions and therefore its is

even now indented on modern day society as one of Shakespeare's most

infamous plays.

Initially observed in the later part of 1606, Macbeth is the last of

Shakespeare's four distinguishable tragedies, the others being Hamlet,

Othello and King Lear, but critics regard it as his darkest work.

Shakespeare's King Lear is an absolute calamity in which the innate

world is amorally unresponsive toward mankind, but in the play Macbeth

Shakespeare conspires to add a supernatural factor, where the witches

purposely connive to ruin Macbeth's world and Scotland's heritage.

A play like Macbeth in the 1600's was a daring move of William

Shakespeare. As the King at the time was fixated with the effects of

the supernatural, he may have saw this as a threat to take his throne

like the Gunpowder plot that had transpired previously, but the ending

of the play would have pleased the strongly Christian audience as

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth who has a leading role in the slaughter of

King Duncan, suffered deep humiliation and despair. It might well be

asked who was more responsible for the death of King Duncan, could ...

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...beast was't then That made you break this enterprise to me?

When you durst do it, then you were a man'. This immediately makes him

forget all his attempts of loosing his part in the killing, and from

then on there was no moans or disagreements between the two, with her

clearly taking leadership.

With all this evidence one could conclude that Lady Macbeth is

'partly' responsible for the death of King Duncan because she was the

sole planner of his murder, but Macbeth is always going to be the one

holding the knife when it pierced Duncan's throat, so he will also

always be slightly responsible for the murder as he committed it.

Macbeth was naive and is simple used by Lady Macbeth as a tool, which

can gain access to the male dominated court of the time. 'It takes two

to tango' would be an appropriate motto to this story.

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