Presentation of Lady Macbeth in William Shakespeare's Macbeth

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Presentation of Lady Macbeth in William Shakespeare's Macbeth

Lady Macbeth fulfills her role among the nobility and is well

respected like Macbeth. King Duncan calls her "our honored hostess."

She is loving to her husband but at the same time very ambitious, as

shown by her immediate determination for Macbeth to be king. Lady

Macbeth’s character changes throughout the play from being a loving

wife to being a crazed psycho path.

When Lady Macbeth receives her husband's letter, she is eager to talk

him into doing a murder. To prepare herself, she calls upon evil

spirits to "Stop up the access and passage to remorse, / That no

compunctious visitings of nature / Shake my fell purpose".

"Compunctious visitings of nature" are the messages of our natural

human conscience, which tell us that we should treat others with

kindness and consideration. Lady Macbeth wants to be unnatural, so

that she can be "fell," deadly. In the next breath, she calls upon

those evil spirits, the "murdering ministers" to "Come to my woman's

breasts, / And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, /

Wherever in your sightless substances / You wait on nature's

mischief!”. "Take my milk for gall" means "take my milk away and put

anger in its place," and "wait on" means "assist," not just "wait

for," so she seems confident that somewhere in nature there are demons

with the power to make nature itself unnatural. This makes Lady

Macbeth seem evil and a character the audience will automatically not

feel sorry for no matter what happens.

As Lady Macbeth plans to kill King Duncan, she calls upon the spirits

of murder to "make thick my blood; / Stop up the access and passage to

remorse". Thin blood was considered wholesome in the past, and it was

thought that poison made blood thick. Lady Macbeth wants to poison her

own soul, so that she can kill without remorse. This again makes the

audience feel no sympathy for Lady Macbeth but instead it makes them

feel nothing for her except detestation

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