They each fall into their own guilt-trip and hardly speak to each other. Macbeth kills Duncan in his sleep and from that moment their marriage begins to fall apart. She argues the case, she mocks him, bringing his manhood into question, she appeals to his sense of loyalty to her, she takes him to bed, and she finally prevails. Macbeth hesitates, equivocates and falters but she holds firm. One of her strongest qualities is persistence and she shows it here. She goes into high gear and virtually holds his hand through it. She makes up her mind to make him do it.Īnd she is right about his lack of resolve – they talk it over and he tells her that he just can’t do it.
FASCINATING WOMANHOOD EBOOK FULL
She is as ambitious as Macbeth but she knows that for all his bravery in battle, all his soldierly and diplomatic qualities, he is basically much too soft –“too full of the milk of human kindness” – to take advantage of the opportunity. That’s the situation into which she has been thrust. When she gets a message that King Duncan plans to spend the night with them at Glamys Castle it seems to confirm the thought that they would have to kill him and that this was their once in a lifetime opportunity.
She knows that the king would have to die for that to happen. Lady Macbeth’s challenge is that she discovers that her husband has been tempted by an encounter with three witches to do something about their prediction that he will become king. The challenges that Shakespeare presents his characters with generates different responses from different people. Some of them, like Iago in Othello, have personality defects, but that’s rare in Shakespeare and it’s not the case with Lady Mcbeth. What he has are ordinary human beings, like you and me, placed in situations that challenge and test them. Shakespeare does not have any evil characters. She is usually depicted as a strong, tough woman and, in her drive to induce Macbeth to murder King Duncan, she appears to be that, but, having succeeded, it does not take long for her to crumble and break down, destroyed by guilt, and she ends up committing suicide. The response she gets from the male characters suggests that she is a young, sexually attractive woman and, indeed, in her effort to influence Macbeth, she uses every method at her disposal, including the employment of her sexual charms. She is usually portrayed in pictures as something like a Disney character, a cross between Cruella DeVille and the wicked stepmother in Snow White.Īlthough she has some of the most bloodthirsty lines in Shakespeare she is not quite Cruella De Ville or the wicked stepmother. She is generally depicted in the popular mind as the epitome of evil, and images of her appear over and over again in several cultures.
Everyone, whether they have read or seen the Macbeth play, has a view of her. Lady Macbeth is possibly Shakespeare’s most famous and vivid female character. Each Shakespeare’s play name links to a range of resources about each play: Character summaries, plot outlines, example essays and famous quotes, soliloquies and monologues: All’s Well That Ends Well Antony and Cleopatra As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Coriolanus Cymbeline Hamlet Henry IV Part 1 Henry IV Part 2 Henry VIII Henry VI Part 1 Henry VI Part 2 Henry VI Part 3 Henry V Julius Caesar King John King Lear Loves Labour’s Lost Macbeth Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night’s Dream Much Ado About Nothing Othello Pericles Richard II Richard III Romeo & Juliet The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Timon of Athens Titus Andronicus Troilus & Cressida Twelfth Night The Two Gentlemen of Verona The Winter’s Tale This list of Shakespeare plays brings together all 38 plays in alphabetical order.
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