Lady Macbeth in William Shakespeares Macbeth Essay

Lady Macbeth in William Shakespeares 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†¦show more content†¦This shows us how power-hungry she is. It also reveals to us the lengths that she will go to achieve her obsession. When her husband shows signs of weakness and wants to back out of her plan she goads him until he changes his mind, ‘I have given suck, and know how tender `tis to love to the babe that milks me, I would while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from boneless gums, and dashed the brains out, had I sworn so as you had done to this.’ Here she uses her clever powers of persuasion in a way that Macbeth can’t really argue with. She uses their relationship and undying love and devotion to pressurise and motivate Macbeth into killing Duncan. This expands on my previous analysis because it demonstrates how she achieves her goal, by using her intelligence and cunning in a composition that in theory is fool proof. Ambition drives her, ‘Wouldst thou have that which esteem’st the ornament of life, and live like a coward in thine own esteem letting ‘I dare not’ wait ‘I would’ like the poor cat i `th’ adage?’ She is even prepared to renounce her male instincts ‘unsex me’ because if she was a man she could be king. She knows no human feeling, ‘Make thick my blood.’ She wants to become thick blooded, not literally but in mental state. Basically she wants to become insensitive and free from vulnerability of an attack of conscience. After the murder Duncan,Show MoreRelatedThe Downfall of Lady Macbeth in William Shakespeares Macbeth1399 Words   |  6 PagesThe Downfall of Lady Macbeth in William Shakespeares Macbeth William Shakespeares Macbeth has been a theatrical favorite since Elizabethan times. Its timeless themes of ambition, fate, violence, and insanity collaborate to produce a captivating plot. The audience traces the disintegration of a tragic hero and his willful wife. 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