Lady Macbeth
William Shakespeare's 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. Lady Macbeth, one of Shakespeare's most forcefully drawn female characters, plays an important role in the play Macbeth. She has a profound influence over the action of the play, and her character accentuates many of the themes. It seems evident that Lady Macbeth is motivated by repressed emotional complexes which lead to her insanity. Lady Macbeth is introduced as she reads a letter from her husband regarding his new title and the prophesies of the three weird sisters. Macbeth is the first to contemplate killing King Duncan, but the notion immediately enters his desirous wife's mind as well. Macbeth is the medium through which the train of evil extends to his calculating companion. Once this evil is exposed, Lady Macbeth's strong and dominating ambition to become queen is born (Jameson 192). There are two reasons why Lady Macbeth is ambitious. Her first motive, ardent affection for her husband, r
Have done to this. (I. vii. 54-59) eveals a touch of womanhood. Because she loves Macbeth, she has an earnest desire to help him attain the throne. Upon reading his letter, the devoted Lady Macbeth does not once refer to herself; she thinks only of Macbeth (Jameson 191-2). On a deeper level, Lady Macbeth's ambition also stems from a sublimation of a repressed desire for children. This sublimation is based upon the memory of her long since dead child. The unconscious battle that this memory produces plagues Lady Macbeth's mind and will be responsible for all of her further actions in the play (Coriat 219). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The sleep-walking scene gives a glimpse into Lady Macbeth's inward hell in a way that her waking state never could (Jameson 193). This climax of her journey leaves her in a state of complete deterioration. The final step of mental destruction takes Lady Macbeth to her death (Coriat 222). 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy Coriat, Isador H. "The Hysteria of Lady Macbeth." Shakespearean Criticism. Eds. Laurie Lanzen Harris and Mark W. Scott. 12 vols. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1986. 3: 219-223. As Lady Macbeth waits for Macbeth to return from the cataclysmic deed, she divulges that she is not as daring as she appears by saying: "That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold; / What hath quenched them hath given me fire" (II. ii. 1-2). Her cowardice is illustrated by her need for alcohol to enable her to act out her wishes. That pusillanimity resurfaces when Lady Macbeth tells her husband: "Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had done 't" (II. ii. 12-13). She uses her father as an excuse for her inaction (Coriat 221).
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Approximate Word count = 1749
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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