Lord and Lady Macbeth

A detailed Summary of Lord and Lady Macbeth

In Shakespeare's tragedy, Macbeth, the characters and the roles they play are critical to its plot and theme, and therefore many of Shakespeare's characters are well developed and complex. Two of these characters are questionable protagonists, Macbeth, and his wife, Lady Macbeth. They play interesting roles in the tragedy, and over the course of the play, their relationship changes and their roles are essentially switched.

At the beginning of the play, they treat each other as equals. They have great concern for each other, as you can see when Macbeth races to tell Lady Macbeth the news about the witches, and she immediately begins to plot how to gain for her husband and his desire to be king. At this point, Lady Macbeth is the resolute, strong woman, while Macbeth is portrayed as her indecisive, cowardly husband. He does have ambition, but at this point, his conscience is stronger than his ambition. Lady Macbeth explains this characteristic of her husband in Act I, Scene v, when she says, "Yet do I fear thy nature; it is too fu

As Shakespeare developed the characters of Macbeth and his wife, their changing roles ironically ended up resembling the other one's role. At the beginning of the tragedy, Macbeth was the hesitant character with a strong conscience, while Lady Macbeth was powerful and firm. However, by the time these two characters were completely changed, Macbeth ended up being decisive and greedy, as Lady Macbeth turned out to be weak since her guilty conscience drove her insane. Shakespeare's exchange of roles in Macbeth is clever yet unusual, but after all, things aren't always as they seem to be.

Macbeth takes it upon himself in Act III to plot Banquo's murder without consulting his wife because he wants to protect her from the corruption that he has involved himself with. His role is now completely changed and there is no turning back for him. As Macbeth goes off on his own during this time, Lady Macbeth's guilt is overwhelming and, cut off from him, causing her to descends into madness. Her guilt emerges in Act III, Scene ii when she says she would rather be dead, and it grows from then on until he

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Approximate Word count = 738
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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Lord and Lady Macbeth

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