Analyzation of Lady Macbeth
In the reading of Act 1of the Shakespearian tragedy of Macbeth, there are many characters that are worth observing. Of the bunch, Lady Macbeth stands out like gold in a bag of coal. Lady Macbeth is bold, ambitious, and sophisticated. A skill of hers that I observed is that she knows how to persuade people around her into doing devious acts just to satisfy her ambition.
An observation about Lady Macbeth is that she is overly ambitious. Her desire to become Queen of Scotland is so all consuming to her that she actually conspires to commit murder! And not just any murder – but the murder of the King of Scotland! In Act 1, the only factor stopping her from killing the King is her conscience. Lady Macbeth is worried that the guilt that she will feel afterward murdering the King of Scotland will bring her to her death. She states this soliloquy about how to deal with this problem- “Come, you spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/ Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood;/ Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse, … 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! Come, thick night, / And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, / That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, / Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, / To cry 'Hold, hold!” (1.5.47-61). In this soliloquy, Lady Macbeth asserts her desire to become a man and be filled with enough “manly” cruelty in order for her to complete the killing of Duncan.
Another observation about Lady Macbeth is her tremendous power of persuasion. An example of this power of persuasion is Lady Macbeth’s ability to convince Macbeth into killing King Duncan. She does this by questioning Macbeth’s manhood. Lady Macbeth says- "What beast was't then / That made you break this enterprise to me? / When you durst do it, then you were a man; / And
An observation about Lady Macbeth is that she is overly ambitious. Her desire to become Queen of Scotland is so all consuming to her that she actually conspires to commit murder! And not just any murder – but the murder of the King of Scotland! In Act 1, the only factor stopping her from killing the King is her conscience. Lady Macbeth is worried that the guilt that she will feel afterward murdering the King of Scotland will bring her to her death. She states this soliloquy about how to deal with this problem- “Come, you spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/ Of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood;/ Stop up th’ access and passage to remorse, … 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! Come, thick night, / And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, / That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, / Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, / To cry 'Hold, hold!” (1.5.47-61). In this soliloquy, Lady Macbeth asserts her desire to become a man and be filled with enough “manly” cruelty in order for her to complete the killing of Duncan.
Another observation about Lady Macbeth is her tremendous power of persuasion. An example of this power of persuasion is Lady Macbeth’s ability to convince Macbeth into killing King Duncan. She does this by questioning Macbeth’s manhood. Lady Macbeth says- "What beast was't then / That made you break this enterprise to me? / When you durst do it, then you were a man; / And