Lady Macbeth is a vital role in revealing the character of Macbeth, both through her actions and her words.
Lady Macbeth shows herself as a character that is willing to do anything to get a desired result. This is seen right from the opening act of the play, when Lady Macbeth says, ‘The raven himself is hoarse that croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan under my battlements. This is also the first sign of the murder that will take place. It is Lady Macbeth that thinks of the plot to kill Duncan so that her husband may be king and she can sit aside him as queen. This is a very good example that she will even kill to get what she or her husband wants.
Macbeth doubts the plan at first, saying ‘We will proceed no further in this business.’ Lady Macbeth seem to have either set her heart on Macbeth being king of the fact that she wants to be queen, and she dismisses the idea of stopping the plan to murder Duncan and asking of Macbeth ‘Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself?’ Lady Macbeth now also shows Macbeth that she would carry out the deed is Macbeth didn’t regain his courage as she says she would ‘pluck my nipple from his boneless gums, and dashed his brains out, had I sworn as you have done to this.’ In the next act, however, Lady Macbeth shows that she is now not prepared to carry out any of the ‘dirty work’ involved in killing Duncan.
Lady Macbeth obviously has the ‘upper hand’ in her relationship with Macbeth, as she can manipulate Macbeth’s mind to make him kill Duncan, a man who he loves and does not want to kill. This is one of the most important things that Lady Macbeth does throughout the entire play. When the plot is conceived, Macbeth is not convinced that it is a good idea at all, as he says ‘If it were done when ‘t is done, then’t were well it were done quickly.’ This extract is saying that he does not want to kill Duncan, but might have considered it if the killing would be quick and the end of it. It is almost as if Macbeth can see that the death of Duncan is going to cause him extreme grief in the future.
deed, and must bury his true feelings about the murder deep inside of him. This is the perfect example of how Lady Macbeth manages to reveal Macbeth’s character, as she reveals that he is a very weak minded individual, being won over by a argument saying that he is not a true man if he doesn’t carry out the murder. Is also reveals that Macbeth may be slightly wary of Lady Macbeth, and does not have control of the relationship like men in those days would expect to have. In this respect, this is another way that shows that something is going to happen, as this relationship is the opposite to the normality in those days.
Lady Macbeth does not just change the mind of Macbeth, she also changes his character and seems to ‘impose’ a bit of herself into Macbeth. Before the deed was thought up, Macbeth would not have turned a second thought to killing on the battlefield, but of it and in cold blood would have seemed completely dreadful. Lady Macbeth manages to persuade Macbeth to murder Duncan, but afterwards, Macbeth hires assassins to kill his trusted friend Banquo. This shows how Lady Macbeth has influenced the character in changing him from a respectable nobleman to a killer, as the assassins are also ordered to kill Macduff and his family.
This shows how dramatic the effect that Lady Macbeth has had on her husband Macbeth throughout the course of the play in respect to Macbeth’s character. The major role of Lady Macbeth in the play is not, I think, to act as a main character in her own right, but to show to the viewing audience that Macbeth is not what he seem on the outside, but is easily manipulated into doing things that would have been otherwise against his will. He is also easily changed permanently, both of which were used by Shakespeare in making the extreme change in Macbeth’s character believable to the people that read and watch the play.
Lady Macbeth manages to turn Macbeth’s mind around completely by saying ‘When you durst do it, then you were a man; and, to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man.’ During this conservation, Lady Macbeth manages to change Macbeth’s mind about the murder, and at the enc of the scene, Macbeth says ‘I am settled, and bent up each corporal agent to this terrible feat. Away, and mock the time with fairest show: false face must hide what the false heart doth know.’ This is Macbeth explaining that he is now set on carrying out the
