Free Macbeth Essays: The Greater Guilt

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The Greater Guilt in Macbeth

Everybody is driven by guilty conscience in our life. Lady Macbeth and Macbeth feel guilty at different times and different ways. Macbeth feels guiltier than Lady Macbeth after the murder of Duncan. During the Banquet, Mecbeth is very upset and nervous after seeing the ghost, But Lady Macbeth is making an excuse about her husband’s fear, and she doesn’t show any guilt. At the end of the play, the opposite is true: Lady Mecbeth feels guiltier than mecbeth.. Guilt is responsible for the death of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth.

In Act II, Scene ii, Macbeth regrets the murder of Duncan as soon as he kills the king. He finds it impossible to pray after Duncan’s two sons waken from a nightmare pray and fall back to sleep : "I had most need of blessing, and "Amen" / Stuck in my throat."(II;ii;32-3) On the other hand Lady Macbeth tells him to forget about the murder because if they keep thinking of the crime, it will make them both crazy:

Consider it not so deeply.

…/These deeds must not be thought

After these ways; so, it will make us mad.(II;ii;30-35)

Because Lady Macbeth kills herself at the end of the play, these lines also foreshadow her future.

In Act III scene 4, Macbeth is going to be crazy after seeing Banquo’s ghost. He got so scared when he sees the ghost walking in the Palace and sitting in his place: "thou canst not say I did it: never shake thy gory locks at me."

This quote shows how scared he is, and Lady Macbeth is making an excuse to hide her husband’s fear:

Sit, worthy friends: my lord is often thus,

And hath been from his youth: pray you, keep seat;

The fit is momentary, upon a thought

He will again be well. If much you note him,

You shall offend him, and extend his passion;

Feed, and regard him not. Are you a man?

This quote explain to the guest that why Macbeth has acted in that way, and how Lady Macbeth hide her husband’s fear of the ghost. In act V scene1, 50: Lady Macbeth is so upset about the fact that they committed such a horrible crime and she can’t erase it. And that is not what she felt at the beginning of the story, she says:

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