How Does Shakespeare Show a Change in Lady Macbeth

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Lady Macbeth is an extremely ambitious woman and wants more than anything for her husband, Macbeth, to be the next King of Scotland. When King Duncan announces that his son, Malcolm, is to be the next King, Duncan’s murder is planned. Lady Macbeth’s crucial role in the play is to persuade Macbeth to carry out the murder of Duncan. In the beginning she is ambitious, controlling and strong. However as the plot concludes there is an extreme change in her character and personality which surprises the audience. Lady Macbeth’s guilt eventually becomes too much for her to handle which leads to her death.

We are first introduced to Lady Macbeth at the beginning of Act 1, scene 5, through the letter that Macbeth sends her. This shows her to be his, ‘dearest partner of greatness’ and that he has no secrets from her. The witches’ prophecies intensify her ambitions for her husband, to be the King of Scotland. Lady Macbeth is the one who encourages him to kill the king and she not only encourages him, she makes all the plans herself. We see how clever she is and how she understands her husband well, she knows he has great ambitions, but she also knows that he is honourable and mentally weak:

“yet I do fear thy nature,

it is too full o’th milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great.

Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it.”

She also knows that she will have to use all her powers of persuasion to control and manipulate Macbeth into the murder.

The audience is left in no doubt about Lady Macbeth’s determination when she asks the spirits to make her masculine ‘unsex me here’ and make her completely evil:

“And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull

of the direst cruelty, make thick my blood,

Stop up th’access and passage remorse”

She also asks them to give her the strength to kill Duncan, she just wants to get on and do it without feeling guilty. At the end of the scene she takes full control of the situation, and Macbeth seems glad to let her have the responsibility.

In Act 1, scene7 she really excel’s herself in how far she will go to manipulate Macbeth, to get her way. He not prepared for her rage when he announces his change of heart.

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