“All things can corrupt when minds are prone to evil.”- Ovid. In the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Lady Macbeth was cruel to her husband. He was told by witches that he would become king, so she urged him to kill the king, questioned his manhood, and when he could not immediately finish the deed, she called him a coward. Lady Macbeth is evil. Lady Macbeth premeditated and planned on carrying out the murder of King Duncan, even if her husband did not want to at first. “Come, you spirits that serve the thoughts of mortals: rid me of the natural tenderness of my sex and fill me from head to toe with direst cruelty!” (I, v, 39-42) Lady Macbeth called to spirits to take away her kindness, her remorse, so she could have the heart to kill the king, though urging Macbeth to do the deed itself. When she went to do it herself, she could not, but made Macbeth do it instead. He …show more content…
was to be king after all. She berated and put down Macbeth to urge him to kill the king, and once he first says he cannot she calls him a coward, that sleeping people are just like pictures of themselves, how she could do a few more evil things, and then sends him back in. “Coward! Give me the daggers! Sleeping and dead people are like pictures of themselves. Only children fear a picture, even of the devil. If he’s still bleeding, I’ll smear the faces of the servants so it will look as if they did it.” (II, II, 52-57)” She even planned on blaming the guards so neither of them would get in trouble. True evil. Though, perhaps somewhere deep inside of Lady Macbeth, she could have started out a decent woman.
She may have called on spirits and asked to strip her of her womanly ways, and on the surface, it sounds evil, but maybe it means she was too good to do it before, too pure, so she had to change before she could do anything like kill the King. “If Duncan hadn’t looked like my father in his sleep, I’d have done it myself.” (2,II,12-13) A quote from act Two, when she attempted to kill the king, she could not, because her kind heart saw that it looked like her father, and she couldn’t bring herself to murder him. Through this, it is still false. Evil by nature, Lady Macbeth never once tried to be kind deliberately, she instead was only weak at some points. In all, Lady Macbeth is evil, she put her husband down and shoved him around, tore out her innocence and swore to do devilish things, and there’s no greater evil in Macbeth, the play by William Shakespeare, than Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth’s mind may be prone to evil, but she was not corrupt, she was just evil from the
beginning.
Lady Macbeth’s wicked character has an extreme impact towards her husband. Lady Macbeth is responsible for influencing her husband to commit both crimes; she unleashes the dark side of him and motivates him to become an evil and horrendous man. In various parts throughout the story we find that Lady Macbeth strives beyond limits to be converted into a bitter and sour women. The audience is revolted by her horrific actions and although she may seem repugnant, she is an extremely talented actor. In her role, having a deceitful and convincing character is important
Even though, Lady Macbeth did not kill Duncan, she knew it was because of her provocation that Macbeth was forced to take this step. In the beginning of the play, she is blood thirsty and cruel. In the middle, when she had to hide Macbeth’s hallucination of seeing Banqous ghost, she said “Good friends, think of this as nothing more than a strange habit. It's nothing else. Too bad it's spoiling our pleasure tonight” (III, iv, 101-103).
In the Shakespearian play 'Macbeth', it seems to be that every one thinks that Macbeth is the villain. But in actual fact Lady Macbeth is the villain. Lady Macbeth uses her cunning and deceptive skills to over power Macbeth into killing King Duncan. When Lady Macbeth receives the letter telling her about the witches' prophecies, she immediately thinks that she and Macbeth will have to kill King Duncan. She calls Macbeth to kind to kill King Duncan and saying that
Macbeth's desire to become king is strongly supported by his wife, Lady Macbeth. Lady Macbeth is a highly ambitious woman who, like her husband, is willing to do anything to obtain power. Shakespeare uses a series of imagery to vividly portray the desire for power in Lady Macbeth's soliloquy: “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!” To achieve her ambition, Lady Macbeth urges Macbeth “to catch the nearest way.” This means she wants him to kill Duncan so that he can become king. However, she fears that Macbeth is “too full o' th' milk of human kindness” to “catch the nearest way.” When Macbeth is reluctant to kill Duncan, Lady Macbeth starts attacking his masculinity. “Then you were a man,” she said. Lady Macbeth also uses the power of emotional blackmail to manipulate Macbeth into killing Duncan.
In the beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth is both equally ambitious and evil as she urges her husband to kill King Duncan in order to fulfill the witches’ prophecies by gaining social power on the throne as king and queen. Lady Macbeth calls upon the spirits to give her emotional strength in order to help her husband go through with the murder plot, “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,” (1.5.39-42). She asks the spirits to take away the tenderness, love, and pity that makes her a woman so that her conscience will not allow her to hesitate in her wicked plans. Lady Macbeth, seeming to have no conscience, takes total control in planning the plot against Duncan proving to be stronger, more ruthless, and ambitious than Macbeth. He is too honorable a man to do what he must to b...
The evil in Macbeth is clearly omnipresent and an almost endless theme for different analysis. The role of Lady Macbeth is interesting on many levels of interpretation, but I concentrate on her way of being evil and her way of interacting with other characters in the play. Lady Macbeth is characterized at least as complex as her husband, although she is not the traditional tragic hero in the play. She doesn't only show the trait of being the evil but also many other, very human, traits. Her interaction with Macbeth and the other characters passes on different levels: She plays the charming serpent, she's a perfect strategist and she's probably, before her fall, the most self-confident and straight person in the play. And, she succeeds in achieving even more influence on her husband than the witches. Therefore it is worth to deal with an analysis of her conduct, which will show that she has many faces - though all of them are a sign of her evocation of the evil and, make her to a second Eve in the fall of men.
Lady Macbeth’s murderous thoughts concerning the demise of King Duncan characterize her as callous and cruel, as well as ruthlessly determined to achieve her goal of rising to power alongside Macbeth. After she reads Macbeth’s letter containing his royal prophecy, Lady Macbeth immediately begins to concoct a plan that will dethrone King Duncan as quickly as possible. She tells “spirits/That tend on mortal thoughts” to “unsex [her] here,” (1.5.47-48) and allow her to promptly lose her identity and transform into a man on the spot. Her readiness to completely alter her appearance and gender emphasizes the lengths to which Lady Macbeth is willing to go in order to successfully carry out her plan. She then further implores the spirits to “come to [her] woman’s breasts/And take [her] milk for gall” (1.5.54-55). By asking the spirits to exchange her nutritive milk for fatal poison, Lady Macbeth suggests that she does not see her breasts as soft and nurturing, but rather obstructive to the execution of her plan, and that
After analysing Lady Macbeth’s character, I able to conclude that I don’t fully agree with Malcolm’s description of lady Macbeth. Many scenes in this play manage to convince us of her association with the devil. However, some parts lead us to believe that she is not entirely evil and that she is capable of remorse. Lady Macbeth is an ambitious lady, led by her thirst for power. She is capable of unpleasant deeds, some so atrocious, they would have been unheard of by a lady at her time, getting her exactly what she desires.
In the play Macbeth created by William Shakespeare, we are subjected to an ambiance of the relationship between corrupting power and ambition. As we read it seems that the character Macbeth is a good man. It doesn’t feel like he would give into dark temptations, but we know that he wishes to progress in power. In Act 1 scene three lines 50-53 we see the three witches telling Macbeth that he will become the next king. Not only does this spark an interest in power but also in his wife Lady Macbeth. In Act 1 scene 5 lines 72-73 a quote is given by Lady Macbeth, “Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it”.
Perhaps the most fundamental theme of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is the inherent corruptibility of even a seemingly good man when ambition turns to greed, and Macbeth himself exemplifies this concept throughout the play. While at the outset he is seen to be loyal to his king, generally considered trustworthy, and displaying numerous other laudable qualities, Macbeth ultimately succumbs to the influence of those around him and becomes unequivocally evil, setting aside all his previously held morals and coming to be driven only by his lust for power. This transition is brought about by a wide variety of factors and plays an integral role in the development of the plot. In his tragedy Macbeth, William Shakespeare employs
Lady Macbeth is a more corrupt being than the lead character Macbeth. Lady Macbeth was deviously manipulative, egotistical, and profoundly immoral – the three traits that make up a truly corrupt individual. Lady Macbeth not only inherited these traits, but she was like a virus, tarnishing and/or infecting anyone she encountered: Notably, her own husband, Macbeth.
Macbeth was not evil he was just a man struggling with his identity and trying to be something he was not. He new nothing other than how to be a soldier and he was good at it. In the end he realised it was the only way he could win his battle. “I’ll fight till from me bones me flesh be hacked. Give me my armour.” 5:3:33. Even though Macbeth had become hated and thought of as a tyrant to others he had won his own battle. This becomes clear when at the end of the play Macbeth feels proud to say “My name’s Macbeth.” 5:8:6.
On the other hand, Lady Macbeth's views on manhood are much different from her husband's and the other characters in the play. Unlike Macbeth, Lady Macbeth envisions a man to be opportunist, cruel and ruthless instead of honorable and loyal. When she receives the letter from Macbeth and learns of her chance to be queen, she prays that the spirits "that tend on mortal thoughts [would] unsex [her]", and that she will be "fill[ed] from the crown to the toe of direst cruelty", so that she would have the strength to murder Duncan. Believing the spirits would "unsex" her, she hopes that she wouldn't be bothered by a woman's kindness or remorse and thus would become a cruel killer, like a man.
Lady Macbeth and her husbands downward spiral towards dark destruction is one the most famous of all time. We watch with pleasure as their horrible actions lead to their ultimate destruction. Lady Macbeth makes the choice to, as one source put it, lose her womanly virtues and become what she thinks is a man. It is this choice that leads to her unknowingly helping the witches in their desire to destroy Macbeth and ultimately her as well. She changes from a woman sure of these decisions to woman riddled with fear, corrupted in all possible manner – mind body and soul. Her ambition and power lead to her destruction. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lady Macbeth is one of the few people in this tale to portray as being innocent. Innocent on the outside but evil on the inside, and she has a tendency to make it all about her. In act 1 she tells Macbeth that he will kill Duncan, because she wants to be Queen. She says “I now feel the future in the instant” (Shakespeare 1.5. 61-62), Lady Macbeth wants the future of Macbeth to come true. She wants the power that would come with the title of Macbeth being king. She is perceiving to be innocent, at the beginning of act 2 she is in a way frightened by the fact of killing Duncan. The deed is then done by Macbeth and we also see the evil Lady Macbeth reborn as she faints to draw attention away from the murder of Duncan. While she is fainting she