Lady Macbeth, Macbeth's Forceful Woman

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Macbeth's Forceful Woman

Shakespeare's Macbeth presents to the audience a woman who is more man than woman. Her masculine virtues (or vices) outweigh her feminine strengths. Let us look at her character in this paper.

A.C. Bradley in Shakespearean Tragedy explains wherein lies the greatness of Lady Macbeth:

The greatness of Lady Macbeth lies almost wholly in courage and force of will. It is an error to regard her as remarkable on the intellectual side. In acting a part she shows immense self-control, but not much skill. Whatever may be thought of the plan of attributing the murder of Duncan to the chamberlains, to lay their bloody daggers on their pillows, as if they were determined to advertise their guilt, was a mistake which can be accounted for only by the excitement of the moment. But the limitations appear most in the point where she is most strongly contrasted with Macbeth - in her comparative dullness of imagination. (340)

In The Riverside Shakespeare Frank Kermode enlightens the reader regarding the murderous mind of Lay Macbeth:

The fatal dismissal from consideration of "the life to come" disables the case for the real as against the apparent good to such a degree that Lady Macbeth, even less aware of the spiritual issues and ridiculing as effeminate the merely human reasons against murder, and showing, as against her husband's view, that the thing is possible. (1309)

Samuel Johnson in The Plays of Shakespeare underscores how ambition by the protagonists leads to detestation on the part of the readers:

The danger of ambition is well described; and I know not whether it may not be said in defence of some parts which now seem improbable, that, in Sh...

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...Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972.

Knights, L.C. "Macbeth." Shakespeare: The Tragedies. A Collectiion of Critical Essays. Alfred Harbage, ed. Englewwod Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964.

Mack, Maynard. Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. http://chemicool.com/Shakespeare/macbeth/full.html, no lin.

Siddons, Sarah. "Memoranda: Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth." The Life of Mrs. Siddons. Thomas Campbell. London: Effingham Wilson, 1834. Rpt. in Women Reading Shakespeare 1660-1900. Ann Thompson and Sasha Roberts, eds. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997.

Wilson, H. S. On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1957.

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