Lady Macbeth's Soliloquy Analysis Essay

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Act 1 Scene 5 of Macbeth begins with Lady Macbeth reading a letter that Macbeth sent to her describing his meeting with the witches and his future kingship. This sparks her interest, and she concludes that the fastest way for Macbeth to receive the throne is by assassinate Duncan. She believes that Macbeth may be too soft and moral to kill, so she vows to make him malicious enough to kill. After learning that the king will be staying at their home, Lady Macbeth takes this as the perfect opportunity to get rid of Duncan, and calls upon evil spirits to turn her into a more wicked being. Lady Macbeth first begins her soliloquy by acknowledging the spirits “that tend on mortal thoughts”(48) Lady Macbeth mentions her womanly attributes frequently throughout her …show more content…

She uses both her gender, breasts, and her milk to represent parts of her that should be seen as pure and maternal. She asks the spirits to “unsex me here”(48), essentially asking for her womanly purity to be removed from her and for her essence to be turned bitter and sinful. She asks them to take all parts of her “and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full” with the mind of a stone cold killer. Lady Macbeth calling upon these spirits to change her shows that she is both more immoral and more of a driving force behind the murder of Duncan than Macbeth is. When Macbeth began to consider murder as a way to get to the throne, he was unsure about it and the thought of it frightens him. In contrast, when Lady Macbeth first reads the letter, she immediately jumps to the conclusion that Duncan should be killed and that in order for this to be

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