MACBETH

In depth character analysis

Character Analysis: Lady Macbeth

 Lady Macbeth is the deuterogamist (the second most important character) in this Shakespearean drama : the wife of Macbeth, she shares his lust for power. Our initial impressions of Lady Macbeth are that she is, as Malcolm describes her at the close of the play, indeed "fiend-like" as, when she learns of Duncan's visit to Dunsinane her thoughts turn immediately to regicide. Without pause, she summons evil "spirits" and commands them to "make thick my blood" so that "no compunctious visitings of Nature" shake her wicked intention to murder the King.

 Interestingly, in this soliloquy Lady Macbeth imagines committing the regicide herself as she asks to be wrapped in the blackest smoke of Hell "so that my keen knife sees not the wound it   "Later, she privately admits in an aside: "Had he not looked like my father as he slept, I had done't,"suggesting that Lady Macbeth is not as "fiend-like" as is sometimes argued. Certainly, she is not naturally "fiend-like" or she would not have sought assistance from the "murdering ministers" she conjures when the audience first meet her, even though she willingly submits to their wicked influence. 

It is arguable that Lady Macbeth is subconsciously repelled by the thought of regicide because when she is pressuring her husband to commit the deed she avoids using the word "murder"; instead she employs a variety of euphemisms, including: "this enterprise", Duncan being "provided for" or merely "it". However, others argue that Shakespeare's employment of euphemisms here is quite deliberate and serves subtly to convey Lady Macbeth's wily, artful manipulation of her husband and which, therefore, strengthens the audience impression of her as being truly "fiend-like". 

However, once the regicide is committed and Lady Macbeth becomes Queen, the dynamics of her relationship with Macbeth undergoes a dramatic transformation. Despite having fulfilled her ambition to become Queen, in an aside to the audience Lady Macbeth privately admits: "Nought's had, all's spent, where our desire is got without content." Ironically, when her husband then enters her own face becomes a mask, disguising what is in her heart as she admonishes Macbeth for entertaining gloomy thoughts which ought to have been buried alongside the body of the dead King Duncan. 

As her ability to influence her husband diminishes – he simply ignores her command to halt his murderous plans for Banquo when she demands: "You must leave this" – Lady Macbeth becomes an increasingly isolated figure. After the banquet scene at which Macbeth arouses suspicions by his erratic behaviour, Lady Macbeth tells him: "You lack the season of all natures – sleep." Ironically, the audience's final impressions of her are in Act 5 scene 1 where she is sleepwalking, burdened by guilt.

 The bold figure who instructed evil spirits to "pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell" is now a pathetic figure, afraid of the dark. Lady Macbeth's gentlewoman tells the Doctor observing her sleepwalk: "She has light by her continually – 'tis her command." The evil she so willingly embraced betrays her – as it betrays Macbeth – and produces only anguish in place of the rewards she had envisioned. On the night of Duncan's murder, their hands bathed in Duncan's blood, she boldly claimed: "A little water clears us of this deed." Now, however, she seems unable to rid herself of the stench and spots of blood she imagines cover her hands still. The Doctor fears she is suicidal and claims: "more needs she the Divine than the physician.

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honestly im just trying to compact as much as i can into these character analysis segments as i can hope they are of help 

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