MACBETH

Macbeth and lady macbeth question

Shakespeare's "Macbeth" presents us with one of the most memorable relationships in all of literature. However, during the course of the play, this relationship undergoes a significant change. To begin with, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth share a close and loving marriage. However, the murder of Duncan drives a stake through them until they each reach their untimely deaths alone and isolated.
In order to understand the major significant change that takes place in their relationship, it is important to acknowledge how close Macbeth and Lady Macbeth once were. When we first meet Lady Macbeth, she is reading a letter from her husband. The letter is a marvellous device that affords us an insight into the closeness of their relationship. In the letter, Macbeth shares the news of his encounter with the Witches. It is clear from the tone and the content that Macbeth values his wife's opinion and is passionately in love with her. Describing her as his "dearest partner in greatness," he outlines his great ambitions and hopes for the future. Importantly, it is a shared future that contains the promise of joint "greatness." For her part, Lady Macbeth is excited at what her husband has communicated to her. She is elated that she shares in his dream of an ambitious future:
Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be What thou art promised:
Her reaction to what Macbeth outlines demonstrates an intimate understanding of his character. She recognises his desire for greatness, yet acknowledges that he lacks "the illness that should attend it." As a result of her understanding of the complexities of her husband's character, she determines to take control of the situation. She understands that her husband holds a certain weakness and she is determined to grasp and control it no matter the cost.
However, this is no ordinary situation. If her husband is to realise his darkest ambitions, she knows that she will have to help him, and in order to do that, she understands that she will have to change. She will have to "Stop up the access and passage to remorse" so that "no compunctious visitings of nature Shake [her] fell purpose." She is willing to sacrifice her very identity as a woman in order to ensure that she has the strength to help husband carry out the murder:
[...] 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!
While we rightly condemn Lady Macbeth for her murderous intent, we must also recognise that she is in large part motivated by love. Her realisation that she must become crueler in order to support her husband places an awful strain on her, and that strain contributes greatly the significant change that takes place in their relationship.
The Killing of Duncan marks the beginning of the end for their relationship. The way in which they react to awfulness of what they have done exposes fundamental differences in their characters that eventually drive them apart. For example, on the night of the murder, Macbeth falls prey to his overactive imagination. He sees a dagger before him, "The handle toward [his] hand" and he imagines "wither'd murder Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf." On the other hand, Lady Macbeth responds to the night's events in a very different manner. For her, the sounds that so disturb Macbeth are little more than the "Owl['s] scream and the crickets['] cry." Her imagination is literal and rigid. It lacks the flexibility needed to survive the unfolding horrors of her husband's crimes and as a result the relationship quickly becomes strained. Perhaps Macbeth senses this in his wife because he no longer confides in her and, following the Banquet Scene, she recedes, wretched and dejected from the action For his part, Macbeth's attitude to the relationship is altered dramatically following Duncan's murder. To begin with, he relies on his wife to provide him with the courage and strength needed to carry out this crime. And, she fulfils this role admirably. The scenes in which she convinces her husband of the need to "screw [his] courage to the sticking place" are some of the the most tense and sexually charged in the play. During such moments, she calls on her husband to prove to her that he is man:
When you durst do it, then you were a man And to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man
The power and passion of Lady's Macbeth's "undaunted mettle" mesmerises Macbeth as he envisages their future as King and Queen of Scotland. He murders Duncan not just to satisfy his own ambition but because he loves her. Yet, like his wife before him, Macbeth finds it necessary to alter his personality in order to live with the consequence of his crime. The changes that he forces himself to undergo impinge significantly on his relationship with his wife.
The changes that occur in Macbeth's character are seen early on in play. In an eloquent evocation of the horrors that are happening to him, he makes an evil plea in Act III, scene ii for the suppression of any scruples he still might have: Come seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day; And with thy bloody and invisible hand Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale!
Macbeth's frightening prayer is answered and very quickly life ceases to have any meaning for him beyond holding on to power. While his wife becomes trapped in the past, he becomes obsessed with future. He keeps alone, "of sorriest fancies [his] companions making" and, sensing his wife's difficulty in coming terms with the grim reality of the world that they have created for themselves, excludes her from the decision making process. He plans the murder of Banquo and the destruction of Macduff's castle without her, eager that she "remain innocent of the knowledge until [she] applaud the deed." As Lady Macbeth recedes from the action, she makes repeated attempts to reach her husband but to no avail. The relationship is literally fractured by the killing of Duncan and the last meaningful role that she plays in his life occurs during the Banquet scene in Act III scene iv. However, even here, as she attempts to prevent him from making a public disclosure, we are reminded of the differences in their personalities. The literalism of her imagination resurfaces as she reminds him that his:
flaws and starts, [...] would well become A woman's story at a winter's fire, [...] When all's done, You look but on a stool.
However, it is too late. His fears have taken hold of him, and instead of looking to her for comfort as he would have once done, he turns to Witches for solace.
Following his second encounter with the Witches, Macbeth becomes increasingly savage. He bring fire and sword to his country and during this period we hear little of Lady Macbeth. The couple, which was once so close now face their doom alone and isolated. When news reaches Macbeth that his wife is ill, his attention remains fixed on military matters. Seyton's confirmation that she has died is greeted by him with a cold acceptance of the inevitability of her fate. He offers us a nihilistic view of existence when he suggests that Lady Macbeth "should have died hereafter". It is philosophy that views:
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, [Creeping] in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time."
The future that they once determined to shape for themselves has become a cold and empty present.
The relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth undergoes significant change during the course of the play. Their initial closeness and belief in a shared future is destroyed by the burden that their crime places on them.