Macbeth

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Macbeth

Macbeth is considered the last of William Shakespeare’s four tragedies. The play is relatively short with darkness and evil overriding the major themes in the play. The play tells of the character Macbeth and his violent coronation. His rise to power is preceded by a series of murders and treachery including that of King Duncan. The tragedy consists of ambition driven treachery, which bears more evil deeds and the final downfall of the evil characters. One of the major characters in the tragedy is Lady Macbeth.

Lady Macbeth comes to learn of the three witches’ prophesy of her husband’s rise into power. She takes it upon herself to ensure that the prophecy is fulfilled and goes to the lengths of spilling innocent blood. Her husband on the other hand, is first portrayed a hero who has accomplished a lot for his kingdom. He is also portrayed as a romantic husband who cherishes his wife and displays kindness and humility to all. His character is however not well founded as it is later corrupted by Lady Macbeth later on in the tragedy and thus he ends up doing things that he could not have done by himself.

The play is a real tragedy because the characters later lead to a downfall that they had brought about on themselves. In the end, we get to see Lady Macbeth being disturbed by the guilt of her unnatural actions until she becomes mad. She is seen sleep walking around the castle trying to hide the bloodstains. The guilt becomes so heavy and eats her inside. This leads to her ultimate demise as she finally commits suicide. Her ultimate downfall could be attributed to the heinous acts and plans she had conjured.

A person’s personality is a collective identification of ones emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral response to the issues they face in life. Shakespeare creates the character by the name Lady Macbeth in his play Macbeth. He displays her with a very frightening personality considering that she is a woman. The audience’s first encounter of her is when she is maliciously plotting for the murder of King, Duncan. This displays her as having the personality of a murderous treacherous woman. She is seen to be more composed, domineering and ruthless than her husband.

She is aware that she is more decisive and strong willed than her husband Macbeth and utilizes this upper hand to urge him into committing murder. The sole reason that makes her execute the murder is that she is a woman or so she explains. Her husband admits that she has all the traits of a man in that she is a masculine person in the body of a woman. This shows that the personalities of ambition and boldness are attributed to the male gender. This also shows that her husband recognizes that she is more domineering than he is.

Through her, we realize that certain personalities are not restricted to the males only. Lady Macbeth together with the witches uses manipulation to attain their ambitions. Lady Macbeth uses her cunningness and domineering nature to manipulate her husband into doing her will. She constantly nudges him to commit the murder even the he is not for the idea of taking someone else’s life. With her cunningness, she evokes his male ego by questioning his manhood.

This places Macbeth in a corner where he feels he has to commit the murder in order to prove that he is indeed a man. On the contrary, he proves himself otherwise because in the real sense, no man ought to be manipulated by a woman to perform her bidding. Her strong will and character is demonstrated when she is able to hold her cool and stature throughout the murder of the king. On the contrary, Macbeth becomes nervous and freaks and the sudden change of events, however, it is Lady Macbeth who calms his nerves in the moments that follow the murder of the king.

We also get to see her remorseful personality whereby she is plagued by the guilt of committing such a crime. This brings her to her downfall and leads her to near madness and insanity. The guilt is too much that she struggles to hide any bloodstain that is evident in the castle. She is later seen to be talking g to herself and sleepwalking throughout the castle. Lady Macbeth displays ambition and tact in the play. Immediately she becomes aware of the prophecy from the witches that the husband would soon be king of the land. She takes the initiative to have this happen. She does not believe that her husband has the will or guts to see this through thus she takes it upon her to see to it that the prophecy happens.

She invokes the spirits to take away her feminism and fill her with vile emotions and feelings. It is through her that Macbeth is able to perpetrate all the murders. He relies on her strong will and character to hold his composure throughout the murders. Although Lady Macbeth is portrayed as an evil and malicious character, it can be argued that she did all of this for her husband. It is after she learns of the prophecy that Macbeth will be the king that she starts calculating his accent into royalty. She supports Macbeth’s accent into royalty and even assures him that he should entrust all the details to her.

She believes that her husband is too soft and cannot handle the events leading to his promotion. She recognizes that he is too much of a ‘gentleman’ filled with kindness and meekness, which could hinder him from carrying out the murders. With her cunning and manipulative nature, she is able to convert Macbeth’s feelings of remorse, guilt and kindness with those of malice and contempt. At the beginning, Macbeth detests the idea of slaying his and even pulls away from the intimate love he had with Lady Macbeth. He insists that he could not knife his king since he owed his duty to his king. This shows that if it were not for Lady Macbeth, Macbeth could not even conjure the thought of slaying his own king.