She is far from a passive participant as seen by her actions. Throughout “Macbeth,” Lady Macbeth serves as the driving force behind Duncan’s murder. In one of her first immoral acts, Lady Macbeth begins to plan Duncan’s murder when she receives the witches’ letter, but she is concerned that Macbeth lacks the will to murder. After reading the witches’ letter that prophesizes Macbeth’s coronation, Lady Macbeth is overcome with ambition to take the throne. Lady Macbeth is willing to do anything to make this prophecy a reality.
Lady Macbeth calls on the spirits of darkness and evil to replace her nurturing and feminine qualities with remorseless cruelty. Macbeth is appalled of the thought of killing his king and can think of many reasons for not going ahead with the murder. So Lady Macbeth manipulates him by accusing him of being a coward and unmanly, until he agrees to proceed with the murder. Lady Macbeth presents her plan that when Duncanâs servants are asleep, he will enter Duncanâs chamber and kill him. Macbeth carries out this murder so the third prophecies will be fulfilled.
Macbeth struggled with this concept, contemplating whether he should carry out the evil deed. He conjured up a list of reasons to avoid killing King Duncan. Lady Macbeth then challenged Macbeth’s manhood, referring to him as a coward. Only then did he take it upon himself to kill the king. Although, Macbeth takes the dagger and kills King Duncan, Lady Macbeth was the one who planned to kill him that night and frame his guards.
After reading Macbeths letter, Lady Macbeth is jubilant to the idea of murdering King Duncan. She begins to come up with a plan in killing Duncan to gain the royal crown. She then fills up with pure evil; she evilly scams Macbeth into the sadistic murder. Lady Macbeth says “Look like th’ innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t” In this quotation Lady Macbeth is demanding that Macbeth should act innocent and not guilty, but beneath the kindness and love, be a devious evil man who won’t let anything between the crown and himself. Shakespeare quotes sentences such as ‘Look like th’ innocent flower’, which suggests that lady Macbeth is comparing Macbeth’s behaviour towards a flower.
She may very well be the underlying cause of all evil in the play; she tricked King Duncan, used her husband, and made her guests believe that, rather than feeling guilty for his crime, Macbeth was sick. When Lady Macbeth invites King Duncan to come to the castle
If any woman is to be held responsible for Macbeth’s demise, let it be Lady Macbeth, for rather than warning Macbeth against the witches’ prophecies, she decides to encourage her husband to kill the King. Lady Macbeth is obviously the dominant partner of the two when that role should naturally fall to the male partner. She is the mastermind behind all of Macbeth’s evil deeds. Lady Macbeth has such greed and desire to be Queen of Scotland, that she will do practically anything to seize the throne. She immediately forces Macbeth to act on the witches prophecies and murder Duncan in his sleep.
She basically questions his man hood at one point and and claims she would slay a baby for him. In return this motivates Macbeth to man up and slay Duncan. To make sure Macbeth goes through with the homicide Lady Macbeth gives him incentive , " We fail/ But screw your courage to the sticking place/ And we'll not fail..."( Shakespeare 1.6.59-61). She states that if
Introduction Shakespeare sees powerful and ambitious women as evil and bewitched because men are meant to be the powerful ones and women are meant to be weak. Today we see powerful and ambitious women as no different than men and they are in our community everywhere. For example Shakespeare shows this with Lady Macbeth being ambitious about being queen and this would be conveyed as being disturbed and abnormal in the 17th century. Lady Macbeth’s ambition to be queen is first disturbed in act 5 scene 1 when she is in a room alone reading her soliloquies and does not her understanding on her surroundings. She then slips into a slope of depression, guilt and insomnia.
If it were not for his wife, Macbeth would never have decided to murder Duncan. In MacBeth, a famous Shakespeare play, MacBeth, with the aid of his lover, Lady MacBeth, murders Duncan, King of Scotland, for his throne. In the Act in which this occurs, before the deed is done MacBeth is doubtful and wavers. Lady Macbeth sees this as weak and cowardly and manipulates him into killing the King. Lady MacBeth plays an important part in Duncan’s murder because it is she who had the greater ambition to kill him.
/ I would, while it was smiling in my face, / have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums / and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you / have done this” (Lady Macbeth, I, vii, 63-67). Now we see here that Mrs. Macbeth has a little bit of power over her husband, and when she wants to make a point, she does it, and she does it well. Now does this demonstrate courage? By this point in the play, she has come up with a plan to obtain what she thinks is right for her and her husband, and has convinced him to go through with the ultimate sin: killing the king. I believe that Lady Macbeth is full of courage.