In Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” and both, Browning’s Victorian Dramatic Monologue “The Laboratory” there is a variety of disturbed characters. In Macbeth it is Lady Macbeth who is driven to guilt due to her, convincing her husband to murder King Duncan. In the Laboratory, a woman discovers her husband has been unfaithful to her and is trying to further his own social standing by sleeping with women of higher social order than he is. She’s obsessed to gain her revenge through her obsession of “poison.” In Act 5 Scene 1 of Macbeth, Shakespeare has used the technique of Dramatic Monologue. Act 5, Scene 1 is the sleepwalking scene which already shows her disturbed mind to the audience.
When Jonathan Harker first visits Dracula’s castle, he is confronted by three female vampires in a scene where he drifts in and out of consciousness. In his journal, Harker describes the three vampires: “There was something about them that made me uneasy, some longing and at the same time some deadly fear. I felt in my heart a wicked, burning desire that they would kiss me with those red lips. It is not good to note this down, lest some day it should meet Mina’s eyes and cause her pain; but it is the truth” (Stoker, 3.40). As Harker tries to control his sexual desire for the three vampires, he feels both attracted to them, and disgusted by them.
Explore how Shakespeare and browning reveal strong feelings using Lady Macbeth and the laboratory. The laboratory by Robert Browning is about how one woman in aristocratic France because of betrayal and jealousy can lead to attempting to kill her partners’ new lover. The woman is at a laboratory to have a poison created to kill her rival. During which she has flash backs revealing what she has witnessed. The woman in the dramatic monologue is the woman with the strong feelings unlike normal women of the 18th century who would have gone to a church to pray to god, for him to give them strength, but this woman decided to go to a laboratory which was considered as the devils house, “devil’s-smithy”, to take actions into her own hands.
She deliberately raises Estella to be the tool of her revenge, training her beautiful ward to break men’s hearts. 1. Brief outline of ‘Macbeth’ The three witches tell Macbeth he will become thain of Cawdor and Glamis... and the king He then becomes the thain.. Then he tells his wife in a letter he wrote to her and she decides they need to kill the king Macbeth kills the king but his wife has to return the daggers to the guards because Macbeth didn’t, then
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.
The points that will be argued are, that Lady Macbeth played a large role in the murder of King Duncan, The three witches planted the idea in Macbeth’s head, and that the murder of King Duncan was all Macbeths doing. In many ways, Lady Macbeth drives Macbeth to the murder and acts as more of a physical spur, as opposed to the witches who use a mental approach. She bullies him, uses emotional blackmail and knows he is morally sensitive so he must be pushed. She mocks his bravery and knows he is a warrior and will be insulted. When Macbeth is thinking about not going ahead with the plan she says, “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”.
She immediately forces Macbeth to act on the witches prophecies and murder Duncan in his sleep. Later, when Macbeth becomes uncertain about committing the crime, it is his wife who goads and belittles him guilting him into doing something he does not necessarily want to do. When Macbeth returns with the bloody dagger after killing the King, Lady Macbeth gets angry and calls him a coward, questioning his manhood, again manipulating her husband to get what she wants – the
Macbeth sends news of the witches prophecies and his coming fortune, which sparks an unscrupulous attack on his morality by Lady Macbeth, and the audience begins to feel compassion for the scorned hero. Macbeth’s letter to Lady Macbeth describes the honor received for his valiant battle and tells of the witches’ prophecies. The message ends with affectionate words and asks that she celebrate with him. Instead of rejoicing (Crowther) she immediately begins an assault on his masculinity and values, implying that he is not strong enough to pursue the King’s crown: …Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great,
The poems Porphyria’s Lover and The Laboratory both by Robert Browning are both quite simillar in the way he tells them and sets the scene/setting are different in several ways. Porphyria’s Lover is about a man who is in love with a woman who is from a rich upper-class family so cannot stay or be seen with him. So one night when she goes to see him, he kills her, so that she cannot leave him again. The Laboratory is about a woman whose boyfriend has left her or another girl. She then wants revenge.
This misinterpretation, committed in pursuit of power, leads Macbeth to perform certain actions which result in the death of the king, the death of Macbeth’s friends, and eventually his own demise. At the start of the play, Macbeth is seeking a great amount of power. His wife, Lady Macbeth says to him, “When you durst do it, then you were a man;” (Act 1, sc. 7, line 56), suggesting that they have either considered or committed murder for the sake of their own advancement in the past. Macbeth further condones this in his action to the witches’ prophecy that he will become king.