Lady Macbeth Controlled Analysis

1276 Words6 Pages
Macbeth Shakespeare Controlled Essay Within this essay I am going to analyse ‘Macbeth’ and a few poems from Robert Browning, focusing on the characters’ voices created by the authors within the texts. I am going to analyse Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s changing/deteriorating state of mind and the language Shakespeare uses to convey this to his audience, past and present. In addition, I am going to examine a series of Robert Browning poems to see if he has employed similar linguistic devices. Within ‘Macbeth’, Shakespeare has made use of the soliloquy form to create a clear sense of the character’s voice. This form gives the audience an insight into the mind of the character and the issues that that character is wrestling with. Similarly,…show more content…
This suggests that her mind is unstable here because she plans to make sure that Macbeth ‘shall be what thou art promised.’ In other words, she is going to take control to make sure that the witches’ prophecies are fulfilled. It could be argued that Lady Macbeth decides to fulfil the prophecies because she loves her husband so intensely. Lady Macbeth uses very positive adjectives in this scene to describe her husband (‘great’, ‘worthy’, etc.), in much the same way as Macbeth does in his letter to describe his wife (‘dearest partner of greatness’). They clearly have an extremely passionate relationship and Shakespeare portrays that Lady Macbeth is willing to do whatever it takes to assist her husband. You could argue that the idea of potential power, or moving up the social hierarchy, goes to Lady Macbeth’s head and that her motivation for helping Macbeth is rather selfish-she alone wants the power. It could also be argued that the ‘fatal’, ‘gall’, ‘murdering’, ‘mischief’, ‘night’, and ‘Hell’ also support the previous point. The audience never actually meet the ‘real’ Lady Macbeth without the influence of the witches. As there is such a huge supernatural element to this scene and it is so carefully attached to Lady Macbeth in this scene, it makes me question how the Elizabethan audience would have reacted to her character. As we know they were such a deeply religious, superstitious audience, I imagine that the idea of becoming possessed by ‘spirits’ would have made a huge impact on their psyche and their own moral judgement towards the characters and their behaviours. Even a modern audience is shocked by the graphic imagery of the ‘knife’ and the ‘wound’ in this passage but the Elizabethan audience would have been particularly disturbed because James I, King on the throne at the time believed ‘sit upon God his throne in the earth and have the count
Open Document