It can be argued that Lady Macbeth is the true butcher; she is the person who persuades Macbeth to kill Duncan. Macbeth’s conscience tells him not to kill the King, he actually attempts to stand up to Lady Macbeth but she uses interrogative language to belittle him. Lady Macbeth’s overpowering traits at the beginning of the play would have been seen as very unusual to an audience watching at the time it was written as females were usually dominated by their husbands. This is effective in the play because it shows how weak Macbeth was at the start of the play and shows how their personalities change after killing King Duncan; Lady Macbeth becomes
Macbeth responds, in brief, as a loyal thane to the Scottish king, but the prospect unnerves him. * The audience could see Macbeth’s ambition leading him to cursed thoughts which has been greatly *enforced and twisted* by the* malicious* witches. *The caution from the first apparition causes Macbeth to start a bloody massacre across England, killing families of people who may threaten his position. After this point in the play, we see *that *Macbeth* has* turn*ed* into a ruthless tyrant* in the hope of avoiding fate*, so desensitized to humanity that even the suicide of his wife *could not arouse grief from him. * All he could muster was* “She should have died hereafter”.
Macbeth is a little nervous at first, but Lady Macbeth is able to get Macbeth to agree with her to kill King Duncan. Macbeth still has a conscience because he is very hesitant about killing the King. He has a conscience throughout the entire play. It is Macbeth’s conscience talking when he sees the hallucinations of the dagger and the ghost of Banquo, and has a constant worry of being discovered. This is also evident in his terrible dreams in which he hallucinates a voice that cries “Macbeth does murder sleep...Macbeth shall sleep no more”(Shakespeare II, ii,43).
“More is thy due than more than all can pay” (1.4.21). King Duncan says this to show how he is grateful of Macbeth for wining the war. As events unfold, Macbeth shows his true character when he kills Duncan to become king. This shows he has a false appearance because Duncan thought the two were friends and Macbeth would not kill a relative. Towards the end of the play Macbeth gets caught up in a killing spree by hiring people to murder Banquo and his son, and by having everybody in Macduff’s castle killed: The castle of Macduff I will surprise, Seize upon fife: give to th’ edge o’ th’ sword His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate
Through analysis of Macbeth’s choices in the play, it is evident that his ruthless ambition, blind trust in the witches, cowardice towards his wife’s demands and overconfidence were the key faults that led to his demise. One of the reasons Macbeth meets his untimely tragic defeat is due to his ruthless ambition. From the moment Macbeth hears the witches’ prophecy and the first of them is realized (becoming Thane of Cawdor), Macbeth begins to seek out future ambitions: becoming the King. His personal ambition, fortified by his wife’s drive for power makes him blind to the man he was before he met the witches and before he became Thane of Cawdor. When Macbeth debates with himself regarding the pros and cons of killing Duncan he states: “I go, and it is done.
Throughout the play Lady Macbeth is the driving influence behind Macbeth and the immoral path that he chose to follow. To put it simply Lady Macbeth started the rot and persuaded the hesitant and indecisive Macbeth to “be a man” and do the deed of killing Duncan. Macbeth initially decided to “proceed no further” in the matter of killing Duncan because he had been kind to him of late bestowing the position of Thane of Cawdor on him. She responds to this by saying that if he can lose his ambition so readily, his love for her must also be changeable. Then she insults his masculinity and questions his courage.
This conflict within Hamlet is further expounded by the possibility that his father was murdered by his uncle, King Cladius. In an attempt to cope with the moral weakness of his mother, Prince Hamlet dispels any sympathetic feelings toward women causing him to ruin his relationship with Ophelia and leaving him lonely. In order to accurately interpret Shakespeare’s usage of a female’s role throughout his play it is imperative to consider the greater source of his ideas-his historical background. The historical period of the Elizabethan era influenced Shakespeare’s negative portrayal of women and thus, he uses the women in his play as tools in unraveling Prince Hamlet. In Hamlet, it can be noted that the patriarchal setup of society mirrors that of England during the Elizabethan era.
However, because Lady Macbeth has ambition beyond her status, she wants him to become King as soon as possible. The only problem for Lady Macbeth is she feels Macbeth is too nice to kill Duncan. She says “it is too full o’ the milk of human kindness”, which shows Lady Macbeth thinks of her husband as a coward. The soliloquy used by Shakespeare truly shows the disturbed mind of Lady Macbeth; creating an unsettling affect on the audience through his representation of her as a scheming and dangerous character. The use of imagery reveals that witchcraft was a fascination of Elizabethan England.
Macbeth is the real villain and Lady Macbeth is just a partner in crime, egging him on because of her desire to be Queen. Macbeth was loyal to his King and was an excellent soldier. However his wife, Lady Macbeth could see a better future for Macbeth as King after Macbeth tells her about the witches and their prophesies in a letter. Despite these conflicting ideas, it was Macbeth himself who decided to murder Duncan and the others. It seems that most people believe that Macbeth is the real villain of the play, after firstly killing the King but then Banquo and Macduff’s family but through Macbeth’s own ambition and desire for power, Lady Macbeth was able to manipulate and evoke weaknesses in Macbeth’s character to cause his respectable needs as a loyal solider, to turn into evil motivations.
She pushes for Macbeth to do the unthinkable all so that they may become Kind and Queen. She accuses Macbeth of not acting like a man. “When you durst do it, then you were a man”, if he went ahead with killing the King. This was a great force for Macbeth to proceed with the task. When he finally goes