Lady Macbeth

• Lady Macbeth: 'Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness To catch the nearest way.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'Hie thee hither, That I may pour my spirits in thine ear And chastise with the valor of my tongue All that impedes thee from the golden round.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full Of direst cruelty!'
• Lady Macbeth: 'Make thick my blood Stop up the access and passage to remorse.'
• Lady Macbeth's wish

  She wants evil spirits to clog her arteries to feel no remorse for murdering the King
• Lady Macbeth: 'Come to my woman's breasts, and take my milk for gall.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'Look like th' innocent flower, But be the serpent under 't.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'I have given suck, and know How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me: I would, while it was smiling in my face, Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this.'
• Lady Macbeth's scorn

  She heaps scorn on Macbeth's declaration to not proceed with the murder plan
• Lady Macbeth: 'But screw your courage to the sticking-place, And we'll not fail.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had done't.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'It will make us mad.'
• Lady Macbeth's foreshadowing

  She foreshadows her own insanity
• Lady Macbeth: 'Infirm of purpose!'
• Lady Macbeth: 'A little water clears us of this deed.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'What's done, is done.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'Nought's had, all's spent, Where our desire is got without content; 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'Are you a man?'
• Lady Macbeth: 'Out, damned spot! out, I say!—One: two: why, then, 'tis time to do't.—Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?'
• Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking

  Memories of the murder night tumble out, showing irony as she cannot rid herself of the metaphorical blood stain
• Lady Macbeth: 'The thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?—What, will these hands ne'er be clean?'
• Lady Macbeth's remorse

  She shows remorse for the killing of Lady Macduff, her hands stained like her mind
• Lady Macbeth: 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.'
• Lady Macbeth: 'What's done cannot be undone.'
• Lady Macbeth's juxtaposition

  She shows her mental destruction and the breakdown of her moral centre
• Lady Macbeth: 'Banquo's buried; he cannot come out on's grave.'
• "Come to my woman's breasts / And take my milk for gall"
• "Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none."
• "I have given my soul's consent"
• Out, damned spot; out, I say. One, two, -- why, then ‘tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? – Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.
• I laid their daggers ready;He could not miss ‘em. Had he not resembledMy father as he slept, I had done’t.
• But screw your courage to the sticking-place,And we’ll not fail
• When you durst do it, then you were a man” “Great Glamis! Worthy Cawdor!” “Yet I do fear thy nature: it is too full o' the milk of human kindness.” “Come, come, come, come, give me your hand.
• 'Out, damned spot! out, I say!'' She says this line in Act V, Scene I, when she hallucinates Duncan's blood on her hands.
• "I fear thy nature, it is too full o'th'milk of human kindness" (Lady Macbeth)


  AMBITION and GENDER

  Beginning act1scene5

  
  

  - Lady Macbeth says this ironically - not because she is scared of his black and deep desires, but because she fears he doesn't have the guts to make them a reality.

  - Lady Macbeth uses the symbol of breast milk to subtly question Macbeth's manliness.

  - Interesting inversion of Elizabethan gender stereotypes - it is Lady Macbeth who gains the courage to do what is necessary - no matter how violent - to put her husband on the throne.

  - Thus, it seems the witches' prophecy spurs her ambition more so than Macbeth's.

  - She begins to dismiss Macbeth's masculinity

  - Shakespeare uses the metaphor of breast milk here, to convey both how caring and feminine Lady Macbeth considers her husband.

  - This is a criticism of what she sees as his weakness, and contrasts the heroic and masculine character the audience has heard about up to this point.

  
  

  - These lines are uttered after Lady Macbeth reads her husband's letter explaining the witches' prophecy. - The statement is laden with irony, as Lady Macbeth fears not her husband's cruelty, but his kindness.

  - The obvious implication is that she realises murder will be necessary to fulfil the witches' prophecy, but she doubts her husband's capacity to go through with it.

  - This establishes Shakespeare's interrogation of Jacobean gender stereotypes, which Macbeth and his wife's relationship inverts.

  - Jacobean gender roles would have portrayed men as dominant and violent, while women were supposedly passive and fragile.

  - Yet Lady Macbeth's determination to crown her husband by any means necessary completely upends those traditional gender expectations - in fact, her ambition already seems to exceed her husband's.

  - Her reference to breast milk as a metaphor for maternal love and care, feminine traits which she is applying to her husband, emasculates Macbeth (she takes away or admonishes his masculinity).

  - This suggests that his hesitation to execute the murder reflects a lack of manly courage, something which Lady Macbeth instead tries to embody.

  - It is worth noting that Lady Macbeth's deriding or derisive tone seems to condemn human kindness as merely a womanly weakness, which should be a noble characteristic, Shakespeare seems to be saying that ambition cannot coexist with morality, something which Lady Macbeth has already recognised.
• "Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty" (Lady Macbeth)


  AMBITION, GENDER and ORDER VS CHAOS

  beginning act1scene5

  
  

  - This haunting soliloquy is delivered after Lady Macbeth has resolved to kill Duncan.

  - She appeals to supernatural forces, the spirits, to rid her of any mortal weaknesses, like guilt or compassion, which might prevent her from going through with the murder.

  - By pleading to be "unsexed", she's aligning such weaknesses, which are simply just normal human morals, with the supposed flaws of women.

  - The "direst cruelty" she seeks, is a distantly masculine characteristic, with which she wants to replace her feminine infirmity.

  - In the metaphor of being physically filled "from the crown to the toe", crown means the top of the head, but also doubles as a pun - referring to the object of her ambition, revealing the horrifying extent to which Lady Macbeth is prepared to sacrifice her feminine identity, and give herself over to male brutality.

  - In effect, Shakespeare is identifying his contexts - glorification of males as violent and cruel, and the pressure to fit this mould as the root of this tragedy

  
  

  - Praying from her castle rooftop to demons - a horrifying image to Shakespeare's deeply Christian audience - she offers to sacrifice her humanity so that her ambition can be fulfilled.

  - She goes on to pray that the heaven's don't witness Duncan's murder.

  
  

  - Lady Macbeth's adoption of masculine traits is clear in her famous soliloquy in act 1 scene 5.

  - She commands dark spirits to 'unsex her' or take away her femininity, and come to her "woman's breasts" to take her sweet milk for bile: Shakespeare uses poisonous, vivid imagery to reinforce her ruthlessness, using high modality language, to compel the spirits to:

  
  

  "fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty."

  
  

  - The images compound, or gather with her wishes to "make thick my blood", and calling on "murdering ministers", to enhance this characterisation.

  
  

  - Chaos also occurs on social and individual levels, and no character gives themselves over to chaos more than Lady Macbeth.

  - Shakespeare's audience had old-fashioned or archaic ideas about what the social order was in a family.

  - The average Jacobean believed that a noble lady was a kind and shy person whose job was to get married, make many babies, and hope one of them was a boy, who could be the family heir.

  - Lady Macbeth's monologue in Act 1 scene 5 is a direct attack on every aspect of this natural order: For the first two acts of the play, Lady Macbeth subverts the traditional order of Elizabethan couples, by being highly masculine.
• "A little water clears us of this deed" (Lady Macbeth)

  AMBITION and GUILT

  Beginning act2scene2

  - Although Lady Macbeth claims that "a little water clears us of this deed" (act 2 scene 2), appealing to the symbolism of holy water to try and absolve them of the crime, Macbeth is not so sure.
• "Look like th' innocent flower, but be the serpent under't" (Lady Macbeth)


  APPEARANCE VS REALITY and SYMBOLISM

  act1scene5 beginning

  
  

  - The flower and serpent are symbols which represent the different ways Lady Macbeth wants her husband to behave.

  - The first part of the quote is a simile, where she asks her husband to look pretty and presentable, like a flower.

  - The second half is a metaphorical command to be as wicked and deadly as a snake (biblical reference to the serpent as the devil/source of all evil).

  
  

  - This quote exemplifies the dichotomy between appearances and reality - this theme is pervasive throughout the play.

  - The contrast of imagery between the idyllic flower, which symbolises beauty and virtue, and the serpent, which is the biblical symbol of evil, establishes the vast difference between the fair exteriors that characters deceitfully present, and the foul reality that underlies them.

  - Lady Macbeth also uses imperative - as she commands her husband in an inversion of typical gender roles.

  - Here, she has succeeded in unsexing herself, and adopting the masculine cruelty and dominance she thought her husband lacked.

  - However, Shakespeare's biblical allusion to Eden, through referencing the serpent, aligns Lady Macbeth with Eve, as if she is tempting an innocent man into sin.

  - Some critics argue that Shakespeare suggests that it is the inherent evil of women that causes all this chaos.

  - Inversion of typical Jacobean gender roles as LMB commands her husband with imperative language.
• "Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't" (Lady Macbeth)


  APPEARANCE VS REALITY

  Beginning act 2 scene 2

  - For all her perceived strength, Lady Macbeth too, seems to have been putting on a 'false face' to the audience.

  - Even after she struck a bargain with demons, to turn her into a ruthless murderer, and persuaded Macbeth to help her kill Duncan, we get a hint in act 2 scene 2 that she's actually not bold and remorseless.

  - As she is waiting for Macbeth to return after murdering the King, she complains that she would have killed Duncan herself [quote]

  - This is the same character who bargains with the devil and constantly mocks her husband for being a coward - but then Macbeth appears, and the façade goes straight back on.

  
  

  - Additionally, despite her best efforts, Lady Macbeth is not completely able to escape her sense of guilt.

  - She realises she cannot kill Duncan, after she sees him sleeping

  - This shifts the image of Lady Macbeth from demonic, to a woman desperate to fill the hole in her heart with a crown.
• "My hands are of your colour, but I shame to wear a heart so white" (Lady Macbeth)


  APPEARANCE VS REALITY

  Beginning act 2 scene 2

  
  

  - After returning the daggers to the guards, she mocks her husband and states:

  [quote]

  - Meaning, my hands are covered in blood, but I'm the only red-blooded person here.

  - In these times, the colour white was seen as insipid and cowardly, just like in "lily-livered" (Macbeth says this to a servant in act 5).

  - We don't get to see Lady Macbeth's descent into madness, but it manifests in her sleep, when her guard and 'false face' is down, and the reality of her thoughts can infiltrate her body.

  - Needless to say, Lady Macbeth's offstage suicide shows that reality had finally overtaken her social appearance, and she can't handle it anymore.