Lady Macbeth Quotes

Lady Macbeth calls to the spirit to rid her of her feminity and fill her like a man, one with deadly cruelty. This shows how the female qualities Lady Macbeth possessed kept her back by her delicacy to commit such churlish crimes. After Lady Macbeth was stripped, she was later able control Macbeth's actions and take the lead in Act 2, Scene 2. "Why worthy thane, you unbend your noble strength to think so brainsickly of things," She continues to call his actions weak so unlike

In these ways, the Lady manipulates Macbeth and attempts to live through him to accomplish her thirst for power. She knows this is the only way to achieve her

When Macbeth comes out of Duncan's chambers with the dagger, he is scared and says that his hands are covered with the blood of the man he just murdered. Lady Macbeth calls him a coward and then goes to the servants and smears the blood on them so they will look guilty. Later, when Macduff is telling people that Duncan has been murdered, Lady Macbeth uses the gender roles to her advantage and she acts like she is surprised and in shock after

Because of her dominant personality, Lady Macbeth wants to have the full knowledge and pride of knowing she has accomplished her goal of obtaining immense power and seems to believe that the way to truly get this power is to do it herself. Lady Macbeth wants the influence of what is happening around her to truly know that her desires are being fulfilled and she does this by

Lady Macbeth craves to be cold, ruthless and in control, which are typical masculine traits in Shakespeares time. As a result of this she begins manipulating her husband to gain what she wants. She manipulates Macbeth with great effectiveness, which she achieves by undermining his objections to murdering Duncan. when she sees him hesitating to go forward with the murder, she begins repeatedly questioning his manhood until he feels that he must do it just to prove himself and his masculinity; 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”. Lady Macbeth abuses her power by planting the idea in her husband's mind that anybody who stood in her and Macbeth’s way on the journey to reach royalty was to be destroyed, and made him feel as if he was less a man if he decided against it.

When Macbeth initially confides in his wife, Lady Macbeth, about his thoughts of murdering King Duncan, she calls upon the aid of “spirits that tend on mortal thoughts” to “unsex [her]” so she may be filled with “direst cruelty” to prepare for the crime (Shakespeare 1.5.47-50). Lady Macbeth’s desire to have her gender taken away from her suggests that she believes her femininity is a weakness that prevents her from involving herself in murder and that she must become more masculine in order to become strong enough to do it. Later, on the night before Macbeth and Lady Macbeth put their plan to murder King Duncan into action, Macbeth’s good sense begins to return and he begins to have second thoughts about killing the kind ruler. However, Lady Macbeth chastises him, asking “what beast” had the courage to “break this enterprise to [her]”, and that “to be more than what you were” would make him “so much more the man” (Shakespeare 1.7.53-55, 57-58). Macbeth is successfully provoked into proceeding with the plan by having his pride and masculinity attacked.

It triggers Macbeth’s paranoia and guilt, resulting in his overly desperate reliance on Lady Macbeth to the point that she must assume the dominant role between the two and take on the responsibility for concealing Duncan’s murder. Lady Macbeth assumes control and directs Macbeth to “carry them and smear the sleepy grooms with blood” (Shakespeare 2.2. 63-64) in order to sneakily incriminate the guards and alleviate the worries of her husband while mitigating his erratic behaviour. However, not only does Lady Macbeth now have to persevere through her own internal struggles as a consequence of the murder, but she must also be the point of support and relief for Macbeth that she is so seeking for herself. This dissonance of her responsibilities clashing with her own feelings intends to showcase the odds against this master manipulator.

Stated in Act 1 Scene 5, Lady Macbeth quotes, “Come you spirits that assist murderous thoughts, make me less like a woman and more like a man, and fill me from head to toe with deadly cruelty. The quote shows that Lady Macbeth is pleadingly asking to remove her feminine qualities, as referring back to Shakespearean times, women were known to be fragile and delicate while men were known to be strong and ruthless. She states she needs be fierce and callous to achieve her goal of becoming strong enough to seize the crown, showing that her willingness to kill King Duncan’s life for power. King Duncan was a loyal, wise and honest man in his reign of king of Scotland who generously named Macbeth Thane Of Cawdor and provided power and reputation towards the Macbeths. However, he was only to be brutally murdered in the end by Lady Macbeth.

After Macbeth’s sudden hesitancy to carry through with the murder, Lady Macbeth reveals to him that she would have “dashed the brains out” of her own child “had [she] so sworn / As you have done to this”, referring to Macbeth’s promise to kill Duncan (Shakespeare 1.7.58-59). Shakespeare composes the seemingly confident answer to convince readers and Lady Macbeth that her presence looms over her husband’s. Secondly, Lady Macbeth praises herself for her alcohol tolerance in comparison to the guards, declaring: “what hath quenched them, hath given me fire” (Shakespeare 2.2.1-2). Lady Macbeth’s rejuvenation by the alcohol which drugged two men to sleep aids Shakespeare in presenting her outward strength. Finally, Lady Macbeth chastises her husband in Act 2 through the lines: “My hands are of your colour, but I shame to wear a heart so white”

In the play, Lady Macbeth harbours this role immensely, she is power-hungry, cruel, and wicked. Her immorality is immense in the beginning of the play. being the catalyst in the murder of King Duncan, all so she and Macbeth could gain the utmost power her ambitions drive her to achieve, no matter how atrocious the actions are to gain it. This is perfectly developed when Lady Macbeth in her infamous monologue states “Unsex me here, and fill me…of direst cruelty!” (Act 1, Scene 5)

When Lady Macbeth found out about the predictions the witches had for Macbeth, she started to pressure him, even guilt tripped him about their deceased son, and made him doubt the morals he valued. As act I of Macbeth, carried on, the image and principles Macbeth had for himself began to rot away. While Macbeth desired take King Duncan’s throne, he wanted to do it the in righteous matter. Whenever Macbeth had doubts about killing King Duncan, Lady Macbeth was always there to urge him otherwise, because she cared more about power than him "Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor." (1.5 52).

As soon as she gets word of the witches prophecy, she shifts her focus to making Macbeth king and herself queen. She is a very power hungry character. It is clear that she dominates Macbeth with her words as she convinces him to murder Duncan. She questions his manhood and does absolutely anything that she can to manipulate him. “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” (Shakespeare 1.7).

Throughout time there has been plenty of famous “rip-offs”, however, I feel Shakespeare does it best with his blatant stealing from Greek mythology and tragedies. Throughout Macbeth, there are plenty of references to Greek mythology from the tragic hero narrative to the outright mention of Hecate. The Witches in Macbeth are no exception. They are displayed as all-knowing characters who work for Hecate herself and bear a strong resemblance to the three Fates or Moirai in Greek mythology. This essay will take a deeper look into the question: Are the Witches and the Moirai one and the same?

In the play Macbeth, Shakespeare crafts the witches to be evil and deceiving with a manipulative trait from the start. To the audience this emphasises the idea that they are powerful for the wrong reasons. At the beginning of play the witches enter through the stage direction “thunder and lightning” this symbolises that the witches characters are seen to be evil as the weather precedes them. This phrase creates a bitter tone that reflects onto the witches. This shows the audience that they can be despicable characters.

— Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.” After analyzing the play, when Lady Macbeth says those lines she is sleep walking and seems to be distressed because of all the things that happened. She thinks it's all because of her that many lives have been cut short. She thinks Macbeth is afraid of people finding out the truth but the one who is truly afraid is her. She's afraid she will be blamed and caught for her actions because she knows she is one of the reasons why most of the people are dead due to her encouraging Macbeth to kill all those in his way to become more powerful and eliminate those who threaten his power.