Lady Macbeth Essay, Research Paper

William Shakespeare wrote a lot of plays, some of which were tragedies. Through out the years people have been studying these plays in order to figure out Shakespeare s intentions for writing them. These analytical studies have convinced people that they have found the purpose behind these great mysteries. Unfortunately, not everyone has the same views. One of Shakespeare s great gifts was being able to create characters that were very real and mysterious. Because of this many people are fooled and believe that Lady Macbeth is good and only wants to support her husband. Lady Macbeth s true evil led to the killing spree that is present in Macbeth. Even before she seen Macbeth after his encounter with the witches she already had a plan. This is seen in Act 1 Scene 5 lines 42-46. A passage that takes place right after Lady Macbeth reads the letter from her husband that informs her about the witches. In these lines Lady Macbeth is trying to numb her heart and hide her conscience. She does this so that she may go through with her well-prepared plan and do a better job of convincing her husband to murder Duncan. In fact she tries everything to convince Macbeth including insulting him and making fun of his man hood. By doing this Lady Macbeth hoped that Macbeth s self-esteem would disintegrate and that he would try to prove her wrong. In a way she was right. Macbeth did feel bad and didn t want to disappoint his wife; however, if Lady Macbeth didn t make her plans appear so innocent and foolproof it s unlikely that Macbeth would have gone through with it. We see this in Act 1 Scene 7 lines 64-67. In these lines Lady Macbeth tells her husband that she will charm the guards and give them alcohol. She will do this in order to cloud their memories and make sure they didn t tie Macbeth to Duncan s death.

Lady Macbeth finally got her wish. Duncan was dead and no one suspected Macbeth. Now she and her husband will step up to the throne and nothing can go wrong. Unfortunately, things didn t turn out that way. Macbeth became more independent and stopped relying on his wife. Even when he was afraid of what may happen to him he still never confides in Lady Macbeth. He committed more murders and rarely even talked to his wife. Lady Macbeth tried to get involved by talking to him and trying to comfort him but that didn t help. That is when Lady Macbeth pulled her last stunt. She felt so left out and alone that she pretended to be mad. This is seen in Act 5 Scene 1 lines 34-39, 41-44, and 63-65. This is Lady Macbeth s sleepwalking scene and in these lines she relived the night of Duncan s murder. Most people believe that this scene is Shakespeare s way of showing Lady Macbeth s good side but that is very unlikely. How many people do you know sleepwalk with a light? In this scene Lady Macbeth decides to fool her husband and win his heart back. By repeating her words from the night of the murder she hopes to frighten Macbeth and make him realize how much he depended on her. She believes that Macbeth would be so stunned by her words that in a manner of concealing the truth he would get closer to her in order to comfort her and keep her quiet. Unfortunately Macbeth is too busy to notice his wife s plead which leads to her suicide. In conclusion Lady Macbeth is the driving force behind the murder. If it weren t for her manipulation and planning Macbeth would have never killed Duncan. The witches words would come true eventually and the universe wouldn t be disrupted. A lot of lives would have been saved and Macbeth and his wife could have lived a happy life.