Mabet - Lady Macbeth's influence
Uploaded by mattblome on Nov 09, 2001
How important is the influence of Lady Macbeth on her husband? Lady Macbeth plays a key role in influencing her husband to take the path that he does. She is the catalyst that effectively unleashes Macbeth’s true side of evil. Throughout the play we can see that she has a strong influence on him and is a primary cause for increasing Macbeth’s ambition. Lady Macbeth’s words to her husband as well as her many powerful soliloquies show us her great desire to become Queen and hence urge Macbeth to murder Duncan as well as begin his reign of tyranny. However, in no way can Lady Macbeth be seen as the sole influence on Macbeth. Although Macbeth appears to be greatly subordinate to his wife in terms of levels of evil, he is still an extremely ambitious and powerful character. She greatly helps him throughout the play to get him through various problems. The supernatural also plays an important role in Macbeth’s life. Macbeth and his wife have a very loving relationship in which they have great influence in one and other. In the earlier acts of the play we can see that Lady Macbeth’s words mean a lot to her husband, giving the impression that she is definitely the dominant figure in the relationship. Lady Macbeth has a strong influence on her husband however he is a strong and ambitious character without her.
Lady Macbeth is an influence on her husband in many different ways, for many different reasons. We discover that as soon as she opens her husband’s letter she immediately begins to scheme and plot, showing her true evil and ambition. We can immediately become aware that she wants Macbeth to become King so she can become Queen of Scotland. She is unsure whether Macbeth is too kind and without the evil that needs to merge with his already prominent ambition. As said in her famous soliloquy, ‘I fear…is too full’o the milk of human kindness, to catch the nearest way’. For this reason, she influences him greatly into the prospect of murdering the king. The thought of becoming Queen pushes her and causes her to act outrageously. She calls on spirits, showing the presence of the supernatural, saying such things as ‘come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here…make think my blood…take my milk from gall’. She decides to pour all her spirits of evil...