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Lady Macbeth Essay Mark and Feedback

‘Lady Macbeth is a female character who changes during the play.’Starting with this moment in the play, explore how far you agree with this view.
Write about:
• how Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth in this extract
• how far Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as a female character who changes in the play as a whole.
[30 marks]
AO4 [4 marks]

The given extract is as follows;

LADY MACBETH: Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One, two. Whythen ’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 cancall our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?
DOCTOR: Do you mark that?
LADY MACBETH: The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now? What, will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’that, my Lord, no more o’that. You mar all with this starting.
DOCTOR: Go to, go to; you have known what you should not.
GENTLEWOMAN: She has spoke what she should not, I am sure of that. Heaven knows what she has known.
LADY MACBETH: Here’s the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. O, O, O.
DOCTOR: What a sigh is there! The heart is sorely charged.
GENTLEWOMAN: I would not have such a heart in my bosom for the dignity of the whole body.
DOCTOR: Well, well, well –
GENTLEWOMAN: Pray God it be, sir.
DOCTOR: This disease is beyond my practice; yet I have known those which have walked in their sleep who have died holily in their beds.
LADY MACBETH: Wash your hands, put on your night-gown, look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on’s grave.
DOCTOR: Even so?
LADY MACBETH: To bed, to bed; there’s knocking at the gate.Come, come, come, come, give me your hand; what’s donecannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed.

Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as a female character who experiences mental decay and guilt as the eponymous tragedy progresses. In this extract during Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth experiences psychosis as she commands for the imaginary spots of blood on her hand to be removed through ‘Out, damned spot! Out, I say!’ The adjective ‘damned’ highlights Lady Macbeth’s guilt as she comprehends the heinous crime of regicide she has committed, which would be seen as one of the most evil crimes one could carry out in the Jacobean era, hence she deserves the punishment of damnation. The repetition of ‘Out’ can be viewed as Lady Macbeth ordering God to forgive her, almost creating a metaphor that removing her spot will get rid of the damnation. Shakespeare purposefully illustrates this impact on Lady Macbeth to show the Jacobean audience, mainly those with a noble status, the eternal punishment they will suffer if they choose to break the Great Chain of Being and Divine Right of Kings.

This contradicts with Lady Macbeth during the start of the play in act 1, where she commands spirits to ‘unsex me here And fill me from the crown to the toe topfull Of direst cruelty’. The command to ‘unsex me’ shows how Lady Macbeth attempts to get rid of her female characteristics, as in the Jacobean era, women were denied power due to it being a patriarchal society. Shakespeare makes a direct link between how women are denied power, identity and authority, and the need to turn to evil and the supernatural for help. Furthermore, Lady Macbeth asking to be filled from ‘crown to the toe topfull’ shows her utter ambition. ‘crown’ signifies Lady Macbeth’s strong desire to be Queen, which reflects the mental state she suffers from later in the play. Moreover, Lady Macbeth’s desire for evil changes throughout the play as ‘direst cruelty’ illustrates her as a Machiavellian villainess at the beginning of the play. Lady Macbeth is invoking the power of the supernatural therefore she believes she needs to be cruel to succeed. Alternatively, ‘direst cruelty’ can be seen as criticising the idea of what it is to be a man, perhaps suggesting that Shakespeare is critical of the patriarchal society that produces these kinds of murderous men.

Lady Macbeth is illustrated as a Machiavellian villainess who slowly decays mentally, She commands Macbeth through the simile ‘look like th’ innocent flower’ , along with the metaphor ‘But be the serpent under’t’. The use of the imperatives ‘look’ and ‘Be’ highlights the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth is in control despite being in a patriarchal society, hence she is punished later in the play through her sleepwalking and hallucinations of blood in her hands. The ‘serpent’ links to the story of Genesis in the Bible, where Satan takes the form of a serpent, where the serpent temps Eve to tempt Adam, clearly symbolising Lady Macbeth as Eve. The serpent clearly links Lady Macbeth to the supernatural and hell. Shakespeare intertextually refers to Genesis to highlight duplicity and evil, which would evoke fear the superstitious Jacobean audience at a time where witches and the supernatural were greatly believed in.