Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are two of Shakespeare’s most famous characters. Macbeth is a brave and ambitious general who is spurred on by his wife, Lady Macbeth, to kill the king and take his place. Lady Macbeth is a strong and ruthless woman who will stop at nothing to see her husband on the throne. As their ambitions grow, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s relationship starts to unravel, leading to tragedy for both of them.
“This dead butcher and his fiendish queen,” says Malcolm of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Describe how these two characters changed throughout the play as a result of their flaws. Macbeth’s character is weak, and Lady Macbeth has a lot of power, which helps her to easily influence him.
Macbeth is also easily able to be manipulated by the witches and they play on his gullibility. Lady Macbeth is more ruthless than Macbeth and she is the one who pushes him to kill Duncan even though Macbeth is reluctant at first.
After Macbeth kills Duncan, he starts to become more paranoid and he starts to see ghosts which haunt him. Macbeth also becomes a lot more violent as he orders the deaths of Banquo and Macduff’s family. Lady Macbeth also becomes more unstable and she has sleepwalking episodes where she tries to wash her hands clean of imaginary bloodstains. By the end of the play, both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have been consumed by their ambition and guilt which leads to their downfall.
Macbeth is a brave soldier who fights for the King without hesitation in the beginning of the play, but his thirst for power and inquisitive nature drive him to the witches, who offer him a prophecy. Banquo realises there must be some kind of trick hidden in the witches’ prophecies somewhere, but Macbeth refuses to accept it, and when Lady Macbeth finds out about them, her strong desire for power and her chill disposition lead Macbeth astray. At first, Macbeth is just a little ambitious, but Lady Macbeth’s desires far exceed his, so she is able to persuade him to kill King Duncan.
Macbeth’s strong belief in the witches prophecies leads him to think that he is invincible and this overconfidence leads to his downfall. Lady Macbeth starts to feel guilty about all the murders they have committed and she eventually goes insane and kills herself. Macbeth becomes paranoid and is always afraid of being caught and killed so he kills more people to try to cover up his tracks but in the end he is caught and killed.
Macbeth has a conscious yet, because he is hesitant about murdering the King. However, because his weak nature prevails over him, he does have a conscience at this time. The dagger’s figments and Banquo’s ghost are all manifestations of Macbeth’s vivid imagination, as well as his continued worry, which all stimulate him. This is also demonstrated in his nightmarish visions, which depicts the strong idea that “he murdered sleep.”
Macbeth’s conscience is further shown when Lady Macbeth has to persuade him into killing Duncan and even after the murder, Macbeth is still worried about what he has done as his hands are “of the same colour” as the blood on them.
Lady Macbeth does not have a conscience as she is able to kill without any hesitation or remorse. She is also very ambitious and power-hungry, which drives her to push Macbeth into killing Duncan. Even after the murder, she is completely unruffled and appears to be more concerned about hiding the evidence than anything else. Throughout the play, she remains ruthless and single-minded in her pursuit of power.
Throughout the play, Macbeth’s character changes not only from what we hear about him and his thoughts from the play, but also through his actions in the play, such as murdering Banquo and subsequently Lady Macduff and her children. The insecurity that was previously present in Macbeth is demonstrated by the character’s transition throughout the performance.
After Duncan is murdered, Macbeth becomes paranoid, and his first step in securing himself is one of many that he takes to do so. Macbeth is also very superstitious; for example, when he believes the witches’ prediction that Banquo’s descendants would become king.
Macbeth is so paranoid about this that he has Banquo killed and his son run out of the country. Macbeth’s mental state deteriorates throughout the play as he becomes more and more bloodthirsty. Lady Macbeth is ambitious and it is this that leads to her downfall, she pushes Macbeth too far and when Macbeth starts to have doubts she calls him a coward. This causes Macbeth to push on and do what she wants, even though it goes against his own nature.
Lady Macbeth also shows signs of mental deterioration throughout the play, after the death of Duncan she sleepwalks and tries to wash the imaginary blood off her hands. She also commits suicide at the end of the play. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are two characters who are consumed by ambition and this leads to their downfall.
At the end of the play, when Macbeth’s wife has died and the fighting is drawing closer, he demonstrates some good. He wishes for a normal existence in which he might have lived to an honorable age, but he understands that he has forfeited this. Even after hearing that Birnam Wood is on its way to Dunsinane, Macbeth rejects this notion and fights on until he realises that Macduff was not born naturally but rather “Untimely ripped” from his mother’s womb.
Macbeth’s wife, Lady Macbeth, is one of the most evil characters in all of Shakespeare. She shows no remorse for her actions and even tries to blame Macbeth for the death of Duncan. When Macbeth kills Banquo, she is more than happy to see it and when Macduff’s family is killed, she feels nothing.
The only time we see any emotion from her is near the end of the play when she is sleepwalking and talking about the murders she has committed. Even then, she does not feel any guilt or remorse, only regret that she was not able to kill more people. In the end, Lady Macbeth goes insane and kills herself, which is probably the best thing she could have done.