The deterioration of Lady Macbeth over the course of the play ‘Macbeth’ Essay Example

him and also what she will do: "And chastise with the valour of tongue / All that impedes thee from the golden round".The third audience is the actual audience watching the play while she is not speaking directly to them she is, in a sense intentionally showing them what she is thinking, unlike her third speech, during which she is oblivious to all other forms of audience outside of her own mind. Similarly, during her third speech, the structure is illogical; she moves from one thought to the next unpredictably and there is no correlation between thoughts, also the sentences are short and, often, make very little sense in themselves.There are a number of interesting choices of words and images within this first speech, for example, "milk of human kindness" the notion of "milk" is interesting here it is referring to a woman's milk which is associated with children, and therefore innocence, and a reference to women and characteristics that would have been associated with them (in this cases it is the weakness and unwillingness or inability to fight as in Shakespeare's time three were no women in the army or in the government or anywhere that wasn't at home).The notion of milk also carries through into later in the scene when Lady Macbeth is asking for dark spirits to take the milk in her breasts for gall. Similarly, in this instance, the milk is referring to the notion of femininity.

Also there is the use of the word "chastise with the valour of tongue / All that impedes thee from the golden round" (my emphasis).To chastise is something normally done to child in order

to 'teach them a lesson' and drive away any bad habits. For her to have the confidence to place herself farther up in the hierarchy than her husband is rather incredible especially in the times that both she and Shakespeare would have been living in.One of the effective images is: "That I may pour my spirits in thine ear" not only is this an effective line in the sense that it provides the audience with a vivid image of her whispering into Macbeth's ear but also, pouring poison into somebody's ear was a well-known way of killing somebody and the audience would have known about this so it is not an accident that this image also is suggestive of Lady Macbeth poisoning Macbeth with her "spirits", that is to say, her thoughts and ideas.

The notion of poisoning also links to the milk and, more specifically, the innocence that it implies; it is as if she is tainting Macbeth's innocence with her own mind. The second speech takes place during the third act, which is directly in the middle of the play. This means it is also in the middle of Lady Macbeth's deterioration into madness. This can immediately be seen as the first half of her speech links to the third speech and the second half links to her first speech.The link in the first half is most prominent in the lines: "Where our desire is got without content: / 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy". The first of these lines shows that she is beginning to be consumed by the guilt of what she has done; she now has everything she wanted

but is not "content" while this is not the Lady Macbeth in the third speech but it is most certainly on its way to getting there.

In the second line she talks about being "safer" this demonstrates how insecure she is, as before Duncan was murdered and before the guilt started to claw at her there was no talk of being "safer" as she knew she would succeed in whatever she was undertaking. However, now the sureness has gone as a result of her worry that somebody may discover what they have done to get where they are. In fact she is so fearful that she feels no matter what they do, even if they were to die, they would not actually be safe, only slightly more safe, only "safer".This guilt and insecurity spirals out of control until it manifests itself in the spectacular display of guilt we see in the third speech. In the second half, the link lies in the last lines: "Things without all remedy / Should be without regard: what's done is done". Her absolute view of events reflects what was seen in the first speech; a confident woman who is utterly convinced that everything will work perfectly, a woman for whom there are no half-measures and who believes what cannot be fixed does not bear thinking about.

The line "Nought's had, all's spent," portrays both sides of Lady Macbeth; first we can see that she can only see things as two, very rigid, extremes of all or nothing, the rhyming words "spent"/"content and "destroy"/"joy" give emphasis to this splitting into extremes as does "all remedy" (my emphasis) here we can see the

extremities of her views as it is her belief that if it cannot be entirely solved there is no point in attempting. This splitting into extremes is the reason that the problems both she and Macbeth face affect her much more noticeably; she cannot deal with the middle ground and all of the unforeseen events that occur.All this is similar to the Lady Macbeth we see at the beginning of the play, however there is also a feeling of hopelessness in what she says; she feels that they've given everything they had into this but, because it has not turned out perfectly, they have lost it all and have nothing to show for it. The feeling of hopelessness are carried through the next few lines in "'Tis safer to be that which we destroy", a feeling that is mirrored by Macbeth when he says "better be with the dead, / Whom we (.

.. ) have sent to peace".A particularly interesting line in this speech is "what's done is done"; through the use of the positive verbs the audience can see her confidence and assurance that regardless of whether they can change events or not everything will fall into place.

The line is repeated in a similar way in Lady Macbeth's final line: "What's done cannot be undone. (...

)". However, in this case, Shakespeare uses negative verbs to illustrate that she is no-longer assured that everything will fall into place, there also lies a sense of longing in these lines; that she wishes that what's done could be undone.It is during this speech that we begin to see the psychological effects of what her deception.

We can see how, suddenly, the woman who confidently said "look like the innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't" is consumed by doubts and fears. Which makes it all the more interesting for the audience; they are not simply being told that Lady Macbeth is beginning to suffer from her actions; they are being shown it very vividly.In the third speech Lady Macbeth is again talking to herself however this time she is seen to be mad, there are number of reasons for this firstly, and most obviously, she is speaking to herself in front of two other people, the doctor and the gentlewoman.

Unlike during the second speech where what she says completely changes when Macbeth enters, showing that she is still aware of the events outside he own mind, here she continues to talk blatantly in the view of these two other people, and this has a far greater effect on the audience as they are not simply being told "Lady Macbeth is no-longer sane," they are seeing it for themselves.Secondly, very unlike the long sentences seen in the first speech, here there is little or no structure to her words; many of the sentences appear incomplete and there is almost no logical progression of thought. This has a profound effect on the audience who can see how this is in stark contrast to the Lady Macbeth that was seen in the beginning of the play.Throughout this speech Lady Macbeth is washing her hands, as she believes they are covered in Duncan's blood and no matter how much she cleans she will never be rid of the blood, earlier in the

play Macbeth stated much the same thing "my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas incarnadine," the notion of washing their hands clean of the blood also links back to the second act, immediately after the murder, Lady Macbeth says, in her ignorance of what exactly it is they have done and the effects it will have on them, "wash this filthy witness from you hand (.

.. A little water clears us of this deed" however the audience is now shown that the water has not mentally cleared her of what she's done, because while she may not actually have killed Duncan she knows that he would not be dead if not for her, which is why we see this incredible display of guilt.The changes in personality that Macbeth goes through are very different to those that occur in Lady Macbeth; in the beginning of the play we are told that Macbeth is an excellent warrior and a "worthy gentleman" this is in stark contrast to the audience's first impression of Lady Macbeth who we immediately see to be a woman with incredible ambition, and without any problem with the idea of killing the king or anybody else, for that matter, as long as it furthers her own ambitions "Stop up the access and passage to remorse,/ That no compunctious visitings of nature/ Shake my fell purpose".

However, after the murder of Duncan she begins to falter, we see that, when she is alone she in being eaten away by glut, but in the company of Macbeth, she is still the same person we saw at the beginning of the play. After the murder of Banquo

there is very little change in Lady Macbeth, however in Macbeth the audience sees striking manifestation of guilt. In the final act of the play, Lady Macbeth is overwhelmed by guilt we see her sleepwalking across the castle oblivious to everybody else.She eventually takes her own life, which is no what the audience would have expected from her at the beginning of the play. What is interesting about this is that she is has beam written out of the play before Macbeth is killed, this was likely a deliberate decision on Shakespeare's part as it demonstrates that the is less resistant to the changes from her ideal plan, and also the fact that she killed herself, as opposed to being killed, shows not only shame and guilt of her actions, but also that she is trying to run away rather confront what she has done.We can follow the deterioration of Macbeth through the three murders he commits; the first, the murder of Duncan, was done to gain the crown demonstrating clear thought.

Macbeth ordered the second murder, being Banquo's murder, to, unnecessarily, secure his position as king as Banquo could not have dethroned Macbeth, and it is not clear even if that was his intention. The third murder, the murder of Macduff's family, from which Macbeth had absolutely nothing to gain.In this murder the audience can clearly see that Macbeth is no longer the "valiant" gentleman that we saw at the beginning of the play. However, in the final act when confronted by the army outside of his castle, he regains all of his lost valour: "At least we'll die with harness on our back.

" This demonstrates the how despite Lady Macbeth's confidence in her actions at the beginning of the play, she cannot face what she has done, unlike Macbeth who rather than deteriorate even further returns to the same level of honesty and bravery that we saw at the beginning of the play.