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Examples Of Mental Illness In Lady Macbeth

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Lady Macbeth is a major part in the famous Shakespearian play, Macbeth. This is One of the many tragedies written by Shakespeare during the Renaissance era. Throughout the play lady Macbeth shows symptoms of a mental illness through her erratic behavior. Lady Macbeth strongly suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder based off her lack of sleep, reoccurring dreams, and random outburst. It becomes clear throughout the play that lady Macbeth suffers from some forum of illness as she drives herself to death with her disorder.
Macbeth was written during the renaissance era by William Shakespeare, when tragic plays were popular. The play was based on Scottish noble who received a prophecy from three witches that he would someday be the king. Macbeth took this information and ran with it, he begun plotting his plan to be king. With the encouragement and help from his wife lady Macbeth, the two were able to kill the king and his son thus preventing him from becoming king. Macbeth wasn’t so sure about this whole plan for power, but after lady Macbeth received a letter from Macbeth telling …show more content…

Lady Macbeth shows signs of being not in touch with reality as she refers to the men she just kills as “sleeping and dead are but as pictures’’(mac.2,50-51). All her symptoms point to post traumatic stress disorder as the mental illness she suffers with. Professor William Copeland and duke university stated
“Post-traumatic stress disorder is connected to a traumatic event or a series of tragic events in a person’s life” This implies a connection of post-traumatic stress disorder and lady Macbeth. During the end of the play lady Macbeth was under care from a doctor. The doctor told lady Macbeth “therein the patient must minister to herself” (mac.5,54-64). Lady Macbeth later died due to her illness that drove her to her

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