Good And Evil In Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'

The British Isles have been riddled with violence going all the way back to Roman times. The Violence and gore from the time period that the play was written weave throughout the fabric of Macbeth. Lady Macbeth’s abusive, avaricious, and controlling personality is a main cause of Macbeth’s killing rampage which eventually ended both their lives. The process of turning Macbeth into a cold blooded killer began when Lady Macbeth received a letter from her husband. After reading the letter she said, “Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o’th’ milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way.” (1.5, 15-18) Lady Macbeth is questioning whether Macbeth is too kind to do what has to be done to become king. She wants to be queen so badly that she is willing to do anything, but she wants to make Macbeth kill king Duncan. All of her evil intentions are seen when she says, “That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe topful Of direst cruelty. Make my blood thick.” (1.5, 47-49) She is asking evil spirits to take the good from here and fill her with evil. This just stiffens the argument that she is willing to go to any lengths to gain power and wealth.

Therefore Lady Macbeth starts on a campaign to convince Macbeth to kill Duncan. She uses tactics that involve insulting his manhood, and making sexual incentives if he were to kill the king. But when Macbeth starts to have second thoughts she says, “What beast was ’t, then, that made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man; and to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man.”(1.7, 47-51) Here is where Lady Macbeth pushed him over the edge by saying that if he kills him he will be more of a man, but if he doesn’t he will be something lesser. She is swaying him away from talking himself out of killing his friend and