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Lady Macbeth Research Paper

779 Words4 Pages

Women in Shakespearean plays have always had important roles, sometimes even the leading role. Whether they create the main conflicts and base of the plays, or bring up interesting moral and cultural questions, they have always been put in challenging situations. Some women are stronger than others, and their effect on the play is different for each one. It’s almost unbelievable, if we take into consideration the status of women, of course with its discrimination and cruel conditions, in Shakespeare’s days - sixteenth century Elizabethan England. Shakespeare is highly sensitive to his target audience in every step of the writing process. Despite the relative insignificance of women in Elizabethan social order, Shakespeare uses them in many …show more content…

He shows Lady Macbeth with female qualities as well as with manly qualities too. When Lady Macbeth learns about the witches' prophecy that Macbeth will ultimately be King, she fears he will be excessively kind-hearted to achieve this status so she begins to take matters into her own hands. Her soliloquy imploring dark powers to take all compassion from her is appalling in its unnaturalness, "Come, you spirit, that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full Of direst cruelty". We truly see her evil and horrifying side when she starts to call the evil spirits to come and persuade her, and take control of her actions, "come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here…make thick my blood…take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers…come thick night." (Shakespeare 40-50). All these images of darkness and horror reveal the true character of Lady Macbeth. We can see her intelligent thinking when she says to Macbeth "Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it." (Shakespeare 65-66). She managed completely to twist the situation around into making herself presentable. Macbeth doesn't want to kill Duncan but she used clever methods to pressure him. She convinces him that it is his idea, then she called him a coward and finally she tells him that he can't love her, and this hits him because their relationship is so

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