Macbeth, also known as The Scottish Play is a play written by William Shakespeare. The play shows themes of paranormal activity, royalty, regicide and many more. Unlike most plays in the Jacobean era, Shakespeare made the female characters untraditional. He showed them as the masterminds. Possibly the most untraditional character in the play is Lady Macbeth, a bloodthirsty woman that would stop at no extent to get what she wants. Placing her far from the soft, vulnerable image that women had at the time. Perhaps one of her most powerful scenes in the play is her Soliloquy, which will be analyzed more in-depth as her character is examined.
Lady Macbeth is presented as murderous at the beginning of her soliloquy, “The raven himself is hoarse”.
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She becomes crueler and more psychotic as the script develops. “Fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty!” The word crown may foreshadow to what happens after Duncan is murdered. It also may show that Lady Macbeth may possibly be a very cruel queen that is cruel to the people. The phrase “direst cruelty” means that she wants to be filled with the most terrible and dire evil possible. Direst is a superlative which shows that she doesn't want to be only one kind of evil or have evil in her, it means she wants to be the worst kind of wicked possibly imaginable and attainable. The use of the exclamation mark shows the aggression of her speech and the loud and powerful tone she speaks in. It could also show the shock of the audience when they hear her vile thoughts spoken out loud. The use of the word “fill” shows that she does not want to be only partially with corruptness, she wanted to be filled with it to the brim. A Jacobean audience would have been shocked with that use of words because they do not see women as a threat or as a being capable of such desires. However a modern day audience would be more shocked at the level of evil she aspires to be. She also starts to mention things about becoming power hungry. “Make thick my blood”, the fact that she wants her blood to be so thick that no remorse or mercy can pass through it shows how ruthless. The use of the word blood shows that she doesn't want to have normal human functions anymore, and wants to close all passages to remorse. To a Jacobean audience Lady Macbeth would be seen as the farthest thing from a woman possible since she wanted to have no emotions. Unlike how women at the time who were believed to be very sensitive. She also is presented as being unmotherly. This is emphasized later on in the soliloquy. “Take my milk for gall”, this links with the past point because it shows how