Macbeth's Butcher And His Fiend-Like Queen

In Macbeth, Shakespeare presents a ‘butcher and his fiend-like queen.’ To what extent would you agree with this presentation of the two main characters in Acts 1 to 3?

In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Macbeth is portrayed as a ‘butcher’ whilst Lady Macbeth is ‘his fiend-like queen.’ However, it can be said that Shakespeare disagrees with these views; he provides a contrast in the views of these characters as the audience are presented with Macbeth’s moral conscience and consequent suffering and Lady Macbeth’s dissimulation.

Shakespeare depicts Macbeth as a ‘butcher’ and tyrannical leader in order to warn the audience of the chaos ensued if the king of a country is not its rightful leader. This mercilessly cruel nature is exposed when Macbeth plots

Whilst Banquo is hesitant and questions the intentions and existence of the witches, ‘Or have we eaten on the insane root,’ Macbeth demands to know more of what the witches are offering him. This demanding tone is used in imperative verbs such as ‘Stay’ and ‘Tell’, showing the determination in Macbeth to act upon his ambitious drive. Another way in which Macbeth can be described as a ‘butcher’ is when he kills one of his closest friends, a mere obstacle in the way of his ‘vaulting ambition’. While he is plotting to kill Banquo with the murderers he is persuading to help him, he speaks in blank verse. This calmly controlled speech implies that Macbeth’s cunning is able to persuade these murderers further, with his imposing sense of authority. Because he is calm, the audience is aware of the potential of evil within him. Language used by Macbeth , when referencing to killing, is dark and sinister. He often speaks of animals, which are nocturnal or considered ill omens, such as wolves and ravens. Wolves are also predators and this can be associated with the predatory nature within Macbeth. The soliloquy which references ‘the wolf’ uses the imagery of darkness where nature ‘seems dead’. The death of nature can also show the dismissal and absence of God and his light in the sinful actions of

To prepare herself, she calls upon evil spirits so ‘That no compunctious visitings of nature/ Shake my fell purpose,’. ‘Compunctious visitings of nature’ are the signals of the natural human conscience, which controls and guarantees that others are treated with kindness and consideration. She wants to be unnatural, so that she can be ‘fell’ - deadly. Lady Macbeth can also be considered ‘fiend-like’ as she is determined to suppress the femininity of her nature. She commands ‘murdering ministers’ to ‘take [her] milk for gall.’ Milk represents the pure and feminine disposition of Lady Macbeth, a disposition of which women were expected to be of contextually. However, Lady Macbeth wishes for this expectation of purity to be replaced with ‘gall’, which is poison. Whilst milk is natural and the source of life, poison is unnatural within the body and can be representative of death. The ‘murdering ministers’ she has commanded can be portrayed as the devil, which means that Lady Macbeth invites evil. The invitation and welcoming of evil by Lady Macbeth proves that she is