The role of trauma impacts the human brain in a multitude of ways. In Shakespeare’s acclaimed tragedy, Macbeth, the trauma of death, specifically murder, affects the moral compass of Macbeth and of those around him, including his wife Lady Macbeth. After Duncan’s death, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth go through fundamental changes in character. Becoming more ambitious, manipulative and deceitful, Macbeth’s nature comes to mimic that of a pre-coronated Lady Macbeth, who exhibits all of these characteristics previously.
As newly crowned king, Macbeth demonstrates similar ambitiousness to that of Lady Macbeth’s in earlier Acts, while Lady Macbeth becomes the more submissive of the two. The relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth before the Duncan’s murder, is best represented in Act 1, scene 7, when Lady Macbeth insults her husband for his apprehension about the Duncan murder. She relentlessly questions him saying, “Was the hope drunk/Wherein you dressed yourself? Hath it slept since?/And wakes it now to look so green and pale/At what it did so freely?” (1.7.35-38). The discussion between the married couple in Act 3, scene 2, signals the change in their relationship. Alone, Lady Macbeth reflects on the recent events and says, “Nought’s had, all’s spent/Where our desire is got without content,” which contradicts her earlier giddiness about becoming queen (3.2.4-5). Upon hearing her husband enter the room, Lady Macbeth tells her husband, “what’s done, is done” signalling her