Who Is Lady Macbeth Essay

The supernatural, whether one believes in it or not, is very present in classical literature. In fact, many of Shakespeare's plays are heavily influenced by the supernatural. A very famous play, Macbeth, has three witches that tell unchangeable prophecies and are believed to have driven Macbeth and his wife mad, but actually it drove themselves mad. In the play, Lady Macbeth goes off the rail because of her actions and Macbeth drives himself to see visions. The gruesome play Macbeth by William Shakespeare, the tyrannical king Macbeth, and his frail yet cruel wife Lady Macbeth are driven mad by the guilt of murder which also enlarges their eagerness for power. To begin, Macbeth is driven to murder in order to give him more power over Scotland.

In the beginning, she is all about killing as soon as she gets the message he is coming to their home. Lady Macbeth is instantly determined to make her husband king no matter the cost. The text reads, “Make thick my blood / Stop up the access and passage to remorse” (1.5.42-43). This quote emphasizes how much Lady Macbeth wanted power. She is willing to change her own qualities, so she would be able to commit murder. In this scene, Lady Macbeth is acting a little crazy showing that from the start she was never very normal. The crazy and aggressive people are often the ones that break the hardest. This quote is foreshadowing Lady Macbeth’s end. It is almost ironic how she asked to be removed from guilt to kill, but guilt is what ended up killing her. She begins to go off the rails when she is caught sleep walking. Shakespeare writes, “What, will these hands ne'er be clean?” (5.1.39). In this quote Shakespeare is illustrating Lady Macbeth struggling to scrape this blood off her hand, but the blood isn’t truely there. This is the Duncan’s blood and the guilt from his murder has finally broke her. She is gone insane and she is sleep walking and talking. Lady Macbeth is scrubbing and scrubbing her hands to try to get off the imaginary blood, but all this scraping could cause her hands to bleed. This will make the illusion real, driving her even more mad. Lady Macbeth’s guilt will eventually kill her, all because she wanted