How Does Lady Macbeth Convince Her Husband To Kill Duncan
In Act 1 Scenes 5 - 7 of ‘Macbeth’, How does Lady Macbeth convince her husband to kill king Duncan? Focus on her language in Act 1 Scenes 5 -7 in your answer.
In this essay I will be focusing on the language used by Lady Macbeth throughout the play and how she uses it to convince her husband to murder the King. At the beginning of the play, when Macbeth is on the way back from battle, he has already begun thinking about what the three witches had said and killing King Duncan. Lady Macbeth, who appears to be driven by hopes and dreams of becoming queen, finally persuades her husband by breaking him down emotionally and picking at each of his weakest points.
Lady Macbeth is a very ambitious woman, she only sees what she thinks …show more content…
she wants and what stands in the way of her getting it. Her husband is very brave, strong and of high position, also soon to become Thane of Cawdor and well trusted by King Duncan. However, Lady Macbeth is not satisfied with her husbands ranking and wishes for him to be more than this. She wants him to be king. Through her speech its is easy to tell that she is rather head strong and very capable of ordering people about especially when driven by her dream of being Queen.
Strangely enough, even though Lady Macbeth dreams of killing Duncan, she still knows that she wouldn’t be able to commit the deed herself therefore she calls for spirits of darkness to take away her femininity thus, making her evil.
“unsex me here and fill me from top to toe full of direst cruelty”. This show that she is capable of committing the act whilst she has no womanly feelings. This is the first time she shows herself as being truly evil as her voice ferocious and strong whereas before she would talk to her husband very softly which now portrays her as a rather violent …show more content…
person.
Lady Macbeth’s first attempt in persuading her husband involves the use of flattery. She does this by greeting him with: “Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor, Greater than both by all-hail hereafter.” By doing this she inflates Macbeth’s ego and makes him feel much more confident in himself, telling him that he has done many great things to get him to where he is at this point and he is worthy of becoming much more. This helps her to get Macbeth on her side and willing to kill King Duncan.
In the play Lady Macbeth insults her husband’s masculinity because, after celebrating his achievements he realises that it is not such a good idea to kill the king at this point as it may cause a lot of unnecessary grief and other people may become suspicious of them, but she makes Macbeth feel that if he does not kill King Duncan then he will be disappointing his loving wife who is not pleased to hear of Macbeths disloyalty to her.
“What beast wasn’t then that made you break this promise to me? When you durst do it then you were a man.” By saying this she manages to make Macbeth feel bad enough about breaking the promise, that he decides to go on with their plan to kill the
King.
Lady Macbeth convinces her husband to kill king Duncan by reassuring him that he only has a small part to play: “leave all the rest to me.” This shows that she is obviously the dominant one in their relationship and that she has the most control. This would give Macbeth confidence in his wife and himself as then he knows that if she will be taking care of everything else then surely he can do one simple thing, and she has faith in him aswell.
Another way in which Lady Macbeth attempts to sway her husband’s opinion on killing Duncan is by making him feel guilty for breaking the promise he had made to her saying that he was certain that killing the King was the right thing to do: “I have given suck and know how tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me but I would, while he was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from it’s boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this.” Here she is saying that if she had promised to kill her child, she would do it because her love for Macbeth was so strong that she would never break a promise she had made to him. This brings forth a feeling of guilt in him and Macbeth soon realises that he must keep the promise he made to his wife to show how devoted he is to her, no matter how difficult or horrible it may be.
Overall, I think Lady Macbeth’s drive for her husbands actions is particularly selfish as she stands to gain a lot from this and essentially is doing it for her own benefit seeing she would become the highest female in Scotland. This is mainly the reason for treating her husband the way she did because she knows that if he should fail, then so would she. This play ends in tragedy as Lady Macbeth has poisoned her husbands mind and now he is the one organising a plan and scheming against King Duncan which means he was almost happy to murder the King who obviously trusted him dearly.
By Serena Endicott
In this essay I will be focusing on the language used by Lady Macbeth throughout the play and how she uses it to convince her husband to murder the King. At the beginning of the play, when Macbeth is on the way back from battle, he has already begun thinking about what the three witches had said and killing King Duncan. Lady Macbeth, who appears to be driven by hopes and dreams of becoming queen, finally persuades her husband by breaking him down emotionally and picking at each of his weakest points.
Lady Macbeth is a very ambitious woman, she only sees what she thinks …show more content…
she wants and what stands in the way of her getting it. Her husband is very brave, strong and of high position, also soon to become Thane of Cawdor and well trusted by King Duncan. However, Lady Macbeth is not satisfied with her husbands ranking and wishes for him to be more than this. She wants him to be king. Through her speech its is easy to tell that she is rather head strong and very capable of ordering people about especially when driven by her dream of being Queen.
Strangely enough, even though Lady Macbeth dreams of killing Duncan, she still knows that she wouldn’t be able to commit the deed herself therefore she calls for spirits of darkness to take away her femininity thus, making her evil.
“unsex me here and fill me from top to toe full of direst cruelty”. This show that she is capable of committing the act whilst she has no womanly feelings. This is the first time she shows herself as being truly evil as her voice ferocious and strong whereas before she would talk to her husband very softly which now portrays her as a rather violent …show more content…
person.
Lady Macbeth’s first attempt in persuading her husband involves the use of flattery. She does this by greeting him with: “Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor, Greater than both by all-hail hereafter.” By doing this she inflates Macbeth’s ego and makes him feel much more confident in himself, telling him that he has done many great things to get him to where he is at this point and he is worthy of becoming much more. This helps her to get Macbeth on her side and willing to kill King Duncan.
In the play Lady Macbeth insults her husband’s masculinity because, after celebrating his achievements he realises that it is not such a good idea to kill the king at this point as it may cause a lot of unnecessary grief and other people may become suspicious of them, but she makes Macbeth feel that if he does not kill King Duncan then he will be disappointing his loving wife who is not pleased to hear of Macbeths disloyalty to her.
“What beast wasn’t then that made you break this promise to me? When you durst do it then you were a man.” By saying this she manages to make Macbeth feel bad enough about breaking the promise, that he decides to go on with their plan to kill the
King.
Lady Macbeth convinces her husband to kill king Duncan by reassuring him that he only has a small part to play: “leave all the rest to me.” This shows that she is obviously the dominant one in their relationship and that she has the most control. This would give Macbeth confidence in his wife and himself as then he knows that if she will be taking care of everything else then surely he can do one simple thing, and she has faith in him aswell.
Another way in which Lady Macbeth attempts to sway her husband’s opinion on killing Duncan is by making him feel guilty for breaking the promise he had made to her saying that he was certain that killing the King was the right thing to do: “I have given suck and know how tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me but I would, while he was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from it’s boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you have done to this.” Here she is saying that if she had promised to kill her child, she would do it because her love for Macbeth was so strong that she would never break a promise she had made to him. This brings forth a feeling of guilt in him and Macbeth soon realises that he must keep the promise he made to his wife to show how devoted he is to her, no matter how difficult or horrible it may be.
Overall, I think Lady Macbeth’s drive for her husbands actions is particularly selfish as she stands to gain a lot from this and essentially is doing it for her own benefit seeing she would become the highest female in Scotland. This is mainly the reason for treating her husband the way she did because she knows that if he should fail, then so would she. This play ends in tragedy as Lady Macbeth has poisoned her husbands mind and now he is the one organising a plan and scheming against King Duncan which means he was almost happy to murder the King who obviously trusted him dearly.
By Serena Endicott