Lady Macbeth soliloquy analysis
Guided Passage Analysis 1
Shakespeare uses soliloquy first to expose Lady Macbeths true nature so that her thoughts and motives may be uninterrupted and that her speech can be delivered in such a powerful way that the audience is swayed and somehow taken aback. When audience members first lay their eyes on Lady Macbeth, they see her as a sweet and almost innocent woman but when she is finally alone the audience sees her true nature. Dialogue can only tell you so much whereas soliloquy can almost put you into the mind of the character and make you see every thought the character is thinking, no matter how gruesome it may be.
Impressively, Lady Macbeth uses a series of metaphors to count her husband’s main failings as she sees them. For example she describes him as “too full o’ the milk of human kindness.” Theatregoers would associate this “milk of human kindness” with a nurturing mother and her gentle touch for her baby. This in turn would lead to theatregoer’s associate milk with kindness because a mother would show nothing but kindness to her failings. In other words Lady Macbeth is in some way calling her husband weak and ‘not a real man’ because he is too kind and could not commit such a gruesome crime. Lady Macbeth sees her husband as a weak little man who is too full of “the milk of human kindness.”
When Lady Macbeth then complains of her husband that he is not “without ambition; but without the illness should attend it” she appears to be giving “illness” a positive meaning from her standpoint. T he meaning of illness in this context would be evil or even mad and Lady Macbeth is saying that it is what you need to complete your ambitions. Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy is sinister and evil and she reveals so much of her true nature that the audience learns of what she plans to do with the king. Lady Macbeth seeks evil at every corner, hoping it will capture her husband and make him thrive for the same ambitions that she does, so that he will finally kill the king
Shakespeare uses soliloquy first to expose Lady Macbeths true nature so that her thoughts and motives may be uninterrupted and that her speech can be delivered in such a powerful way that the audience is swayed and somehow taken aback. When audience members first lay their eyes on Lady Macbeth, they see her as a sweet and almost innocent woman but when she is finally alone the audience sees her true nature. Dialogue can only tell you so much whereas soliloquy can almost put you into the mind of the character and make you see every thought the character is thinking, no matter how gruesome it may be.
Impressively, Lady Macbeth uses a series of metaphors to count her husband’s main failings as she sees them. For example she describes him as “too full o’ the milk of human kindness.” Theatregoers would associate this “milk of human kindness” with a nurturing mother and her gentle touch for her baby. This in turn would lead to theatregoer’s associate milk with kindness because a mother would show nothing but kindness to her failings. In other words Lady Macbeth is in some way calling her husband weak and ‘not a real man’ because he is too kind and could not commit such a gruesome crime. Lady Macbeth sees her husband as a weak little man who is too full of “the milk of human kindness.”
When Lady Macbeth then complains of her husband that he is not “without ambition; but without the illness should attend it” she appears to be giving “illness” a positive meaning from her standpoint. T he meaning of illness in this context would be evil or even mad and Lady Macbeth is saying that it is what you need to complete your ambitions. Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy is sinister and evil and she reveals so much of her true nature that the audience learns of what she plans to do with the king. Lady Macbeth seeks evil at every corner, hoping it will capture her husband and make him thrive for the same ambitions that she does, so that he will finally kill the king