Macbeth and Lady Macbeths Character

The play ‘Macbeth’ was believed by scholars to have been written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1603 and 1606. Shakespeare’s date of birth is unknown but he was baptised on 26th April 1564 and died on 23rd April 1616, aged 52. He was an English poet and playwright with 38 plays, 154 sonnets, 2 long narrative poems, and several other poems which all consist of his surviving works. His plays have been translated into every major language and are performed more than any other playwrights around the world. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon and married Anne Hathaway at the age of 18. They had three children and between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as a writer and actor. Many speculations surround Shakespeare dealing with such matters as sexuality, appearance, religious belief, and whether work credited by him really was his own or whether it was another writer’s.
‘Macbeth’ is the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare’s tragedies and with so many plot-holes many wonder whether the play was really ever finished. Shakespeare also adds a supernatural element to this tragedy with ghosts/spirits and witches making appearances. Shakespeare’s first plays were written in the style of the day; however he soon began to write in a more traditional style for his own purposes. Shakespeare developed a poetic style of writing with complex and extreme variations that we can see in alot of his more popular plays, for example in ‘Macbeth’ the language goes from one unrelated metaphor or simile to another. An example of this can be found in Act 1, scene 7 “was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed yourself?” The listener/reader is challenged to complete the sense. The play was written in the 17th century during the ‘early modern’ period of Europe. Dramatic advances in scientific understanding took place during this century and two civil wars were fought. James 1st, Charles 1st and Charles 2nd all reigned at some point during the