Malcomes final speech Essay

In Malcomes final speech he describes Lady Macbeth as a fiend like â€Å"queen†. Explain how far you think this description of her is justified Lady Macbeth is a very essential character to the play. She is singly responsible for the most tragedy and destruction throughout the play. She is very responsible because she is the one who talks to and persuades Macbeth. But she cannot be purely seen as an evil influence for she is a much more complex character then many would think. We first see Lady Macbeth in act one, scene five when she is reading the letter that Macbeth sent her. When reading the letter, she reads it in an innocent ladylike voice that we will not see much of until later on in the script. As she calmly reads the letter you can see her slowly spiralling towards the more evil sinister way. The letter is read as if he was writing it to his â€Å"Dearest partner of greatness†. He treats her with a lot of respect as if she is an equal. This would seem to be very awkward to an audience in the Shakespearean era for women were seen to be inferior to men. She decides on Macbeth’s behalf that they are to kill the King Duncan, without Macbeths approval. The only problem is that she thinks that Macbeth is â€Å"too full of th’ milk of human kindness† to commit such an evil task. She then thinks that she had the power to alter Macbeth’s mind like an evil conscience. This makes her more evil than seen so far for she is seen as an evil presence. Lady Macbeth feels that in order to commit the murderous task herself she will need to look for help of evil ghosts and spirits to take her body and do the dirty deeds for her. She suggests strong sentences to â€Å"unsex her † and turn her evil. â€Å"Come to my women’s breasts And take my milk for gall.† In Shakespeare’s time the average person in the audience still believed in witches, evil sprits, potions and evil presences, so they would be scared as if it were real. The audience will also look at her in a very strange, different way for she is willing to give up all her femininity for a natural evil. She continues to make obscene comments to hell. â€Å"Come thick night and pull the In the dunnest smokes of hell.† She says this because she wants not to be discovered for it will cost her life if she was discovered. For a stage production I would start with her sitting in darkness on a chair alone with the spot light on her. She would wear a white dress to promote her innocence. The background music would be slow, low and quiet in a solitary tune. As she starts to ponder evil thoughts, I would slowly creep up in tempo and make all the notes more sinister. She would get up and keep her head down as she wanders around the stage reading the letter. As soon as she finishes reading the letter she will raise her head and start to whisper her lines to the audience making eye contact. The lights would be dim as she goes from side to side on the stage. She will get louder and louder until the servant walks in and after he leaves she will continue walking from side to side getting louder and louder until her husband enters and a red light will fade in as she explains the plot to Macbeth. The second time we see her is when she is at dinner acting sweet and innocent when at heart she is completely evil and filled with hate and gall. Duncan ironically and innocently speaks of sweet and good air which has a ironic relationship to Lady Macbeths earlier quote â€Å"The dunnest smokes of hell† in the last scene. In Act 1, Scene 7 we see Lady Macbeth for the third time. She is alone in the bedroom with Macbeth discussing their hidden sinister plan to kill king Duncan and steal his throne. In this scene we can see again how much influence on Macbeth, Lady Macbeth has. Macbeth decides that he wishes not to conduct in this evil scheme any further, but once again Lady Macbeth bends and twists Macbeths mind to see the opportinity the way she does. An audience would again be surprised to see a women taking more or less complete control over Macbeth. Her character would seem very masculine and the power over Macbeth would seem to be some sort of witch’s spell, again making her seem more evil than she really is. It would not be surprising to see lady Macbeth fall to even lower levels of murder and in justice for all her goodness and innocence has been completely corrupted by greed, therefore making her nothing more than a victim to her inner evil. Macbeth stands for shining goodness in that moment that he refuses to commit this disruption of the hierarchy for it would not only be a murderous crime, it would also mean that he has turned his back on his God, for the king was seen to be God’s representative on earth. Lady Macbeth uses blackmail to get him to obey her. She starts to accuse him of not loving her and not acting like a real man treats his wife. This is ironic, for she does not treat him as a real husband, but none the less she gets her way through these obscene accusations of him being a coward â€Å"And live a coward in thine own esteem† The last time we see Lady Macbeth is in Act 5 Scene 1, after all planned has successfully happened. In this scene we can see how the aftermath of the killings has actually affected lady Macbeth. The scene begins with lady Macbeth being analysed by a doctor and his decision is that she is suffering mentally. Lady Macbeth is mentally scared and is sleepwalking in anguish. Lady Macbeth is constantantly rubbing and washing this certain spot in her palm because she (and only she) can see a red â€Å"damned spot† of blood. She is conveying images of the murder and she is speaking of the killing of an old man ( King Duncan ). â€Å"Who would have thought the old man had so much blood in him† Through sleep walking and being nervous we can see that Lady Macbeth does have a conscious and is liable to greed instead of being this evil monster which the audience has all seen before. The audience for the first time would start to understand and see that all the evil within her was â€Å"evil spirits† and the greed assigned to every human being. In this last scene with her, as she fall apart we can see all her greed and wickedness being stripped from her just leaving her an image of pure, innocent child like women. As Lady Macbeth becomes mentality ill and losses all her influence and greed it is as if Macbeth and his wife have swooped feelings and brains. Her obsession with a â€Å"damned spot† of blood which she cannot remove from her hand contrasts with her attitude to the blood after Duncan’s murder, when she says: â€Å"A little water cleans us of this deed† The way an actress would perform this scene would be very different from the way she would act in Act 1 Scene. Her face would be pale and without make-up, and she would wear a white nightdress to suggest return to a vulnerable childlike state. Her voice would be frail and trembling, and some lines, such as â€Å"The Thane of Fife had a wife† would be spoken like child reciting a nursery rhyme. Referring back to the title question, I think that Lady Macbeth cannot be fully justified as a â€Å"Fiend† for she is a normal women who is corrupted by greed and I am sure that many people in the same situation would be very tempted to do something similar.