Shakespeares Lady Macbeth -- a Lady? Essays -- Macbeth essays

Lady Macbeth -- a Lady? -- in Macbeth      Ã‚   William Shakespeare's Macbeth places a woman in center stage, a woman who embarrasses every woman because of her lack of conscience. This essay attempts to shed light on her character.    Blanche Coles states in Shakespeare's Four Giants evaluates the character of Lady Macbeth:    A woman who could speak as Lady Macbeth does, who could call upon the spirits that tend on mortal thoughts to unsex her and fell her from head to foot full of direct cruelty, who could entreat these same spirits to stop all avenues of remorse so that no compunctions of conscience will interfere with the carrying out of her purpose, who could call upon the night to wrap itself in the murkiest, gloomiest smoke of hell in order to hide, even from the keen knife she would use, the wound she would make when she herself stabs the sleeping King, such a terrible, frightful woman would not scruple at telling a little wife-to-husband lie to accomplish her purpose. (52)    In Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies, Maynard Mack shows how Lady Macbeth complements her husband:    Her fall is instantaneous, even eager, like Eve's in Paradise Lost; his is gradual and reluctant, like Adam's. She needs only her husband's letter about the weyard sisters' prophecy to precipitate her resolve to kill Duncan. Within an instant she is inviting murderous spirits to unsex her, fill her with cruelty, thicken her blood, convert her mother's milk to gall, and darken the world "That my keen knife see not the wound it makes" (1.5.50) (189)    L.C. Knights in the essay "Macbeth" describes the unnaturalness of Lady Macbeth's words and actions:    Thus the sense of the unnat... ...Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972.    Knights, L.C. "Macbeth." Shakespeare: The Tragedies. A Collectiion of Critical Essays. Alfred Harbage, ed. Englewwod Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1964.    Mack, Maynard. Everybody's Shakespeare: Reflections Chiefly on the Tragedies. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.    Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. http://chemicool.com/Shakespeare/macbeth/full.html, no lin.    Siddons, Sarah. "Memoranda: Remarks on the Character of Lady Macbeth." The Life of Mrs. Siddons. Thomas Campbell. London: Effingham Wilson, 1834. Rpt. in Women Reading Shakespeare 1660-1900. Ann Thompson and Sasha Roberts, eds. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997.    Wilson, H. S. On the Design of Shakespearean Tragedy. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1957.