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What Impression of Lady Macbeth do we get from reading Act 1 Scenes 5-7 and Act 2 Scene 2? How does this contrast with the impression we receive in Act 5, Scene 1.

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Macbeth Essay What Impression of Lady Macbeth do we get from reading Act 1 Scenes 5-7 and Act 2 Scene 2? How does this contrast with the impression we receive in Act 5, Scene 1. My primary impressions of Lady Macbeth at the beginning of the play are that she is a Lady unlike any other. She has her own mind and is literate opposite to most women who were nice to look at but moronic. In Act 2 scene 2 her character is constant but seems more authoritative. This is portrayed in the way she speaks to Macbeth in a very stern manner and full of instruction. This is very interestiong because in Act 5 scene 1 it changes again, there is a direct contrast to the impression we receive in act 2 scene 2 because she is a strong commanding woman who changed into a weak scared woman. In Elizabethan society and theatre women were looked down upon and couldn't go to school or work as they were supposed to stay and organise the household. Unlike women, men were given respect and their only job was to pay the bills. In theatre it was the same case, women were not allowed to go on stage so men had to play the parts of women. ...read more.


She persuades Macbeth to kill Duncan by making him believe things are better than they really are by telling him to put on a faultless face in an attempt to cheer him up "Only look up clear. To alter favour ever is to fear. Leave all the rest to me." Lines 69- 71 (act 1 scene 6). She also cleverly uses words with double meaning like 'provided for' meaning or killed; 'business' meaning or murder and 'dispatch' meaning or killing. She uses these words to test Macbeth to conceal how bad what he has to do is and see how he will react to the possibility of murder. She also makes him feel guilty and meagre by saying, "What beast wasn't then. That made you break this enterprise to me? Lines 48-49. She says "to me" as if she is something almost like a force not to be reckoned with. She tells him about how great it would be if he killed Duncan "Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life meaning The crown which she refers to as the highest achievement of life act 1 scene 7. Lady Macbeth plays mind games with him by making him want to murder Duncan in order to prove his manhood. She calls him a "coward" line 43 act 1 scene 7 which makes him then go on to say "I dare do all that may become a man " line 46 act 1 scene 7. ...read more.


Whilst sleepwalking Lady Macbeth quotes fragments of words from conversations she and Macbeth had about the murders of Lady Macduff, Banqo, and Duncan- she is tortured by the images of these murders and she continually has flash backs of the murders. Her death is reported a few scenes later. This act is completely ironic to what she said to Macbeth after the murder about him brushing away his fears. Consequently he ends up being a mass murderer and the things she 'brushed' away came back to haunt her. After the murder Lady macbeth begins to speak in prose which was spoken by the lower class community and not the upper class who spoke in blank verse. This signifies how Lady Macbeth's character has disintegrated and she has gone mad. Lady Macbeth is very self aware at the beginning of the play and almost very strong and mean. She rules her husband and is very determined. Although, when she wants something she somehow changes into a sweet, innocent person to get her own way, then goes back to her normal abusive character when her sweetness isn't working. Therefore getting her very frustrated. Between Act 2 scene 2 and Act 5 scene 1 her character has disintegrated and she has turned pitiful and feeble and all of her majesty has gone. Act 5 scene 1 in a sense is a weak portrait of the same woman we saw in Act 2 scene 2. ...read more.

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