Lady Macbeth wanted to kill King Duncan and for Macbeth to become king. She fears that her husband does not have what it takes to murder King Duncan for the title. Lady Macbeth says " Yet I do fear thy nature:/ It is too full of the milk of human kindness to catch the nearest way" (1.5.15-17) finding that her husband is to kind and noble to murder for the crown.
Therefore Lady Macbeth starts on a campaign to convince Macbeth to kill Duncan. She uses tactics that involve insulting his manhood, and making sexual incentives if he were to kill the king. But when Macbeth starts to have second thoughts she says, “What beast was ’t, then, that made you break this enterprise to me? When you durst do it, then you were a man; and to be more than what you were, you would be so much more the man. ”(1.7, 47-51)
Macbeth is primarily responsible for placing power in Lady Macbeth 's hands and letting her influence him. Lady Macbeth fuels the fire started by the three witches. Lady Macbeth desperately begs her husband to kill King Duncan, so she can become the Queen of Scotland. Macbeth is willing to fulfill his tempting predictions being swayed by Lady Macbeth and the witches. Macbeth discusses killing King Duncan to Lady Macbeth, to which she says, “When you durst do it, then you were a man”(ll. 50).
Macbeths excessive want to be powerful leads him to his downfall.
With this he tells his wife Lady Macbeth the news, and convinces himself that he must kill the king. Lady Macbeth agrees, yet Macbeth starts to have doubts. Lady Macbeth pressures him and tells him to quit being a woman with this Lady Macbeth sets the murder up and Macbeth goes through with it. After this tragedy, they turn to Macbeth and gave him the throne of the Kingdom. The question is was Macbeth evil or sick, Macbeth suffers from Brief Psychotic Disorder and he is not evil.
In the play Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is more responsible for the deaths that occur in the play. Lady Macbeth accomplished this by infringing Macbeth’s comfort level, which made him uncomfortable and give into her desires. The four reasons why Lady Macbeth is responsible is she summons evil demons to fill her body with evil, her death pushes Macbeth over the edge, she has the gender power over Macbeth, and she drives Macbeth to become power hungry. During the course of the play most of Lady Macbeth’s actions cause a direct reaction from Macbeth. If Lady Macbeth had not exhorted Macbeth into murdering King Duncan, then he would have remained a sane man and decided against killing Duncan.
Following the witches speech, thoughts begin to emerge in Macbeth mind about killing King Duncan to become the king. This desire that Macbeth has to become king overloads him and his wife Lady Macbeth. It was amazing to see Macbeth transform from a loyal soldier to a murderer with blood staining his hands. However, Macbeth wasn’t convinced to assassinate King Duncan and the witches knew it. They decided to come again to Macbeth and poison his thought with more falsehood.
We see Lady Macbeth shrink from the killing and Macbeth go through with it. We, as the audience, begin to dislike Macbeth for caving to the will of his wife and giving in to the murder of a benevolent king. After this we see Macbeth take the throne because Duncan’s sons flee the country for fear of their lives. Our dislike for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth only grows stronger.
In the beginning, Lady Macbeth was the dominant person in their relationship as she could manipulate him into doing her dirty work. An example of this is when she convinces Macbeth to kill Duncan in Act 1 Scene 7 saying “ Wouldst thou have that Which thou esteem’st the ornament of life, And live a coward in thine own esteem Letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would,” Like the poor cat i’ th’ adage?” Macbeth was reluctant towards killing Duncan but Lady Macbeth was able to persuade him to do so by using tactics like calling him a coward and even mocking his manhood which, to a man like Macbeth, is powerful because his rank and reputation depends on his courage and masculinity . After Macbeth becomes king, Lady Macbeth is rarely seen in the play and is left out of his plans like killing Banquo, showing us that he no longer needs her dominance, is starting to forget her, and cares less about her. Eventually, Lady Macbeth commits suicide due to the guilt of her crimes, but Macbeth, in Act 5 Scene 5 only replies with “She would of died hereafter.”
In William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, Macbeth starts off as a respectful kinsman of Scotland. After being tempted by the power of the throne, he kills his beloved king and is tormented by paranoia and guilt. Lady Macbeth starts off as a power-hungry individual lacking remorse. Encouraging Macbeth to turn to the dark side and kill the king to achieve his ambitions, her husband becomes more corrupted and insane, killing people without a second thought.
Lady Macbeth even views her husband’s weaknesses as leverage to harass him into killing Duncan. This can be seen when, at one stage, Macbeth repels the idea of killing a good king and believes that the assassination should not be done, his wife demands him to kill by saying abusive words. She questions if Macbeth loves her, she questions Macbeth’s masculinity and she criticizes Macbeth’s aspiration to be king. These three brutal statements hurt Macbeth. Since Macbeth wants to prove his manhood, his love for
Macbeth needed power, he craved it, so after the prediction by the witches to become Thane of Cawdor, he was pronounced just that. ”By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.” The desire to be king overtook him. Killing king Duncan and his wife with their servants daggers; who Macbeth then killed after, Macbeth received the kingly title.
This is done by condemning her husband’s biggest insecurity; his manhood. She states that Macbeth would be “So much more the man.” (Shakespeare, trans. 2012, 1.7.58 if he were to follow through with the plan. Lady Macbeth even points out that she herself would kill her own baby as a means to reach her goals.
For starters Macbeth eager desire to be king causes him to kill King Duncan. Macbeth killing the king shows his ambition because he keeps enduring with the process of killing the King Duncan even though he had doubts. With the many doubts that Macbeth had such as he would not be loyal or he would be caught and killed he reassured himself and persevered through his thoughts to accomplish killing the king. Lady Macbeth has a variety of events that shows her ambition in this play. In the play Lady Macbeth prays to invite spirts to help prepare her for the actions that she has commit.
Lady Macbeth accuses her husband saying “Art thou afeard/ To be the same in thine own act and valour… And live a coward in thine own esteem” (1.7.40-41, 46) at which Macbeth takes great insult. To prove to Lady Macbeth wrong, Macbeth finally agrees on the murder of Duncan. Macbeth wants to prove to Lady Macbeth that he has the courage to kill Duncan and he is very manly and will not stop until Duncan is dead. Once he kills Duncan Macbeth begins to change mentally and emotionally.