Ambition or murder?
Lady Macbeth’s ambition and her desire to become the queen is the driving force behind Duncan and her husband’s demise. This can be seen in her decision to act upon the prophecy, her questioning of Macbeth’s manhood when he was unwilling to kill Duncan and the fact that she was the one guilty for coming up with a plan to murder Duncan.
In Act 1 scene 5, when she hears about the prophecy she decides that Duncan needs to die without considering the consequences. Her desire and ambition overcomes her sense of right and wrong as she calls to “spirits that tend to mortal thoughts” so that she would be able to loose her womanly characteristics and she requests them to “fill me with from the crown to the toe topfull of direst cruelty”.She goes on to tell them, “come to my woman’s breasts and take my milk for gall”; this indicates the extent to which her ambition is manipulating her, she is willing to give her breast milk to make poison.
As the play goes on Macbeth learns of Lady Macbeth’s plans to act upon the prophecy but he starts having second thoughts for he is Duncan’s kinsman and host but Lady Macbeth swoops in to “save the day” for the Macbeths’ future and questions his manhood as she says “when you durst do it, then you were a man”. Furthermore she calls him a coward because he
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Another argument can be made that the witches are responsible for the murder of Duncan because they were the ones that planted the idea inside Macbeth’s mind that he would become king someday; Macbeth upon first hearing the prophecy decided to not act upon it and just leave it upto faith but Lady Macbeth forced his hand to do the worst possible crime to make him