Lady Macbeth: Insanity In Shakespeare's Macbeth

William Shakespeare portrayed the character Lady Macbeth to be extremely ruthless, malicious and manipulative. Thus, being the reason she could easily convince Macbeth to do her will, yet still put on such a convincing performance in front of those who knew nothing of her and her husband’s actions. Lady Macbeth shows her complexity constantly throughout the story when she shares her view-point on masculinity by demasculinizing her own husband, when she strategically plans the murder of the King Duncan, and finally when she finally goes crazy because of the guilt she possesses for not only her own actions but also turning her own husband into a

Macbeth was an honorable and loyal soldier to King Duncan. As he stumbled upon the three witches and hearing their predictions. He began to question his future when King Duncan had given a higher rank to his son Malcolm. As if Malcolm was to become king Macbeth’s second prophecy of him becoming king wouldn’t come true or at least it would take a longer time for him to be king. His ambitions toward the crown grew and it slowly but surely began to corrupt his mind. Along with the help of his wife Lady Macbeth, who encouraged and convinced him to go through the plan of killing Duncan, his mind and soul slowly turned insane.

About 5.7 million Americans or 2.6 of the U.S population. Bipolar disorder is genetic it runs through many families. Bipolar disorder can be treated with medication. Many people tend to want to commit suicide with this disorder. There is no specific cause for this disorder or just one certain thing. It can come from genetics, biological, or environmental. In Shakespeare play Macbeth, Macbeth shows many signs of bipolar disorder. This paper will show the symptoms, causes, and cures of this disorder. This will also show an effective treatment plan that would have changed Macbeth’s life for the better. Macbeth’s death was fate not free will.

The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare, a play wrought with prophecies, deception, guilt, and death, brings light to the symptoms of mental illnesses and their effects on the human brain’s ability to reason, trust, and act in times of pressure. Both Macbeth and his lady are plagued by mental illness, and the effects of their illness only grow as the play evolves. Macbeth’s symptoms of schizophrenia and anxiety, as well as Lady Macbeth’s anxiety as well as hallucinations that eventually push her to suicide prove that not only can mental illness alter the way a person sees a situation, but it can also drive them to harm others and themselves.

Shakespeare engineered a most impressionable character in Macbeth who easily succumbs to the extensive magnitude of opposing constraints. This character is Macbeth, who is the protagonist in the play and husband to a conniving wife, who in the end is the sole cause for Macbeth 's undoing. Conflicting forces in the play compel internal conflicts within Macbeth to thrive on his contentment and sanity as he his torn asunder between devotion, aspiration, morality and his very own being. He has developed a great sense of loyalty from being a brave soldier; however, his ambition soon challenges this allegiance. As his sincerity begins to deteriorate, his own sanity starts to disintegrate until the point where he cannot differentiate between reality

Insanity and paranoia is the result of a guilty conscience. Guilt can kill. Not only physically but mentally. Everyone in the world has the right to make decision. Whether they are intelligent or inferior. When someone make a poor decision there is always consequences. For example a consequence may be the feeling of guilt. The power of guilt can be seen many times throughout Macbeth. Three pieces of evidence of guilt in macbeth is after the unlawful murders he committed, hallucinating, and Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking scene.

Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, is a dark play full of witchcraft and foreshadowing. Lady Macbeth showed scheming qualities throughout the play which had a lot of influence on her husband, Macbeth. Because of her controlling personality, Macbeth was scared to disappoint her. She was the one who positioned the idea of Duncan’s murder into her husband’s mind where he was succumbed by her supremacies and made the ultimate mistake. It was also her idea to place the blame of Duncan’s death on the soldiers. The most prominent example, in my opinion, was that she said she could not get the blood off of her hands. In my opinion Lady Macbeth is more responsible for King Duncan’s murder, and Macbeth’s treason, than Macbeth himself.

In Macbeth, Shakespeare displays how women manipulate men. Lady Macbeth’s ‘evil’ is an ideologically inscribed notion that is often linked to our literary tradition to strong female characters who seek power, who reject filial loyalty as prior to self-loyalty and who pursue desire in all its forms. (Thomas 82).

One of Shakespeare’s superlative examples of a troubled mind is located in Macbeth. The impertinent character Lady Macbeth exhibited many symptoms of depression and antisocial personality disorder. While mental illness is generally developed through an accumulation of several events, as it was in Lady Macbeth’s case, it was definitely more profound after the murder of King Duncan.

Macbeth started off as a valiant and courageous soldier, who would do anything for the king. By the end of the play, Macbeth was a tyrant and a horrible leader who killed those who trusted him to maintain the throne. It takes many factors to take a strong man and transform him into an evil monster. Macbeth’s downfall was caused by the deception and temptation of the witches and their prophecies, Lady Macbeth’s greed and aspirations for her husband to be king, and Macbeth’s own greed, jealousy and ambition.

As the Macbeth’s portray the opposite of social constructs and expectations in the play, they eventually fall into their belonged stereotype after Lady Macbeth slowly starts to spiral downhill. Once Macbeth feels as though someone is in the way of him becoming King, he instantly creates a plan to murder them like Lady Macbeth did with Duncan. As they eventually take up each others common behavior, Lady Macbeth drives herself to insanity due to her womanly feelings. “I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon ’t, read it, afterwards seal it, and again return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep.”, she is seen sleepwalking and participating in strange activities due to the insanity driven from guilt (5.1.4-6). Her feelings of shame and weakness have made her crazy to the point where she has herself doing these things. Not only was she sleepwalking after realizing her mistakes of pushing Macbeth about his manliness too far, she “appears to be washing imagined blood from her hands. Her actions and confused speech greatly concern the doctor.” (5.1.Exposition). After manipulating Macbeth to kill King Duncan and to solve his guilt by washing his hands, she is found compulsively “washing” the “blood” off her hands to rid her own guilt. Although Lady Macbeth is suddenly plagued by guilt, Macbeth has

There are many people in the world that experience mental problems and therefore affecting their personality. Not everyone though is as bad as Macbeth when it comes to mental deterioration. Macbeth is a very self-centered man and it leads him to change the person he once was. Although it is not seen much in the beginning of Shakespeare's play “The Tragedy of Macbeth”, Macbeth’s mental state deteriorates as the play progresses, which can be seen when he is guilty of murdering King Duncan, being taunted by the ghost of Banquo, and his speech to the witches.

Imagine the President of the United States admitting to having mental instability. This scenario may rattle some, but it clearly plays out in William Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth. The play’s title character uses violence to maintain power but gradually plummets into mental illness. Before Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, conspire to murder his cousin Duncan, the King of Scotland, in order to attain authority, Macbeth foreshadows the possible repercussions; afterward, he experiences an immediate sense of remorse. The subsequent murder of a friend displays his progressive unsteadiness, but the massacre of an entire family demonstrates his transformation from instability to deviance. Lady Macbeth tries to mask her guilt by covering up for her husband, but eventually comes to grips with her own instability. In Macbeth, Shakespeare asserts that power drives the title character and his wife to insanity, particularly after their conspiracy to kill Duncan.

She makes it seem like it is simple to get rid of the thought that he just murdered the King by just washing the blood. While Macbeth inside is suffering from his guilt Lady Macbeth makes seem so effortless and acts like nothing happened. The thought questioning herself of what action she forced her husband to do or get involved in never crosses her mind. She gives him false hope on stating that everything will be fine if he just goes and washes all the blood and act absent-mindedly. Shakespeare is showing that “ cannot commit such crime without undergoing terrible inner torment and triggering self-defeating behavior”( Paris) shows that it is the less external consequences of his crime than the internal deterioration. Macbeth went through so much pressure to do the crime he later regretted and suffered and battles with himself and his paranoia. Lady Macbeth only saw the effects of blood visually she did not see how the blood stain was eating Macbeth from the inside. Once again Lady Macbeth is pushing Macbeth to forget about what happened and move on, the murder does not affect Lady Macbeth but the way Macbeth is acting shows that he was never ready to commit this

specifically his relationship with his wife, Lady Macbeth. As he began to become more focused on holding onto his power, he began to ignore Lady Macbeth, quite possibly when she needed his attention the most. When Macbeth hears a noise and asks “wherefore was that cry”(V.v.18), Seyton, Macbeth’s attendant, replies with “the Queen, my lord, is dead”(V.v.19). Upon finding