Macbeth Essay

Submitted By jamiekong112
Words: 991
Pages: 4
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At the end of the play, Malcolm refers to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as: 'this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen', but how much of truth is there to this statement? Macbeth starts of a heroic and noble soldier, but as the play progresses, he kills not just people who stand in but the people around them as well, even though they had done nothing wrong. Lady Macbeth, however had always been a fiend, and only wanted what was best for her and didn’t care who else suffered in order to get her what she wanted – to be queen. She manipulated her husband and played with the witch’s prophecy (that he was to become the king of Scotland), even though the witches never said killing the current king would be necessary. She did this because, as a women, she had lesser status than her husband, and it would be impossible for her to become what she wanted, to be the queen. As the play progresses, Macbeth beings to think he is invulnerable, and no one can harm him, or remove his kingship, however,
At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is one of the best soldiers, and is respected by everyone, including King Duncan. He was brave, noble, and above all complete loyal but this all starts to change after he hears the witch’s prophecy, that say he shall become king “All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!”. He does not realise, that if he had not of heard the prophecy, he would never have killed, and would have continued to be the loyal solider he once was. He did not start off the play as a ‘butcher’, and only killed to protect his people, while at war. When Lady Macbeth heard of what the witch’s had said told Macbeth, she began to torment him.
“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.”
She even goes as far as challenging his manhood, all to try him to follow the prophecy, and become king as fast as possible. I believe Lady Macbeth was a ‘fiend-like queen’ from the being of the play. Even at the very start of the play, she was only thinking of how to better herself, pushing Macbeth to murder. She believed that she would be able to do this and not feel any guilt, as she was not the one who had ‘actually’ done the killings. However, later in the play, she begins to realise that her manipulation of Macbeth directly led to him killing, and she was as bad as him.
“Accursèd be that tongue that tells me so,
For it hath cowed my better part of man!
And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense,
That keep the word of promise to our ear,
And break it to our hope. I’ll not fight with thee.”
This quote by Macbeth is from just before he is killed by Macduff, and shows how he thought he was unbeatable, and he was now realising that that he would die, but he never lost his courage throughout the play.
“I will not yield,
To kiss the ground before young Malcolm’s feet,”
When Macbeth changes throughout the play, Lady Macbeth doesn’t really change until the very end. She is manipulative and doesn’t care for others for the most part of the play, however in the last act of the play she begins to realise what she had done, and feel the quilt for the crimes they had committed. Lady Macbeth believed that since it was her husband committing the murders she would not feel responsible and therefore have no guilt, this proves true for most of the play as she goes on with her new life as queen without thinking about any of the atrocities that got her where she was as queen.
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