Lady Macbeth: A Woman Gone Mad

In nearly all of Shakespeare's plays, the female characters are forced to play second fiddle to the male protagonists, and in only a select few of his plays are they the main characters. In Macbeth, the Bard's dark and twisted tale of ambition gone wrong, his Lady Macbeth, though given much less to do in the play than her husband, is undoubtedly one of the more important female characters in any of Shakespeare's works. She serves as the catalyst for Macbeth's first murder of King Duncan, and, throughout the play, helps to propel Macbeth further into madness. Her desire for upward social and political mobility, and the fact that it is she who plants murderous ideas in Macbeth's mind, portray a woman who is a far cry from the docile and sweet female characters like Juliet. However, Lady Macbeth does meet a tragic end after dealing with demonic forces, punishment for the sins of a woman who dared to do as the men.

The character of Lady Macbeth is easily the most important secondary character in the entire play, and she is essential to both the advancement of the plot and the development of Macbeth's themes on morality and ambition. Lady Macbeth is the driving force of the play, pushing her husband into murdering King Duncan, and sending him down his dark descent into power-hungry insanity. It is she who devises the plan to kill Duncan, and it is she who never falters, unlike Macbeth who begins to have doubts about the deed. It is unlike the Shakespearean times for a woman to be portrayed as having more fortitude and strength than the male character, so Shakespeare was obviously playing around with conventional gender roles of the era. However, at the same time he furthers the antiquated notion of women having a close link with Satan, originally established in the Bible with Eve responsible for Adam's sin. Just before Macbeth's arrival, and just after hearing news of Duncan staying the night, Lady Macbeth calls upon demonic forces to give her the strength to carry out her murderous deeds: "Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty!" (1.5.41-43) Such frank and sacrilegious language must have been shocking back in the early 1600's, especially since it was spoken by a woman.

In those days women were stereotyped as two very different identities: they were either fair, kind-natured, and quiet, or a nagging shrew (as evidenced by Shakespeare's own The Taming of the Shrew). Based on these extremities, Lady Macbeth would obviously fall into the nagging shrew category, as she is neither quiet, nor, would it seem, kind-natured. However Shakespeare is not so simplistic as to see her in such a black-and-white light. Lady Macbeth later reveals herself to be a far more complex character than that of a nagging and overly ambitious social climber. She is obviously more strong-willed than Macbeth, but she is just as affected, if not more so, by the guilt and paranoia of their murders. Towards the end of the play she has totally lost her mind, as her doctor duly notes after witnessing her strange behavior: "Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles; infected minds to their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine than the physician. God, God, forgive us all!" (4.1.65-69). Of course the pain of her misdeeds eventually drives her to commit suicide; her violent end is the most revealing plot point of her character and the way Shakespeare interpreted it. First of all, her demise shows that she is not quite as strong-willed or cold-hearted as we may have been led to believe because she folds under the weight of her conscience. Compare this to her husband who continues spiraling into madness just like her, though his fortitude remains relatively intact. Macbeth's death is, especially for the Renaissance time period, far more valiant and honorable than that of his wife's. He dies fighting with a sword in his hand, more than likely the preferred way of death for many of the men of Shakespeare's time. In their eyes there was no death more admirable and pure. However committing suicide, as Lady Macbeth did, was viewed almost severely as an act of heresy, and a sure ticket to hell, by both Catholics and Protestants of the time.

So the main question Shakespeare historians need to ask themselves is to what purpose and extent did he use Lady Macbeth as a social critique of his times. Though, on the outset, it would appear that the character is a prime example of the stereotyping of the times, a deeper look reveals differently. It is highly probably that Shakespeare, who would have had his work reviewed by King James I (he of the popular King James Bible and witch hunts), felt obliged to include and even enforce religious themes and traditions through his work so as to appease him. By strengthening her character and her role in the life of Duncan, Shakespeare bucks tradition to portray a much more modern saying: Behind every great man, there is a great woman. Though it is debatably as to whether either murderous character should be considered great, the statement stands true nonetheless.

Lady Macbeth is a character whose dual personalities, wrought from Shakespeare's desire to hide his social critique behind age-old ritualism, often clash. One moment she is a steely conspirator with the ability to convince men of murder, and the next she is a proud and doting wife. However unclear her actual personality may be, Shakespeare, a wildly creative renegade of his time, gave birth to one of theater's most memorable, most interesting, and most debated female character of all-time.