Lady Macbeth: Accountable for King Duncan's Assassination

Lady Macbeth: Accountable for King Duncan's Assassination

Lady Macbeth is more accountable than Macbeth for King Duncan’s assassination, but that doesn’t mean that she is a more evil person than Macbeth. At first, it just seemed like Macbeth was honest and pure, and that Lady Macbeth was trying to manipulate her husband into committing murder. As the play continues, it becomes clear the Macbeth becomes more evil and his guilt begins to fade, and Lady Macbeth’s guilt begins to eat her up inside, until her eventual suicide.

In act 1, Lady Macbeth seems evil because she said things like, “ unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe topfull of direst cruelty; make thick my blood, stop up thwacks and passage to remorse that no compunctious visiting of nature shake my fell purpose nor keep peace between th’effect and it”, (Shakespeare Macbeth, I i 40-46). In this statement, she says that she wants her emotions to go away, she wants to be fill with hatred for the king, to make her no feel anything, and that she never will feel anything of it. Her soliloquies gave her a shroud of darkness and mystery that could be seen as devious or evil. As the play went on, Macbeth started to become when he hired the murderers to kill Banquo and Fleance, and it became clear he was becoming evil and corrupt when he was happy about the news of Banquo’s death, and when he named Macduff as a traitor, which is shown in this quote,“ Then live, Macduff, what need I fear of thee? But yet, I’ll make assurance double sure and take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live, that I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies, and sleep in spite of thunder”( IV i 81-85), and Macduff fled in fear that Macbeth would sent people to kill him. Since Mabeth couldn’t find Macduff, he killed his wife and kids instead.

Lady Macbeth became more and more conscious of what she and her husband had done. This became clear when she started sleepwalking and then when she commited suicide by jumping out of the tower window. As it can be seen by these points,...

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