Is_Lady_Macbeth_Truly_an_Evil_Character_

Is Lady Macbeth truly an evil character' In the play Lady Macbeth probably plays the most key role in the play because I believe that it’s Lady Macbeth who persuades Macbeth to slaughter Duncan. Without her he wouldn’t have taken all the wrong turns from the very beginning to the very end. In Act 1 Scene 5 Lady Macbeth says ‘Come you spirits’, this is one of the most revealing things she says because she illustrates that she is on friendly terms with the evil spirits showing us directly the ‘darker’ side of her character. The old saying which I could never prove true until now ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’, has been proved really well by Shakespeare himself. In Polanski’s version of the play he displays Lady Macbeth as a nature loving, love filled, warm hearted women, but as time passes he exposes her true inner self. However in Trevor Nunn’s version, Lady Macbeth was introduced as an ugly, cold heated, bitter and twisted woman who didn’t have a care in the world for anything except herself. The 2 directors different portrayals of her show the different aspects of her character and how differently she can be interpreted. When Lady Macbeth reads the letter which she received from Macbeth’s letter, her reaction shows that she is excited. We can see this in Trevor Nunn’s version of the play where she starts off by reading in a slow and calm manner, trying to prepare her self for all she knows Macbeth might be dead, gradually getting louder and then becoming out of breath. When Macbeth sends her the letter she reads ‘this have I thought good to deliver thee, my dearest partner of greatness’, showing respect upon one another. At the beginning of Act 1, scene 7 Macbeths conscience kicks in, he says, ‘then as his host who should against hi murderer shut the door not bear the knife myself’, meaning Macbeth is the host, he should be keeping a close eye on Duncan he should be protecting him from real evil and not planning to kill him. Khalilur Lady Macbeth practically gets on her hands and knees and begs him not to go back on his word, ‘how tender tis to love the babe that milks me: I would while it was smiling in my face, have plucked his boneless gums and dashed the brains out, had I sworn as you have done to this’. She is willing to ‘…dash…’ the brains out of a helpless baby…she would do anything, even kill her child, to obtain power. After the murder of Duncan, Lady Macbeth changes quite rapidly, from an acting heartless cow to guilt full woman who has forgotten that this was all completely down to her. By the end of the play we see that she has completely lost herself to the guilt and this results in her committing suicide. This perhaps can be interpreted as showing she has some good, in the form of remorse, inside her. The witch’s predictions show us that Macbeth is more curious than Banquo. His is an effective way to start the play because it gives the impression that Macbeth is greedy. This evidence of his greed perhaps also shows that Lady Macbeth as he already greed inside him. Lady Macbeth uses really powerful words on Macbeth; she says ‘hie thee heither’, meaning in short terms: ‘COME HERE’. This makes the audience feel that Macbeth is being stupid enough to get used. In conclusion I think that there is more to Lady Macbeth than that which meets the eye; after all she does lose control over herself. I don’t think she’s a bully she its not like she threatened Macbeth, that she’ll leave him if Macbeth didn’t do it. I just think that Lady Macbeth is highly intelligent and cunning