Macbeth Group

Question:

joohyun91720
joohyun91720
Student
High School - 11th Grade

In "Act 5" of "Macbeth", what does Malcolm say about Macbeth and Lady Macbeth?

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Posted by joohyun91720 on Thursday January 8, 2009 at 6:14 PM and tagged with act 5, dead butcher, lady macbeth, macbeth, malcolm, shakespeare.

Answers:


  1. robertwilliam

    eNotes Editor

    Malcolm, making the final speech of the whole play, says that tyranny produced

    ... the cruel ministers
    Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen,
    Who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands
    Took off her life...

    Macbeth's murdering ways make him a "butcher", though - as many critics have pointed out - the power of his soliloquys and poetic imagination make this a deeply reductive verdict which reminds us what Macbeth looks like if you don't hear his soliloquys.

    And Lady Macbeth, of course, in this verdict has become what she asked the "spirits" in her first scene to make her become: a devil, a fiend, and one without remorse. This is, incidentally, also the first time we learn that Lady M has actually killed herself: we knew that she was dead, but not the how.

    Hope it helps!

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/macbeth-text/act-v-scene-viii

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    Posted by robertwilliam on Friday January 9, 2009 at 3:48 AM