Macbeth Group

Question:

jsbrin
jsbrin
Student
High School - 12th Grade

What is one example where Shakespeare shows or hints at Lady Macbeth’s goodness in Act 1?

Hi, so i figure that like Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is not to be seen as completely evil. Otherwise, there would be no “fall from grace” and, thus, no sense of tragedy, but ican't seem to find where there is an example in scene 1.

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Posted by jsbrin on Thursday April 3, 2008 at 12:13 PM and tagged with act 1, goodness, lady macbeths, macbeth.

Answers:


  1. cybil Teacher
    High School - 12th Grade

    eNotes Editor

    When Lady Macbeth reads her husband's letter in Act 1, scene 5, she fears he is "too full of the milk of human kindness" to do the easiest thing, to kill the king. Therefore, she chooses to defeminize herself:

    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!

    She calls on evil spirits to take away her femininity and make her hard and cruel. This request and her apparent subsequent change into a cold, conniving woman reveal that, like Macbeth, Lady Macbeth was originally a good person, his "dearest partner of greatness."

    Sources:
    http://www.enotes.com/macbeth-text/3349

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    Posted by cybil on Thursday April 3, 2008 at 12:37 PM