all that may become a man;
Who dares do more is none.

Here, Macbeth suggests that a real, honorable man does not do horrible things like commit murder. But Lady Macbeth disagrees. Her argument is rooted in traditional gender roles, and she tells him,

When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man.

In this line, Lady Macbeth is essentially saying that going through with murder would make Macbeth a real man. Here, we see a direct connection between the idea of hypermasculinity and violence. The idea that a real man is one full of ambition and a quest for power and who would go as far as killing another man for a throne is reflective of toxic masculinity.

Lady Macbeth also uses pathos, an appeal to emotions, alongside vivid imagery to emphasize why she wants Macbeth to commit murder. For example, she says,

I have given suck, and know
How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done this.

Here Lady Macbeth emphasizes how horrible the idea of Macbeth breaking this promise to murder is. She brings to mind the sweet image of nursing a young child and then sharply contrasts it with the violent image of ripping a baby away from its mother and beating its brains out. This violent image is an attempt to show Macbeth how much it would hurt her and shock her if he breaks his promise.

Macbeth is dominated by nontraditonal male and female roles.

Masculinity and femininity are not portrayed in uniform ways in Macbeth.  Although women are not fragile, they are not strong either.  Lady Macbeth goads her husband into murdering Duncan, and she sometimes possesses more masculine traits of ambition and follow-through.  However, she also demonstrates weakness, because she is the one who falls apart in the end.  The witches are another example of this contradictory strong feminism.  They are even described as men in some ways, with beards.

Macbeth is described as having all of the traits that are considered positively associated with masculinity at the beginning of the play: bravery, self-sacrifice, and loyalty.  This is the depiction of him in the initial battle.  Yet as the play develops, he also shows some stereotypical feminine traits: indecision, and the need to follow orders. He is, what we would call today, “whipped.”  He even comments that she seems manly, and she makes the comment that he should be more of a man.

What beast was't then
That made you break this enterprise to me?
When you durst do it, then you were a man;(55)
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. (Act 1, Scene 7)

During the murder, he waffles about whether or not to commit it and leaves the details to her.  His wife clearly tells him what to do, and even chides him for not doing it exactly to her specifications.

As far of aspects of femininity, Lady Macbeth is someone of a paradox.  She is strong, but succumbs to guilt.  The reader or viewer could easily assume that when she faints at finding Duncan’s body it is only an act, except that at the end of the play she clearly has lost her mind.  She does so in a very feminine way, being obsessed with being unable to wash the blood off of her hands. It seems to be a girly thing to do, to worry about the physical as well as the metaphorical and symbolic nature of the blood on her hands.  It’s apt symbolism, but it heightens her femininity, and calls into question the viewer’s earlier assumption that fainting at finding Duncan’s body was only an act.

Finally, the witches are not quite women.  In fact, there is a joke made by Banquo when they are first described.

You should be women,
And yet your beards forbid me to interpret
That you are so. (Act 1, Scene 3)

Although it is humorous, the reference to beards and the masculine nature of the witches reinforces their role as figures of guidance.  They never act feminine in any way, especially Hecate.  She is the figure of prophecy and the one pulling the strings.  We are made to believe that while Macbeth thinks that he is making his own choices, it is really she who is leading him.

Women have an overbearing role in every aspect of the play.  Macbeth thinks that he has everything under control, and cannot be harmed, because he hears a prophecy that “none of woman born/Shall harm Macbeth” (Act 4, Scene 1).  He learns later that this means that Macduff can actually hurt him because he wasn’t born the traditional way.  Again, a woman is his doom.  Nontraditional roles of masculinity and femininity dominate the play, and remind us that while we may place ourselves into certain boxes, life is not always black and white.

Macbeth can, to a degree, be seen as a commentary on the conventional implications of "being a man" or "being a woman."

Lady Macbeth's invocation to the "spirits that tend on mortal thoughts" asks that they "unsex" her. The suggestion is that for the purpose at hand—killing Duncan—she wishes not to have the normally gentle and merciful qualities associated with femininity.

At the same time, Lady Macbeth, in criticizing her husband's nature as "too full of the milk of human kindness," is attributing a kind of femininity to Macbeth. When Banquo's ghost appears in the supper scene and Macbeth becomes hysterical, she pointedly asks him, "Are you a man?" to which he replies, "Ay, and a bold one that dare look on that which would appall the devil." Her questioning of his manhood is presented as the worst insult that a woman can deliver, though her intention is to knock some sense into Macbeth and get him to stop panicking. She and the others at the banquet, of course, do not see the ghost. This leads us to the still unsolved question of whether the ghost is merely a hallucination, as Lady Macbeth asserts: "This is the very painting of your fear! This is the air-drawn dagger you said led you to Duncan." Macbeth is not a coward, but the depth of his guilt has caused him to react in a fearful, violently emotional way.

The most significant thing about the traditional concepts of "man" and "woman" presented in Macbeth is the irony that the male lead, Macbeth, has more compassion than his female counterpart. Lady Macbeth's encouragement is what sets the plot in motion and causes the killing. Without Macbeth's own inner cruelty, however, her urging would have fallen on deaf ears. So the ultimate message Shakespeare gives is that both men and women are equals in their potential to destroy others and, ultimately, themselves.

To be a good man in Macbeth is to be brave and strong, a warrior, like Macbeth and Banquo are at the beginning of the play. Consider how highly they are initially praised by Duncan, a character whom we are clearly supposed to like (even Macbeth must admit how kind, generous, humble, and honest a ruler Duncan is). Duncan is, in many respects, an ideal man and ruler—he only lacks the discernment to realize whom he should and should not trust. Further, a man ought to care deeply about his family, like Macbeth does for Lady Macbeth at the beginning, or like Macduff does for his wife and children, or like Duncan does for his sons.

From our knowledge of Elizabethan England, we might make a case that to be a good woman in Macbeth is to be soft and nurturing, a woman who stands by her husband and supports him in his principles. Essentially, we might infer that a woman ought to be everything Lady Macbeth is not. She manipulates her husband, emasculating and insulting him, trying to run roughshod over him and his principles. In the end, she pays a terrible price when she loses her sanity and takes her own life. These are the major clues that her behavior is wrong by Elizabethan standards.

In Act I, scene ii of Macbeth, the wounded sergeant describes to Duncan and Malcolm how fearlessly Macbeth fought in the battle. He says that Macbeth "carved out his passage" through the ranks of soldiers and that his sword "smoked with bloody execution." Once he reached the rebel Macdonwald, he "unseamed him from the nave to the chaps," meaning that he ripped open Macdonwald's torso from his stomach to his head, which he then, in a somewhat redundant gesture, cut off and fixed upon the battlements.

Duncan, of course, thoroughly approves of this thirst for blood, since Macbeth was fighting for him. Macbeth's manliness is therefore associated from the very beginning of the play not only with physical courage, but with extreme violence. Lady Macbeth, however, later finds both courage and capacity for violence lacking in her husband. When Macbeth protests: "I dare do all that may become a man," his wife furiously replies:

When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man.

Macbeth here tries to associate the idea of manliness with honorable and civilized behavior, such as refusing to murder his king. Lady Macbeth, however, is determined that masculinity should signify only courage and violence. Eventually, Macbeth is forced to agree when he says to his wife, with grudging admiration:

Bring forth men-children only;
For thy undaunted mettle should compose
Nothing but males.

The rhetoric of Macbeth, therefore, continually associates masculinity with courage, ambition, and violence. These words, however, cannot disguise from either Macbeth or the audience the obvious fact that stabbing an old man in his sleep, while certainly violent, is hardly courageous.

Look at the public vs. the private roles of the Macbeths and the Macduffs.

Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff mainly deliver their lines at home, in the private realm.  Lady Macbeth convinces her husband to murder Duncan using emotion-filled intimate argument.  Lady Macduff, whose husband has abandoned her, also vents her frustrations with her son and Ross, again privately.  According to linguist Deborah Tannen, women tend to be "rapport talkers," consensus-builders who speak more intimately and emotionally from a domestic, private setting.

Macbeth and Macduff are all about the public realm.  Both deliver speeches to other Thanes, long monologues for all to hear.  They are, according to Tannen, "report-talkers.  They deliver information more so than feelings.  Notice what Malcolm tells Macduff after his family has been slaughtered:

Be this the whetstone of your sword: let griefConvert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.

The men demand action (revenge) of Macduff, instead of words.  They don't expect him to use language to show feelings; instead, they expect steel to do their talking.

This is what Lady Macbeth laments in Act I:

When you durst do it, then you were a man;And, to be more than what you were, you wouldBe so much more the man. Nor time nor placeDid then adhere, and yet you would make both:They have made themselves, and that their fitness nowDoes unmake you. I have given suck, and knowHow tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:I would, while it was smiling in my face,Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as youHave done to this.

She would trade her mother's milk for gall and dash her kids' brains out (if she had any) so that she could have the public privileges of men, such are the limitations of gender in her time.

In Macbeth, which was first performed in 1606, Shakespeare subverts several gender conventions of the time to point out how people viewed the relationship between power and gender.

This is done in several ways. First, let's examine the dynamic between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Although Macbeth is a valiant warrior, it is his wife who appears to be in control of her husband much of the time. Lady Macbeth is portrayed as more ambitious and ruthless than Macbeth, at least at the start of the play. She recognizes, and points out to her husband and the audience, that she does not fulfill the expected gender role of her time. In fact, at one point she wishes out loud that she was a man so that she could do the dirty deeds 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. Make thick my blood.
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! (act 1, scene 5, lines 30–37)

Here, Lady Macbeth essentially says that to be strong and gain power, one must be cruel and that these are male attributes. Macbeth, on the other hand, is too weak—even feminine in his wife's assessment—to do what is necessary to become king of Scotland on his own.

With the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare seems to say that power as we usually see it—asserting physical aggressive dominance—is just one way. It is the masculine way, but not the only way. Women wield a softer power in that they can influence the men around them and pull strings as needed to achieve their ambitions. However, if gender norms did not exist in this way, men and women would be free to chase power or not without societal expectations levied upon them based on their gender.