kind to do so.

Essentially, she describes him as a decent human being who may lack the mettle to do what it takes to become king. She wants him, essentially, to be less well balanced. She notes he is "not without ambition," but doesn't suffer from the "illness" of intense desire that will turn him into a sociopathic murderer.

She says,

Yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great,

Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it.

As we can see, her desire to be queen is so great and seems so within her grasp that Lady Macbeth has lost her moral compass. No price seems to high to pay to achieve her ambitions, if only she can get her husband to do his part.

Lady Macbeth appears as nothing less than monstrous in these scenes. Scene 5 features her soliloquy in which she begins planning the murder of Duncan and invokes all manner of evil spirits for the purpose. In Scene 7, she appears equally ruthless, urging her husband on to commit the murder. He is not entirely willing, but she jeers at him for being weak and declares that she herself would be quite prepared to kill her own baby if required.

In both scenes, Lady Macbeth comes across as not just wicked but grotesque, as she deliberately renounces humane traits like kindliness and mercy and all her own supposedly softer, womanly qualities, conjuring up a frightening picture of herself as filled 'from the crown to the toe top-full/of direst cruelty' (40-41)  and with breasts full of 'gall' (46). She follows this up with the even grimmer image in Scene 7 of herself dashing out her baby's brains.

Lady Macbeth, then, appears as an utterly pitiless, scheming villain at this early stage, prior to the murder of Duncan. However, over the course of the play, this picture of her is not quite borne out. After the murder of Duncan she gradually becomes unhinged with remorse, as her famous sleepwalking scene, when she desperately tries to wash her hands free of blood, attests. In the end, she is not really fitted for such villainy. Although she appears so evil in the scenes discussed above, what she is really doing is trying to work herself up to the pitch of committing murder, to psyche herself up for the dreadful task. It doesn't really come naturally to her. 

Lady Macbeth sees herself as strong and ambitious in Act 1.  She wants what she wants.  When she gets Macbeth’s letter describing the witches’ prophecies, she latches on and does not let go.  She wants to be queen, and she wants Macbeth to be king.  She will stop at nothing, not even murder.

Lady Macbeth sees herself as someone who must take the reins in the relationship for what must be done...she is stronger than her husband who is "too full of the milk of human kindness" to fulfill such a deed as murder.  She calls on the devils and spirits of darkness to "stop up the passage" to guilt and remorse...although we know they should have stopped them up a little more thoroughly since Lady Macbeth commits suicide based on her guilty conscience.

In this scene, Lady Macbeth calls on the powers of darkness to fill her with cruelty; she calls on the evil spirits to give her masculine qualities, to remove from her all that makes her soft and feminine so that she can be firm of purpose in order to convince her husband to commit murder. In this scene, she acts like a conjuring witch, reaching out to the forces of darknesss to aid her in this task.

She asks the night to cover their actions when they kill Duncan so that they can succeed.  Lady Macbeth in this scene, is filled with unchecked ambition, cruelty and a desire for blood.  She, at this point in the play, is the stronger, more cunning Macbeth.   She will take charge of the planning; she will become the man. 

"Under my battlements. 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! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering
ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick
night," And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the
dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!' (Act I, Scene V)

In Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth is confident, decisive, and ruthless.  In this scene, she receives the letter from Macbeth that acquaints her with the Weird Sisters' statements that he would become Thane of Cawdor and king, as well as the fact that he was shortly thereafter named Thane of Cawdor.  After she reads his letter, she immediately resolves that he shall be king: "Glamis, thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be / What thou art promised" (1.5.15-18).  She initially worries that Macbeth's nature "is too full o' th' milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way" (1.5.17-18).  In other words, she never doubts for a moment that Macbeth will be king; she only worries that he may be too gentle to be willing to kill Duncan in order to hurry the process along. 

When she learns from a messenger that Duncan's retinue approaches, she calls his arrival at her home his "fatal entrance," letting us know that she has already, even at this early stage, conceived of a plan to have him killed so that Macbeth can take his place (1.5.46).  She then requests the assistance of those supernatural spirits that "That on mortal thoughts," saying

[...] unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty.  Make thick my blood.
Stop up th' access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
Th' effect and it.  (1.5.48-54)

Lady Macbeth wants any nurturing, compassionate impulse of hers to be removed so that only her cruel and ruthless tendencies will remain.  She wants to make sure that she will feel no regret so that nothing in her womanly nature might dissuade her from the course of action on which she has resolved.  She requests that she be "unsex[ed]" so that she can be more like a man (or the way in which she and her society conceive of men to be): hard-hearted, implacable, and remorseless.

By Act 5, Scene 1, however, we see a very different Lady Macbeth.  It is clear that her earlier to become immune to "remorse" has not been granted.  As she sleepwalks, she is transported back in time to the night of Duncan's murder.  She imagines that his blood is still on her hands, crying, "Out, damn spot, out, I say!" (5.1.37).  Though she said right after the actual murder that "A little water clears us of this deed," it is clear that she no longer believes it to be so easy to escape one's guilt (2.2.86).  Even the doctor that her servant brings to watch her recognizes that her "heart is sorely charged" (5.1.56-57).  Lady Macbeth clearly feels the heavy weight of self-reproach, and even the doctor knows he cannot help her because her ailment is not a physical one, but an emotional/spiritual one. 

In this scene, she recalls trying to force Macbeth to quickly move on from the guilt he felt immediately after the murder, saying, "What's done cannot be undone.  To bed, to bed, to bed" (5.1.70-71).  There was no point in regretting what they did then because there was nothing they could have done to change it.  By this time in the play, though, it is clear that Lady Macbeth has not successfully managed to keep regret away, that her weaker (and, to her, more feminine) impulses have overcome her desire to be ruthless, and her former decisiveness -- and unwillingness to consider any other course of action -- can now be blamed for her current, sad state.

It is notable, too, that in Act 1, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth speaks in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter).  In Act 5, Scene 1, she speaks in prose.  Often, in Shakespeare's plays, when a noble character's speech changes from verse to prose, it is an indication that they have "gone mad."  Such an interpretation certainly seems to fit here given Lady Macbeth's slipping grasp on reality and her later suicide.  Thus, we can also read this change in the way she speaks as further evidence of her character's transformation.

Shakespeare uses the dramatic technique of soliloquy in this scene when Shakespeare allows the audience to overhear Lady Macbeth's innermost thoughts in response to Macbeth's letter and the news that Duncan is coming to stay. In her soliloquy, she uses heightened language to describe her intense to desire to be pitiless in killing Duncan. She employs vivid imagery. For example, she asks that her blood be made thicker to block any regrets over murder:

Make thick my blood.

Stop up the access and passage to remorse

This scene is our first introduction to Lady Macbeth. And she is presented as a ruthless and committed woman who is far more ambitious than her husband. The force of mind and hardness vital for an assassination is shown to come from her. We are also forced to see a comparison between Lady Macbeth and the witches. When she invokes the dark spirits to "unsex me" and "fill me" with "direst cruelty" there is a complete betrayal of humanity and femininity and a colossal abandonment of self to evil. This soliloquy of Lady Macbeth's is full of imperatives ("come", "Fill" etc) gives her speech added urgency and determination. It is interesting to note that when her husband arrives she greets him in the same way as the witches did in Act I scene 3. The messenger announcing the arrival of the king is a nice touch, as it is juxtaposed to Lady Macbeth's plans for him.

In this scene, Lady Macbeth receives a letter from Macbeth in which he tells her about the prophecies and his recent promotion to Thane of Cawdor. Shakespeare's portrayal of Lady Macbeth in this scene is uniformly negative. Specifically, he presents her as an ambitious and ruthless woman, capable of convincing Macbeth that killing Duncan is the only way to realize his dreams of becoming king.

To demonstrate this, take a look at her dialogue after receiving the letter. She talks about Macbeth lacking the necessary feelings ("the illness") to go for the crown. This is because Macbeth is too kind-hearted ("too full o' th' milk of human kindness.") In contrast, Lady Macbeth urges Macbeth to return home so that she can use her influence to ready him for murder:

Hie thee hither,

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear

And chastise with the valor of my tongue

All that impedes thee from the golden round.

This implies that while Macbeth lacks the cunning and cold-bloodedness to kill, Lady Macbeth has it in abundance and, more importantly, can allay any of his fears about committing such a heinous crime.

Moreover, by using the words "golden round" to describe the crown, Shakespeare shows that Lady Macbeth is just as eager for power as her husband.

Finally, after the servant brings news of Macbeth and Duncan's arrival, Lady Macbeth asks to be unsexed and to be filled with "direst cruelty." In other words, she wants to possess all the traits which make murder possible so that she can guarantee their accession to power and prestige. 

In this scene, Shakespeare presents Lady Macbeth as a manipulative, ruthless, and diabolical woman. When she reads Macbeth's letter that acquaints her with his news from the Weird Sisters, she becomes anxious for him to come home. She believes that he is too good and kind to "catch the nearest way" to the throne, and she wants to "pour [her] spirits into [his] ear" and make him see her way.

She also prays to murderous spirits to come to her and remove any sense of remorse or compassion from her and fill her up, from her toes to the top of her head, with ruthlessness and strength so that she can go forward with the evil plans she's already making. Although she desires to be completely remorseless and without feeling, the fact that she has to pray for it makes it seem as though this is not really her natural character. She is ambitious, clearly, but if she were already totally ruthless, she wouldn't have to pray for assistance to be ruthless. Therefore, Shakespeare presents her as manipulative and ambitious, someone who wants to be tougher than, perhaps, she really is.

The revelations of act 5, scene 1, illustrate the psychological costs of Lady Macbeth's early crimes.

In act 1, scene 5, we find Lady Macbeth driven by the same ambition as her husband; we observe her determining to put Macbeth on the throne by way of the murder of Duncan. However, she gives no consideration to the psychological burden that this guilt will place upon her. She's largely focused on Duncan's murder and the usurpation of his throne and is entirely committed to this crime.

As we find in act 5, scene 1, however, the guilt has begun to take its toll. In this later scene, we find Lady Macbeth sleepwalking and trying to wash out the imaginary bloodstains from her hands. Her guilt has tormented her and has ultimately caused her to go insane.

In act 5, scene 1, the Doctor and Gentlewoman witness Lady Macbeth sleepwalking and overhear the queen reveal her role in King Duncan's assassination. Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking is a sign of her tortured soul, which is both restless and overwhelmed with guilt stemming from her participation in Duncan's murder. As Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking, she feverishly rubs her hands while saying,

"Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie!" (Shakespeare, 5.1.25–26).

While she is pretending to wash her hands, Lady Macbeth speaks about her crime and encourages her husband to conceal his emotions in order to get away with the murder. The Gentlewoman and Doctor also witness Lady Macbeth say,

"Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, Oh, Oh!" (Shakespeare, 5.1.31–32).

Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking, hallucinations, and comments regarding King Duncan's murder not only expose her role in his death but also reveal her overwhelming guilt and anxiety. In Shakespeare's day, sleepwalking was synonymous with a tortured soul and was indicative of a restless spirit and mind. In act 5, scene 1, Lady Macbeth is no longer the resolute, ambitious wife she was in act 1, scene 7. She has completely lost touch with reality and can no longer control her emotions. In this scene, Lady Macbeth is portrayed as a guilt-ridden, mentally-unstable woman with a tortured soul. After Lady Macbeth exits the scene, the Doctor admits to the Gentlewoman that the queen is in desperate need of a priest or divine intervention to heal her troubled mind.

In Act I, Scene 5 of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth reads the letter from her warrior husband that informs her of his having been made Thane of Cawdor as well as the witches' prediction that he will be king, along with the news that King Duncan will arrive this night. As she ponders this news, Lady Macbeth worries that the new Thane may not have the temperament for seizing the crown from Duncan.

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shall be
What thou art promised. Yet do I fear thy nature;
It is too full o' th' milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way....(1.5.15-18)

After reading Macbeth's letter, Lady Macbeth wants her husband to hurry to the castle so she can speak with him about whatever is preventing him from going after the crown, and thereby persuade him against his objections to taking what fate and the spirits seem to want him to possess, anyway. In the meantime, Lady Macbeth calls upon the preternatural world to "unsex" her and fill her "top-full/Of direst cruelty" by taking her "milk for gall"--replacing kindness for bitterness.  In this soliloquy of Lady Macbeth's, there is a connection made between masculinity and violence.

When Macbeth arrives, Lady Macbeth convinces him that he must hide what his face reveals after hearing the witches' predictions. "Only look up clear [innocent]" but be like the snake that hides underneath flowers, she tells Macbeth; in other words, give King Duncan no reason to have any suspicion about him. Then, she urges Macbeth to leave all else to her.

Lady Macbeth, in Shakespeare's Macbeth, reverses gender roles with her husband at the beginning of the play, only to revert to a traditional gender role by Act 5.1. 

Lady Macbeth wants to be "unsexed," in Act 1, to be made warlike, like a male warrior.  She wants to have no scruples when it comes to doing what's necessary to achieve the throne for her husband--assassinate the king.  Macbeth has scruples and hesitates, but his wife does not.

Furthermore, in Act 2.2, Lady Macbeth feels no guilt and no regrets for plotting to kill the king, as her husband does.  A little water will clear us of this deed, she says, while Macbeth metaphorically says that not even an ocean could wash all of Duncan's blood from his hands, and also wishes the knocking at the castle door could wake Duncan up.

By Act 5.1, however, Lady Macbeth reverts back to the traditional role of a female.  She now demonstrates scruples and feelings of guilt.  Now that her husband has gone on a killing spree, she sees what her actions and manipulation have led to, and she regrets and feels guilty for what she's done. 

Lady Macbeth flip flops roles with her husband, so much so that she suffers a break down and ultimately commits suicide.  One certainly can't see her doing that in Act 1. 

Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's strongest women and is often considered a villain of the play.  In an odd way, that's high praise, as this important function was usually reserved for a male character in the play.

We first meet her in Act I, scene V.  She is reading a letter from Macbeth, in which he describes his prophetic meeting with the witches.  "Hail, king thou shalt be!" is all the motivation that Lady M needs to decide that her husband should become king sooner rather than later:

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be

What thou art promised:  yet I do fear thy nature;

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness...

And, in recognizing her husband's weakness, a kind heart, Lady M. sets herself up as the driving force behind a plot to kill the present king, Duncan, while he sleeps in their home that night.

In her famous lines (39-55), she invokes whatever magic it might take to give her the strength and courage of a man (implying that her husband lacks this) to get the job done -- which is murder.

Come, thick night,

And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,

That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,

Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,

To cry, 'Hold, hold!

She sets herself up as a villain here, invoking the forces of Hell and cautioning those of Heaven to stay out of her scheme.

Macbeth arrives and she not only greets him by the titles he owns (Glamis and Cawdor), but also calls him "Greater than both hereafter."  She wastes no time in telling Macbeth that Duncan will never leave their home alive ("O, never/Shall sun that morrow see!").  While Macbeth isn't convinced of her hastily described plan, Lady M, is clearly in charge -- "Leave all the rest to me."

In the opening lines of scene 5 of Act 1, we learn how confident lady Macbeth is about her power to influence her husband. She has just received a letter from him which informs her of the witches' predictions that he will be king and that he has been awarded a new title, thane of Cawdor, a fact which had also been predicted by the evil sisters. She expresses fear that Macbeth does not have the callousness required to attain the crown by malicious means. She then says:

...Hie thee hither,
That I may pour my spirits in thine ear;And chastise with the valour of my tongueAll that impedes thee from the golden round,
Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem
To have thee crown'd withal. 

Shakespeare pertinently displays her ruthless ambition in these lines for she wishes to encourage her husband to ignore all sentiment or conditions which would stop him from achieving his goal to become king.

Later, when she welcomes him home, she wastes no time in informing Macbeth about how idealistic she is. She feels their glorious future in the present, which implies that she is not going to waste any time in preparing for their claim to the throne.

She obviously intends to take the lead in getting rid of Duncan. Shakespeare illustrates her barbaric intention and her devious nature when she tells Macbeth:

...To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't.

She has already taken command and advises him to assume a convivial nature and be kind and courteous to deceive others whilst he is, in fact, plotting terrible mischief. Her malicious desire is further supported by the words:

He that's coming
Must be provided for:..

She is ambiguously suggesting that Duncan must be taken care of, not in a kind, affectionate manner, but that his assassination should be carefully orchestrated. To this end, she commands Macbeth:

...and you shall put
This night's great business into my dispatch;
Which shall to all our nights and days to come
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.

Shakespeare indicates, in these lines, that Lady Macbeth is, most definitely, a powerful figure. She has no qualms in committing the most dastardly of deeds and is fearless. She is confident in her ability to successfully plot Duncan's murder and, therefore, is comfortable in telling her husband to allow her to make all the necessary arrangements for their pernicious plot, for this will ensure them future glory when they, as king and queen, will have sole command and mastery over Scotland.

Her confidence and power are further supported later when Macbeth expresses doubt about the success of their evil venture and wishes to withdraw from committing the deed. She manages to persuade him by, once again, taking the lead. It is ironic, therefore, that she later commits suicide when the extent of her and her husband's malice persistently gnaws at her conscience and drives her over the edge.

I think Shakespeare presented Lady Macbeth as a powerful woman right from the start, because it makes the most sense.  Macbeth is a brave warrior according to the soldier's testimony to Duncan earlier.  

For brave Macbeth--well he deserves that name--
Disdaining fortune, with his brandish'd steel,
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like valour's minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave;
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,
Till he unseam'd him from the nave to the chaps,
And fix'd his head upon our battlements.

Additionally, Macbeth is powerful politically as well.  He's not some lowly grunt on the battlefield.  He is a thane, which makes him a member of a ruling class.  Not as powerful as a king, but definitely more powerful than some grunt or servant.  Lady Macbeth, as Macbeth's wife, is used to being the wife of a powerful man and thane.  She is used to having servants.  She is used to power and used to being obeyed.  She is used to getting her way.  To me, it makes sense that she is presented as powerful, because she is powerful.  It also makes sense that she would be very tempted to continue gaining more power.  By introducing her as powerful, Shakespeare makes Lady Macbeth into something that I would already expect, and then within a few scenes, Shakespeare takes her to the next level of power hungry.  

In Act I, Scene 5, we encounter Lady Macbeth reading her husband's account of the meeting with the witches. She immediately realizes she will have to push her husband, who she believes to be too "full of the milk of human kindness," into committing the murder she believes necessary to fulfill the witches' prophecy. She resolves to "unsex" herself and become cruel and remorseless in pursuit of this goal. At the end of the scene, she exercises real and tangible power over her husband when she tells him to "leave the rest to me." She will come up with a plan by which they will murder Duncan, who is staying at their castle. Later, she plays the welcoming hostess to the King, and goads her husband to murder Duncan when he vacillates in Act I, Scene 7. When Macbeth thinks about postponing Duncan's murder, Lady Macbeth bitterly reproaches him, calling him a coward and questioning his masculinity. Later, she plants daggers on the King's guards and smears them with blood. Lady Macbeth is portrayed as a powerful, strong, and ruthless woman early in the play. She essentially controls her husband. By the final act, however, Lady Macbeth is a shadow of her former self. She becomes consumed by guilt, and dies with, as she believes, blood on her hands.

In Act 1, Scene 5 of Shakespeare's Macbeth, the first third of Lady Macbeth's soliloquy is devoted to Lady Macbeth reading aloud a letter she has received from her husband.

In the letter, Macbeth reports his and Banquo's encounter with the three "weird sisters," or three witches. He particularly reports that the witches prophesied he would first be made Thane of Cawdor, then king. To prove that their prophecies are reliable, Macbeth next relates that once the three witches had vanished into thin air, messengers came from the king "who all-hailed [him] 'Thane of Cawder'; by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me" (I.v.7-9). Macbeth's letter, according to Lady Macbeth's soliloquy, ends with Macbeth saying he wanted to report the good news to her so that she can take part in "rejoicing" (13). However, the rest of Lady Macbeth's soliloquy, immediately after reading the letter, shows some private thoughts of hers that serve to develop Shakespeare's major theme concerning the dangers of excessive ambition.
Lady Macbeth next states that she is afraid his nature is "too full o' the milk of human kindness/To catch the nearest way" (18-19). In saying "to full o' the milk of human kindness," she is saying a couple of things. First, infants drink milk, and in being nurtured with milk by their mothers or nurses, they are shown kindness. Hence, Lady Macbeth is first saying Macbeth's mind is too much like that of an innocent babe's. Second, in referring to kindness, she is also saying he is far too kind. The phrase "catch the nearest way" can be translated as meaning ascend to the throne as king as soon as possible rather than waiting. Hence, she is asserting that Macbeth is far too innocent and too kind to do anything dastardly or conniving that will win him the throne sooner rather than later.
Other claims she makes in her speech assert that he has ambition but not the drive to fulfill his ambitions; he is too holy and pure to become king; and that she knows he is willing to cheat to win what he wants.

All in all, as she speaks her soliloquy, she is planning to convince Macbeth to do something dastardly to win the crown, such as kill the present king. Since she is willing to stoop to such a low, immoral level to gain power, we can see that the soliloquy helps to develop Shakespeare's theme concerning the dangers of excessive ambition. 

In William Shakespeare's Macbeth (I,v), Lady Macbeth is seen reading a letter she has received from her husband (Macbeth). In the letter, Lady Macbeth learns that Macbeth encountered witches who prophesied his climb to king.

Lady Macbeth ponders Macbeth's ability to "catch the nearest way" to the throne. She believes him to be far too kind. She compares Macbeth to an infant (he is "too full o'the milk"). Later, after a messenger brings word that Duncan is on his way, Lady Macbeth's true nature emerges. She asks to be "unsexed" and filled with "direst cruelty." She renounces peace, remorse, and God ("nor heaven peep").

Readers learn that Lady Macbeth is a woman who desires power more than anything. Her husband does not mean much to her (given her comparison of him to a child). She knows that she can only count on herself to do what needs to be done. Essentially, Lady Macbeth proves herself to be ambitious, ruthless, and manipulative.

In Act I, Scene 5, Lady Macbeth receives a letter from her husband describing his encounter with the witches and their prophecy that he will become king of Scotland. She is presented as a devoted wife, willing to abandon whatever scruples she has to help her husband achieve what they view as his destiny. When she discovers King Duncan will be at their castle, she immediately resolves to "unsex" herself, becoming ruthless and cruel in order to push Macbeth, who she views as "too full of the milk of human kindness" to carry out the murder that will put him on the throne. She is also remarkably assertive. No sooner does she learn Duncan will be staying at Inverness that night then she begins to hatch a plan to kill him. She tells Macbeth what to do, advising him to greet Duncan with great hospitality so as not to reveal their plot:

bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue; look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't.

Beyond that, she tells Macbeth, he should "leave the rest to me," meaning Macbeth should simply act normal while she plans the brutal and treasonous murder of the king. Lady Macbeth's actions would have been viewed by Shakespeare's audiences as not only devious and cruel, but as an inversion of the natural order of things. This is certainly how she is presented in this scene, and it is consistent with the theme originally described by the witches: what's fair is foul and what's foul is fair. Yet the modern audience might be equally struck by Lady Macbeth's love and ambition for her husband as well as her willingness to defy prescribed gender roles. As for the potential for conflict, it is obvious the couple is plotting to kill the King, an act that will plunge Scotland into bloody chaos.

In act 1, scene 5, Lady Macbeth is presented as the more dominant personality within the pair. Indeed, notice her words between lines 14 and 16, when she charges her husband as being too kind, lacking the ruthlessness necessary to seize the opportunity. Even so, it is important to remember that, for all her considerable ambition and ruthlessness, Lady Macbeth remains constrained by the gendered universe in which she operates, only able to act when in partnership with her husband (unlike Macbeth, who has far more freedom to act unilaterally). This quality is reflected in the actual act of murder seen later in the play, where Lady Macbeth ultimately plays the role of an enabler and coconspirator, even as Macbeth is responsible for committing the physical act of murder.

Macbeth's characterization, at this point, is more open to interpretation. Macbeth himself is well aware of the possibility of usurpation, and he himself has already put murder on the table as an option (this is already clear from his lines at the end of act 1, scene 3). However, this raises the question: What precisely is his attitude toward this crime? Has he already committed to it, or is he of a more ambivalent mindset? The answer cannot really be found from the text alone. Even looking forward toward his sudden crisis of conscience in act 1, scene 7, the basic ambiguity of his psyche remains: Does that last minute crisis reflect more longstanding doubts and turmoil regarding Duncan's murder, or is it nothing more than last-minute second guessing once he approaches the moment of no return? The answer is not really clear, and (as if often the case with Shakespeare) it seems subject to interpretation.

Act V is the final act of Shakespeare's Macbeth and one in which both Macbeth and his wife encounter the negative consequences of their actions. In his quest for power, aided and abetted by Lady Macbeth, Macbeth has been responsible for the murders of King Duncan, Banquo, and Macduff's family. He has also become a harsh and cruel king. 

Lady Macbeth, when she steeled herself to participate in the murder of King Duncan, discussed how such an act and the strength she needed to develop went against her inherently gentle feminine nature. This tension, between the practical need to be ruthless to act appropriately as a wife to Macbeth and further his career and her own moral upbringing and nature, lead to inner turmoil. She is especially guilty over her contribution to the death of Duncan. In Act V, this inner conflict and guilt gradually drive her insane. 

The outward manifestations of this guilt are sleepwalking and a belief that blood is literally staining her hands and cannot be washed out. Macbeth hires a Doctor to care for her, but the Doctor suggests that she may actually need a priest instead. In Scene 5, Seyton notifies Macbeth that Lady Macbeth has committed suicide. 

In Act V, Lady Macbeth's behavior is unrecognizable. At the beginning of the play, she comes across as an evil, strong, and manipulative woman who questions her husband's courage and encourages him to murder his relative Duncan, who is also the king. She appears to be cruel and relentless:

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!

In this soliloquy, she invokes the evil forces to fill her with cruelty and strength because she wants to help her husband in his quest to murder king Duncan.

Nevertheless, in Act V, Lady Macbeth is a completely altered person. She has stepped into madness and begins to hallucinate and sleepwalk. Her guilty conscience will not give her peace. Lady Macbeth's realization that she encouraged and forced her husband to commit atrocious acts begins to haunt her, and she is no longer a self-possessed and strong character. We realize she has become fragile and neglected by her husband.

By embracing evil, Lady Macbeth initiates her own demise, as did her husband. They are both tragic characters because they could have had a good and normal life, but, instead, they chose corruption and evil.

In this scene, Lady Macbeth is presented as overwrought and restless, so much so that she cannot sleep and has taken to somnambulism. She consistently walks in her sleep so much that it has alarmed one of her gentlewomen to such an extent that she has reported her lady's strange conduct to the doctor. At the beginning of the scene she informs him:

... I have seen
her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown upon
her, unlock her closet, take forth paper, fold it,
write upon't, read it, afterwards seal it, and again
return to bed; yet all this while in a most fast sleep

When the doctor asks her what Lady Macbeth had to say whilst she was in this state, the gentlewoman refuses to repeat what she had heard, stating that she cannot say it to anyone since she has no witness to confirm her report.

At this point, Lady Macbeth enters with a candle. The gentlewoman reports that Lady Macbeth had commanded that that there continuously be light next to her bed. It appears that she has grown afraid of the dark. The two witness her walking with the candle, open-eyed but with no sense of sight, since she is fast asleep. The Lady then starts rubbing her hands and the gentlewoman says about this:

It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus
washing her hands: I have known her continue in
this a quarter of an hour.

Lady Macbeth then begins to speak, saying firstly, "Out damned spot." She perceives a mark on her hand and wishes to erase it. Witnessed by the doctor and gentlewoman, she furthermore utters:

Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One: two: why,
then, 'tis time to do't.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my
lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we
fear who knows it, when none can call our power to
account?--Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him.

She seems to be hallucinating and her speech is garbled. In her confusion she refers to her husband, asking him to flee, and then is suddenly critical of him. She then gives the assurance that they should not fear since none can call them to account. She then suddenly refers to Duncan's murder, stating that no one could have expected him to have so much blood.

Lady Macbeth then makes reference to Lady Macduff, who Macbeth has murdered. She then promptly refers to the supposed blight on her hands and refers to Macbeth again, stating that he spoils everything with his sudden shows of fear. The doctor is shocked by this and instructs the gentlewoman to leave since she has heard what she should not. Lady Macbeth continues in her somnambulistic state and remarks:

Here's the smell of the blood still: all the
perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little
hand. Oh, oh, oh!

She is clearly obsessed by the stain on her hand and its bloody smell. Her cry is a piteous wail, for she believes that the smell and the stain are impossible to remove. In her delirium, Lady Macbeth imagines that her husband is with her and instructs him to dress for bed and not look so afraid since Banquo's buried and obviously cannot return from the grave - a reference to Macbeth's fear when he saw Banquo's ghost. She then asks that Macbeth come to bed since there's "knocking at the gate," an obvious reference to the period just after they murdered the king. She beseeches the imagined Macbeth to come to bed since they cannot undo what they have done. The gentlewoman tells the doctor that she will now go directly to bed.  

It is clear that Lady Macbeth is overwhelmed by remorse. She is so stricken by guilt that it sits on her conscience constantly so that she cannot sleep. She and her husband's evil has enveloped her completely and she realizes that she cannot undo the harm that they have done. She is haunted by images of their malevolence and is a tortured, pitiful soul.

The Lady Macbeth we witness here is in direct contrast to the forthright and ruthless conspirator we have come to know earlier in the play. She then had no qualms in encouraging her husband to commit the most pernicious evil. At one point, when Macbeth expressed doubt about assassinating the king, she said the following:

... 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 to this. 

This illustrates the degree of remorseless evil she was prepared to commit to. She had no reservations about doing whatever was necessary to achieve their ambition. When Macbeth fears that they could fail, she says:

... What cannot you and I perform upon
The unguarded Duncan? what not put upon
His spongy officers, who shall bear the guilt
Of our great quell?

In this instance, she had already planned to intoxicate Duncan's guards by plying them with alcohol and adding a potion to their drink so that they would sleep like swine and not remember anything, whilst they committed their dastardly deed. She displayed such depth of savagery and ruthlessness that her husband commented:

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

Lady Macbeth has now lost this undaunted fervor and has become a miserable, overwrought, and paranoid version of her former self. She has been overwhelmed by the cruelty and overly sanguine nature of their malice and has lost her sanity--just punishment for their greed. Eventually, she is so overcome by guilt that she takes her own life.

In act 5, scene 1, Lady Macbeth wanders the corridors of Dunsinane Castle as if in a terrible trance. It would appear that she's in the process of going insane, her fraught nervous system cracking under the weight of guilt and paranoia. Earlier in the play, Lady Macbeth had appeared as strong and in control. It was she who acted as the main mover in the plot to murder Duncan and constantly cajoled a weak, vacillating Macbeth to put aside his moral qualms about killing the king and get on with carrying out the dirty deed.

Yet now, Lady Macbeth cuts a truly pathetic figure as she vainly tries to scrub the imagined blood-stains from her hands. In act 2, scene 2, things couldn't have been more different. Then, Lady Macbeth was so blithely complacent about the prospects of avoiding guilt:

A little water clears us of this deed.

But as she sleepwalks the corridors of Dunsinane, no amount of water or ceaseless scrubbing of hands will be enough to wipe away the guilt that has now indelibly stained Lady Macbeth's tortured soul.

Lady Macbeth could be described as having become mad or crazy from guilt. She is like a ghost, sleepwalking at night, muttering aloud to herself about washing a blood spot away. She talks about how much blood there is and rubs her hands as if she is washing them. The guilt over the murders she has participated in has caught up with her.

This mad sleepwalking has been happening frequently enough to alarm her gentlewoman, who calls in a doctor to witness the scene. Lady Macbeth sleepwalks in front of him with open eyes and says:

Out, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.

This scene is ironic, because Lady Macbeth was the one whose tough words had earlier goaded Macbeth into murdering Duncan. When Macbeth returns from the murder, in a state of shock, he says that the blood he'd shed could turn the seas from green to red. Lady Macbeth then advises him to get a grip and insists it is easy enough to wash the blood away. Now, however, she has had a change of heart, and no amount of washing can rid her of her guilt.

At the beginning of act 5, scene 1 of Macbeth, we learn that Lady Macbeth has been sleepwalking and has been doing disturbing things (Lady Macbeth's gentlewoman refuses to say exactly what) during these nightly strolls. Lady Macbeth enters the scene, holding a candle and rubbing her hands together as though she is trying to wash something from them, her eyes wide but unseeing. It becomes clear over the course of her confused speech that what she hopes to remove is the memory of the blood from the murder she committed. In her dream, she's experiencing the blood so clearly that she can even smell it. She regrets having believed that her and her husband's power made them unaccountable for their actions, and she is now haunted by the choices she made.

Lady Macbeth plays a significant role in encouraging Macbeth to kill Duncan and become king. She is presented as a calculating woman who is filled with passion and ambition. She definitely displays her feminine powers in seducing and encouraging Macbeth in this way, but she also has a masculine side and this is most clearly presented in Act One, Scene V. 

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! (I.v.42-45)

She wants to become more like a man of action. She is trying to psych herself into becoming more ambitious and dangerous. If she becomes more bold, she will be more inclined to encourage Macbeth and go through with the regicide. 

There is an ongoing debate as to how much Lady Macbeth influences Macbeth. Some draw a parallel to the story of Adam and Eve wherein Eve is often blamed for luring Adam to sin. But one could equally argue that Adam is also to blame and the same counterargument has been used with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. She encourages him but does not force his hand. They are both complicit in scheming to kill Duncan, so some interpretations that place a larger portion of the blame on Lady Macbeth can be challenged. 

Following the crime, Lady Macbeth feels the guilt and anxiety that Macbeth does. A sudden sound startles her and this illustrates that anxiety. As the play progresses, Macbeth becomes increasingly more nervous. Lady Macbeth holds herself together with more composure, but by Act V, Scene I, she has had a mental breakdown and apparently commits suicide.