Ambition/Lady Macbeth Flashcards
“The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now? What, will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’that, my lord, no more o’that. You mar all with this starting,”
“Little water”
Lady Macbeth’s speech is incoherent, frantic, and continuous, as her internal monologue is said aloud. She alternates between worrying about her growing guilt and telling an imagined Macbeth off for jeopardising their plot. For example, in one long string of monologue, she says, “The Thane of Fife had a wife. Where is she now? What, will these hands ne’er be clean? No more o’that, my lord, no more o’that. You mar all with this starting,” going from panicking about their growing body-count to scolding Macbeth for being jumpy in an instant. The random, disjointed structure of her speech reflects how she’s torn between her ambition and her guilt. Part of her is holding onto the woman she was before, someone who was fearless and unsympathetic of Macbeth’s fear, while the rest of her is descending into remorse and grief. Therefore, there is a level of hypocrisy in her character. A case of situational irony is the way she worries about being unable to wash the blood from her hands: earlier, she thought a “little water” would clear her of guilt, but now she learns this isn’t true.
“Yet I do 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.” (A1.S5)
Similarly to her husband, when Lady Macbeth first hears of the Witches’ prophecies, her mind immediately jumps to murder. She has both the ambition and the confidence to act on her desires, but doubts her husband’s capacities to do so. This is expressed in her soliloquy: “Yet I do 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.” (A1.S5) This is one of Lady Macbeth’s most famous quotes, and she says it in Act One, Scene Five, when we are first introduced to her. Shakespeare may have chosen to have her say these words when she is first introduced to the audience in order to foreground the fact that Lady Macbeth’s defining trait is her ambition. In contrast, we are introduced to Macbeth when he is in battle, which might have suggested to Jacobean audiences that he is brave and noble (at least superficially or initially so). Lady Macbeth can be seen as the ultimate catalyst for the plot, spurring her husband to commit murder. In the above quote, Shakespeare implies that Lady Macbeth believes that you can only act on your ambitions and achieve greatness when you sacrifice or ignore their moral compass. She doubts Macbeth’s ability to do this; according to her judgement he is “too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness // To catch the nearest way” or, in other words, do what (supposedly) needs to be done. Evil is equated with “illness” in this quote. Lady Macbeth’s words suggest that she believes pursuing one’s ambitions generally necessitates doing evil deeds; evil and ambition and intimately linked.
“pour[s her] spirit into (his] ear” (A1.S5.L24)
Lady Macbeth, as a woman, would’ve been socially pressured to appear less ambitious and encouraged to hide her desires. However, while Lady Macbeth only encourages her husband to carry out Duncan’s murder and does not herself commit it, she can be viewed as more ruthless and single-minded in her ambition than Macbeth. After Macbeth receives the Witches’ original prophecy, he is not satisfied or resolved to act on it and seeks his wife’s counsel. Lady Macbeth then “pour[s her] spirit into (his] ear” (A1.S5.L24) and directs his actions, all the while persistently questioning his manhood. Thus,
while she uses gender norms to shame Macbeth into committing murder, the
power dynamic between them is uncommon for the day - a wife would have been expected to be submissive and accepting of her husband’s orders. In a reversal of this, Lady Macbeth wields power over Macbeth and directs his actions. For this reason and as well as due to her ruthless ambition, Lady Macbeth would have been viewed as a masculine character. A Jacobean audience might have been inclined to view her particularly negatively on the assumption that she is untrustworthy because she does not conform to accepted gender norms.
