Lady Macbeth Flashcards
‘Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor, Greater than both’
Love, manipulative
- Beginning to speak like the witches, tri colon
- Lady Macbeth flatters Macbeth, conveys her as manipulative
- Lady Macbeth dominates the conversation, Macbeth hardly speaks
- Lady Macbeth decides a plan after, flatters him to try make him go forth with the plan
- When Macbeth starts to speaks, he soon interrupts him
‘But screw your courage to the sticking-place, / And we’ll not fail’
(Emasculation, Relationship)
- ‘sticking place’ seen in weapons like arrows, conveys that Lady Macbeth is using Macbeth like a weapons
‘Are you a man?’
Emasculation, Relationship
- Lack of courage makes him less of a man
- Mental disturbances were seen as a female problem
‘Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts,’
- Lady Macbeth calling on the supernatural
- Gives the audience a bad impression about Lady Macbeth
‘O never / Shall sun that morrow see’
- Decides the kill Duncan
- Lady Macbeth dominants the conversation and starts plotting without the consent of Macbeth
‘look like th’ innocent flower, / But be the serpent under ‘t’
- Hide true intention
- ‘Serpent’ seen as dangerous
- Lady Macbeth tells Macbeth to act ‘innocent’ to hide his true intentions and deeds
‘I do fear thy nature, / It is too full o’th’milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way.’
- Lady Macbeth feels as if Macbeth is not capable to obtain the throne
- Lady Macbeth views Macbeth as kind and she sees this as something that is weak about him
‘Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here’
‘fill me from the crown to the toe topfull / Of direst cruelty’
- Asking the spirits to take away for female traits
- As females are seen as soft and gentle, she is trying to become as masculine as she can so she is able to peruse their plans on killing Duncan
‘Come’, ‘fill’, ‘stop’, ‘take’
- Lady Macbeth uses imperatives, showing how she wants to obtain control
- She wants to be in control so she can control Macbeth to kill Duncan
‘Milk for gall’
- Lady Macbeth wants all her femininity to be taken away.
- The change from ‘milk’ to ‘gall’ can portray how Lady Macbeth doesn’t want to nurture any children however wants to cause pain and death
‘honoured hostess’
- Lady Macbeth trying to hide her truth intentions and thoughts
- Creates dramatic irony, as the audience knows Lady Macbeth plot against Duncan
‘Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had done ‘t’
- Shows Lady Macbeth planned to kill Duncan herself
- This quote could present Lady Macbeth as a coward, due to her making up excuses for not murdering Duncan herself
- It also conveys Lady Macbeth’s softer emotions, her love for her father
‘Here’s the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand’
- Lady Macbeth regrets her actions
- Feels guilt
- Tries to cover her past, but this evidently doesn’t work
- First time we see Lady Macbeth is struggling
Sleeping walking scene
- Free speech from Lady Macbeth, different from the normal iambic pentameter
- Could portray Lady Macbeth natural speech, as she is giving out her natural emotion and is more honest
- Due to Lady Macbeth sleeping walking, she looses her mask of innocence with covers all their deeds
‘Out damned spot! Out, I say!’
- Hallucinating about a stain of blood
- ‘Spot’ represents all the sinful deeds Lady Macbeth has committed.
- It represents the guilt of the murders she has committed
- Also a burden that Lady Macbeth is trying to wash off
