Lady Macbeth Flashcards
quotes
Have picke’d my nipple from his boneless gums and dash’d the brains out
Lady Macbeth is talking about how if she ever had a child she would kill it. This would have shocked the audience in the time Shakespeare wrote it as women were supposed to be gentle and love children, however Lady Macbeth is the opposite of this picture of a perfect Jacobean women as she is saying how she would kill her child. This sets up Lady Macbeth as a character as it shows how manlike she is compared to her Husband Macbeth who is too “innocent”
Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t
Lady Macbeth here is saying how she could not kill the king because he looked to much like her father, yet in A1, s7 she said how she would ‘dash’ the brains out of her baby if she ever had one. The audience would have been confused as to Lady Macbeth’s character now as she is acting like the perfect Jacobean women now but earlier on she was saying how her own husband was too innocent to kill the king and how she would have to do it herself. It shows her ambition to get her husband on the throne yet how her ‘womanly’ nature is kicking in.
“Banquo’s buried, he cannot come out on’s grave”
Lady Macbeth is so full of guilt that she is even admitting to the murder of Banquo in her sleep. With the doctor hearing as she sleepwalks, she says that Macbeth killed Banquo, Macbeth might here of this and therefore decide to try and get rid of her too.
