Lady Macbeth Flashcards
“I do fear thy nature, it is too full of the milk of human kindness”
“Art not without ambition, but without the illness should attend it”
Lady Macbeth receives Macbeth’s letter about the witches. She worries that he is too nice to do what needs to be done. She is not more ambitious than her husband but is crucially more willing to fulfil her ambitions whatever the cost.
“Come you spirits….unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe, top full of direst cruelty”
Elaborate metaphor where Lady Macbeth calls on spirits to make her evil enough to go through with the plan to kill Duncan. She wants to remove her weakness- her femininity which shows the patriarchal society in the Jacobean era. “Crown” shows her ambition to be queen.
“Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it”
The idea of appearance vs reality. Reflects Lady Macbeth’s character- female and weak to the world but manipulative and controlling behind closed doors.
“When you durst do it, then you were a man”
She persuades Macbeth to kill the King by taunting him about his manhood. Shows the common view that being manly is to take control and act while Lady Macbeth is actually in full control by manipulating her husband to get him to do what she wants him to.
“Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done’t”
Shows Lady Macbeth’s inner weakness that she conceals from the world- she is not as cruel as she acts when she is manipulating her husband. She wants Macbeth to do her dirty work for her to keep her hands clean but she ends up feeling the guilt anyway later in the play.
“A little water clears us of this deed”
Lady Macbeth doesn’t feel guilty about murdering Duncan and this contrasts the “Neptune’s ocean” described by Macbeth.
“Things without all remedy should be without regard; what’s done is done”
She tells Macbeth not to worry, that they can’t undo things. This shows a lack of remorse or guilt from Lady Macbeth- a murder doesn’t seem to play on her conscience like it does her husband.
“What, will these hands ne’er be clean? ….Who would’ve thought the old man to have so much blood in him?”
Later in the play, Lady Macbeth suffers extreme guilt, and keeps washing her hands in her sleep. This shows a complete role reversal with her husband who now feels a lot less guilt. She speaks in prose instead of iambic pentameter showing her madness from guilt.
“The Queen, my lord, is dead”
Shows that Lady Macbeth can’t cope what she has done and it has driven her to suicide. This makes her appear to be the weak woman society expected her to be, completely different to the strong manipulative woman earlier in the play.
