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Lady Macbeth is a character in Shakespeare's play Macbeth. While based on the real-life Queen Gruoch of Scotland, both her character and the play's events are tied very weakly to actual history. She will reportedly be played by British actress Tilda Swinton in the 2007 film adaptation of Macbeth.
In the play She manipulates her husband, Macbeth of Scotland, into committing a series of brutal murders in order to clear their path to the Scottish throne. To that end, Macbeth murders King Duncan, his best friend Banquo, and Thane Macduff's entire family. While Macbeth initially balks at the bloody tasks she insists that they are necessary to seize the throne, she manipulates, mocks and threatens him every step of the way until he convinces himself that he is capable of doing the worst things he can think of. By the time he has Banquo killed, he no longer needs her help to brutally eliminate anyone in his way; indeed, King Duncan is the only person Macbeth kills at his wife's urging at all. He eventually makes himself king, giving his wife everything she asked for and more. By this time, however, her long-supressed conscience has begun to plague her; she is haunted by visions of spots on her hands — the blood her husband has spilled largely at her instigation — and she eventually loses all contact with reality, tormented into madness by the guilt. She also seems to blame herself for the acts Macbeth commits alone — such as having Macduff's wife and son killed — for her indirect responsibility, having pushed her husband to his state of tyranny. Just before the climactic battle between Macbeth and Macduff, she apparently commits suicide, though the play does not reveal the cause of her death. As cultural figure Shakespeare used the ruthless, manipulative Lady Macbeth to subvert the traditional Jacobean attitudes towards femininity. In the years since the play was written, she has become an archetypal character: she is the standard template for a wife using her husband to further her own ambition. Memorable lines | ||||||||
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