How is Lady Macbeth presented in Macbeth?

How does Lady Macbeth change across the play?

We first meet her in Act 1 Scene 5, reading Macbeth's letter about the witches. She knows at once what must happen. Her only worry is that her husband is "too full o' th' milk of human kindness" to do it, so she calls on dark spirits to fill her with cruelty instead. When Macbeth arrives she takes charge: "Leave all the rest to me." In Act 1 Scene 6 she welcomes King Duncan as a gracious hostess, and in Act 1 Scene 7 she argues Macbeth back into the murder after he has decided against it.

In Act 2 Scene 2 she has drugged the drinks of Duncan's grooms, the servants guarding his room, and she admits one weakness. She would have killed Duncan herself, "Had he not resembled / My father as he slept". When Macbeth comes back still holding the daggers, she takes them back to Duncan's room and smears the sleeping grooms with blood so that they will be blamed. The next morning she faints, or seems to, while Macbeth is describing the scene. Directors have to decide whether the faint is real or a clever distraction.

Once Macbeth is king, the balance between them shifts. In Act 3 Scene 2 she is already unhappy: "Nought's had, all's spent, / Where our desire is got without content". In other words, they have gained nothing, because getting what they wanted has not made them happy. Macbeth now plans Banquo's murder without her, telling her to "Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck" ("chuck" is a pet name, like "chick"). At the banquet in Act 3 Scene 4 she covers for his outburst at Banquo's ghost and scolds him with "Are you a man?" It is the last time she controls a scene.

She does not appear at all in Act 4. When she returns in Act 5 Scene 1 she is sleepwalking, rubbing at her hands and reliving the murders in broken sentences, while a doctor and her gentlewoman (her servant) watch. The gentlewoman reports that "she has light by her continually", a sharp change for a woman who once called for "thick night". In Act 5 Scene 5 her death is announced in a single line, and at the very end Malcolm says it is thought she took her own life.

What are the key moments for Lady Macbeth?

Act 1 Scene 5: "Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here". Her speech is full of imperatives, which are commands, such as "unsex me" and "Make thick my blood". She is asking to be emptied of everything her world thought of as feminine, especially gentleness and pity. The request also reveals something about her: if she were naturally ruthless, she would not need to ask. To some of the audience, a woman deliberately calling on evil spirits would have sounded close to witchcraft.

Act 1 Scene 7: "When you durst do it, then you were a man". Macbeth has decided not to kill Duncan, and she attacks his masculinity to change his mind. "Durst" means "dared", so she defines being a man as daring to kill. She goes further, saying she would have "dashed the brains out" of her own baby rather than break a promise the way he is breaking his. The image is shocking because it attacks motherhood, the role her society valued most in a woman.

Act 2 Scene 2: "A little water clears us of this deed". After the murder she is calm and practical, and this short sentence brushes guilt aside. The word "little" makes the crime sound small and easy to clean up. Shakespeare sets the line up to be answered later: in Act 5 we watch her still trying to wash hands that are no longer bloody.

Act 5 Scene 1: "Out, damned spot! out, I say!" The woman who gave orders to spirits and to her husband now gives orders to a stain nobody else can see, and it will not obey. She speaks in prose, ordinary sentences instead of the rhythmic verse she used before, which suggests her mind has lost its shape. Her fragments jump from Duncan's murder to crimes she took no part in, like "The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?" (Macduff is the Thane of Fife), so the audience hears her memories breaking apart.

What context matters when writing about Lady Macbeth?

Jacobean society, in the reign of James I, was patriarchal, which means men held power in the family and the state. A wife was expected to obey her husband, so a woman who pushed her husband into murder would have seemed unnatural, even monstrous. Shakespeare's first audience would also have watched a boy actor play her, because women did not act on the English public stage until 1660. That adds another layer to a character who asks spirits to "unsex" her.

Witchcraft was a real fear. King James had written a book about it, Daemonologie (1597), and many people believed witches served the devil. When Lady Macbeth calls on "spirits" and "thick night" to help her, she sounds uncomfortably close to the witches. Some readers link her closely with them. Others argue that her humanity is the point, because her mind breaks under what she has done, and the witches never suffer like that.

Religion shapes her ending. Christian teaching treated suicide as a grave sin, so Malcolm's verdict on her as a "fiend-like queen" who died "by self and violent hands" matches what much of the audience would have believed. The sleepwalking scene makes that verdict harder to accept. The Doctor says "More needs she the divine than the physician", meaning she needs a priest more than a doctor, and the scene invites pity as well as judgement.

What might an exam question on Lady Macbeth ask?

AQA sets one question on Macbeth in Section A of Paper 1. You get a printed extract from the play, and the question asks you to start with it and then write about the play as a whole. It carries 30 marks, with 4 more for spelling, punctuation and grammar (AO4). Most boards set an extract-based Shakespeare question, but check your own board's past papers for its exact wording.

Lady Macbeth changes more sharply than almost anyone in the play, so contrast an early moment with a late one whenever you can. Two focuses to practise:

• Starting with Lady Macbeth's speech after reading the letter in Act 1 Scene 5, explore how Shakespeare presents her as a powerful woman.
• Starting with the sleepwalking scene in Act 5 Scene 1, explore how Shakespeare presents the effects of guilt on Lady Macbeth.

What does a strong paragraph on Lady Macbeth look like?

Here is an original model paragraph for the second focus. Its first sentence is the argument, and the rest proves it.

In the sleepwalking scene, Shakespeare shows Lady Macbeth's power collapsing into guilt. In Act 1 she spoke in confident verse and gave the orders. Now she speaks in broken prose, and her commands have nobody to obey them: "Out, damned spot! out, I say!" The imperative that once drove Macbeth to murder is aimed at a stain only she can see. Her line "What's done cannot be undone" twists her earlier "what's done is done", turning a shrug into a confession. When the Doctor says she needs "the divine" more than "the physician", a Jacobean audience would recognise a sick soul, suffering the punishment she once thought water could wash away.

Setting an early line beside a late one, as this paragraph does with "what's done", is one of the quickest ways to show you know the whole play.

Key Lady Macbeth quotations to learn

Pick short lines you can quote exactly. Each of these can be bent to more than one question.

• "too full o' th' milk of human kindness" (Act 1 Scene 5): she treats kindness as a weakness, and "milk" ties it to the motherhood she later rejects.
• "unsex me here" (Act 1 Scene 5): she asks spirits to strip away everything her society saw as womanly.
• "look like th' innocent flower, / But be the serpent under't" (Act 1 Scene 5): the serpent recalls the devil in the Garden of Eden, evil hidden under beauty.
• "When you durst do it, then you were a man" (Act 1 Scene 7): she wins the argument by making manhood mean the courage to kill.
• "A little water clears us of this deed" (Act 2 Scene 2): a calm dismissal of guilt that her sleepwalking later answers.
• "What, will these hands ne'er be clean?" (Act 5 Scene 1): a question with no answer, asked about a stain that is not there.