Friday, February 28, 2014

What action best demonstrates Lady Macbeth’s weakness in Act V?

By Act V, Lady Macbeth has completely fallen apart psychologically. She is a shell of the strong (if profoundly wicked) woman portrayed earlier in the play. Wracked by guilt, she sleepwalks, attempting to wash away imagined bloodstains from her hands, exclaiming "Out, damned spot!" Interestingly, her collapse into madness from guilt parallels her husband's development into a murderous monster. Earlier in the play, Macbeth was morally conflicted about the murder of King Duncan, and it...

By Act V, Lady Macbeth has completely fallen apart psychologically. She is a shell of the strong (if profoundly wicked) woman portrayed earlier in the play. Wracked by guilt, she sleepwalks, attempting to wash away imagined bloodstains from her hands, exclaiming "Out, damned spot!" Interestingly, her collapse into madness from guilt parallels her husband's development into a murderous monster. Earlier in the play, Macbeth was morally conflicted about the murder of King Duncan, and it was Lady Macbeth who drove him to commit the deed that unleashed the string of killings. By this point in the play, Macbeth has become a pitiless tyrant, plotting the murder of any who he perceives to threaten his security as king. His wife is the one torn apart by remorse for the murders they have committed, as we see when she asks herself, "will these hands ne'er be clean?" The "out, damned spot" scene (Act V, Scene 1) is when we see Lady Macbeth at her lowest, and Macbeth discovers before his climactic battle with the forces of Malcolm and Macduff that his shattered wife has taken her own life.

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