In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lady
Macbeth is especially excited by the predictions the witches deliver to Macbeth while he
is walking on the heath with Banquo. For if Macbeth becomes King, she will be Queen of
Scotland, and Lady Macbeth's ambition equals Macbeth's, if it does not surpass
it.
When Lady Macbeth learns that the King is coming to
visit overnight, she greets her husband with her plans. She notes that while the King
may arrive that day, he will never live to see the
morning.
O,
neverShall sun that morrow see!
(I.v.65-66)
Macbeth initially
agrees with his wife's decision to murder the King, but as Duncan rewards him for all of
his efforts on battlefield, Macbeth decides he might like to wait before acting.
(Remember, also, that Duncan is not only his King, but his friend and his cousin.)
Murder does not come easily to the noble man Macbeth is at the play's beginning.
However, Lady Macbeth is incensed as he hesitates, and ridicules and insults her
husband—along with his bravery and his manhood—until he agrees to
proceed.
Once the King has gone to bed, part of Lady
Macbeth's plan is to get his guards drunk; this leaves the sleeping King essentially
protected. In Act Two, scene two, Lady Macbeth reveals not only
that she has prepared the way for Macbeth's success (taking care of the "details," but
that she would have done it herself if not for one
reason:
Had he
not resembledMy father as he slept, I had done't.
(15-16)
Besides words of love
spoken to her husband, this sentiment may be the only indication
that Lady Macbeth has a feminine side to her at all. Only because the King looked like
her father did Lady Macbeth not take the daggers and kill Duncan herself. As it is, when
Macbeth cannot return the bloody daggers to the room where Duncan lies dead (because he
is so shaken by his actions), Lady Macbeth does so, and smears the King's blood on the
guards to provide incriminating evidence that it is they who have murdered the man they
were supposed to protect.
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