HL Sample Answer 2


Macbeth


man!’) and taunting him (‘Wouldst thou…live a coward in thine own esteem, / Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’ / Like the poor cat i’ the adage?’). Most effectively she employs the shocking image of infanticide to illustrate her commitment to


her husband and to question his constancy. She tells her husband, had she promised to, she would not hesitate to murder her own child: ‘I would…/ Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you Have done to this’.


Although Macbeth is responsible for all of his actions, Lady Macbeth proves to be a spur, urging him to realise his darkest ambitions. As the architect of the plan to murder Duncan, Lady Macbeth is clearly the more dominant at


this stage of the relationship. She tells Macbeth that she will drug Duncan’s guards so that he can enter the chamber and kill the King. When Macbeth returns to her holding the bloody murder weapons, he relies on his wife’s steely nature to take charge. She promptly returns the daggers to the chamber and smears blood on the guards to frame them for the crime. Following the discovery of Duncan’s body, Macbeth again needs his wife to protect him. As Macduff questions Macbeth as to why he killed the guards, Lady Macbeth diverts suspicion away from her husband by feigning a fainting fit. In the first two acts of the play, it is clear that Lady Macbeth is a dominant force over her


husband. However, as the play proceeds we see how the couple interact less and both find themselves wrestling privately with the implications of their crimes. In the acts that come after the discovery of Duncan’s body, Macbeth finds no need to consult or conspire with his wife. He orders the murder of Banquo and the slaughter of Macduff’s family without discussing it with her. The atomisation of their relationship is most evident when they articulate their fears in soliloquy.


Lady Macbeth is clearly troubled by her new position of power. She is unable to share this with her husband and instead in a short soliloquy dwells on this privately: ‘Nought’s had, all’s spent Where our desire is got without content: ’Tis safer to be that which we destroy Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.’


Here she seems to envy Duncan’s death, preferring it to the anxiety of her own position. What


is most telling is that she hides these doubts from her husband. When he enters the scene, she acts coldly towards him and criticises him for his own dark thoughts. Ironically, she could have directed that criticism at herself. Macbeth too withdraws from the confidence of Lady Macbeth and faces his fears privately, only


expressing them in soliloquy. He recognises that as King he should expect love and respect. Instead, he is reviled:


‘And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but in their stead, Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.’


Macbeth cuts a lonely, world-weary figure here. Where before he had a ‘partner of greatness’,


now he has only his own dark thoughts. Unsupported, unloved and alone, he becomes increasingly disillusioned with life. The collapse of his relationship with Lady Macbeth is central to this despairing isolation. Lady Macbeth’s soliloquys are short and few in the play. Instead, Shakespeare reveals her


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