Lady Macbeths Soliloquies - Essay Example

The soliloquy of Lady Macbeth that appears in Act I, Scene V of Macbeth, beginning with ‘The raven himself is hoarse’, is a crucial one. It appears at a point where the first murder in Macbeth is about to take place. The unsuspecting victim, Duncan, is about to enter Macbeth’s castle, Inverness, and Lady Macbeth’s speech primarily expresses her desire for the courage to go through with their diabolical plan. This particular speech does not serve to advance the plot as the reader is already aware of the plans of Macbeth and his wife to kill Duncan and thereby win the crown of Scotland.

However, this speech reveals a crucial aspect of Lady Macbeth’s character. The woman who was just previously seen haranguing her husband for being ‘too full o’ the milk of human kindness’ is now seen to be not entirely free from fear herself. From this speech, it is clear that even Lady Macbeth has some compunction about committing the deeds that she and her husband have planned. This scrupulous note helps give this otherwise cruel character a human face. Her exaggerated speech and horrific imagery – ‘make thick my blood’ or ‘take my milk for gall’ – in the light of this only reveal how Lady Macbeth is not as unshakeable as she would like to believe herself.

This speech is also interesting in its idea of gender. It is as if to be able to commit a crime like murder, the woman has to deliberately rid herself of all signs of femininity. She must be ‘unsexed’ for her to be able to summon up enough courage to go through with murder. This provides us a glimpse of how society at the time and Lady Macbeth herself view the idea of gender. Action is seen as primarily a man’s domain and to be able to do anything of as great a consequence as murder, the doer has to be male. This notion of women being prohibited from the male arena helps us understand Lady Macbeth’s excessive violence and bloodlust as perhaps a way of compensating for the ‘weakness’ of her gender as it was seen then.

The other speech that we shall consider is ‘That which hath made them drunk’ in Act II, Scene II. This speech, unlike the first, does give us certain details about the plot. It tells us that Lady Macbeth has gone ahead and drugged the grooms of Duncan, presumably to use them as scapegoats for the murder. But other than giving us this plot detail, this speech also reveals to us certain characteristics of Lady Macbeth. Her feverish speech, where she refers to the owl as the ‘fatal bellman’, reveals her superstitious and slightly hysterical side. It becomes apparent from this speech that her becoming ‘bold’ is not entirely normal or sane. We see that despite her apparent cruelty and coolness, the act of murder has indeed taken a toll on her mental balance.

This is further strengthened in the last speech that we shall be studying, which appears in Act V, Scene I. Lady Macbeth has by this point lost her sanity entirely. The doctor and the gentlewoman have just been discussing her state when she enters mumbling to herself about the ‘damned spot’ in her hand that will not be washed away. This garbled speech tells us, and also reveals to the doctor, the state of her mental health. Also, importantly, it reveals clues as to how involved Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were in the death of Duncan. When she asks ‘a soldier, and a feard?’ Lady Macbeth recalls the speech she was giving Macbeth to encourage him to act. To a perceptive witness, this may well have given away the fact that they plotted Duncan’s murder. This speech also gives the audience a deeper glimpse into Lady Macbeth’s character. From being a brutal and inhuman character, Lady Macbeth is now seen as defeated, vulnerable, and utterly human.

The soliloquies of Lady Macbeth in totality then, serve to not only move the plot and create that crucial dramatic suspense; they also make Lady Macbeth a more sympathetic character. From the rest of the play and her outward speeches, Lady Macbeth comes across as a hard, unfeeling woman but it is through her dream-walking speech and her calling out to the spirits that the audience gets to see how weak she is. This makes her less effective as a murderer – she does give in ultimately to the guilt of the crime before Macbeth does – but more effective as a character. These speeches make her a more rounded, fuller character, full of conflict and contradictions. They also make her a more sympathetic character. It is easier for the audience to see the pathos and tragedy in the character of Lady Macbeth once they get an insight into her inner turmoil. The soliloquies in Shakespeare’s work therefore, do a lot more than act as mere embellishment to the verse, they move the plot and help in the audience’s conception and re-conception of the characters. Read More