All Things Change

The final act of Macbeth could not be any different from the beginning of the play. The power dynamic between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth shifts as the play progresses and by the end it is the polar opposite of what we saw in the first acts. In the first acts of the play Lady Macbeth is a strong female character who seems to have many masculine attributes. When she learns that King Duncan will be entering her house she immediately begins plotting his death. Lady Macbeth is more ready to commit murder than her husband, she worries that his nature “Is too full o’th’milk of human kindness” (1.5.15). She wonders if Macbeth is too full of goodness to carry out the deadly deed, it’s interesting that Shakespeare uses the word milk in this line. Milk is usually associated with motherhood and obviously mothers are female, but Lady Macbeth wonders if her husband is too full of this female trait; which in turn makes her seem more masculine. She distances herself from those female images and instead uses them to describe her husband. She seems to be more masculine by showing more bravery than Macbeth when she goes back into the room and smears the blood over Duncan’s servants, she tells him “My hands are of your colour, but I shame To wear a heart so white” (2.2.62). Lady Macbeth again shows her more powerful masculine side by finishing what Macbeth could not do himself. She is obviously a very brave and powerful woman. She is even able to keep her composure through the middle acts of the play as Macbeth begins to show signs madness.

But by the beginning of Act 5 Lady Macbeth is in worse shape than her husband. She has succumbed to her guilt over the murders and sleep walks at night. She begins to let details of the murder slip out in her madness. Her guilt drives her to obsessively wash her hands; she is attempting to wash Duncan’s blood off her hands, she cries, “Out, damned spot; out I say… What need we fear who knows it when none can call our power into account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?” (5.1.30-34). Lady Macbeth is giving away secrets and implementing herself in Duncan’s murder, and even mentions Banquo’s death adding more suspicion on she and her husband.  She seems to be hysterical when she cries out, “To bed, to bed./There’s a knocking at the gate./ Come, come, come, come, give me your hand.” (5.1.56-57). Hysteria was considered to be a female illness. Shakespeare stripped Lady Macbeth of all of her masculine qualities and has given her a specifically female ailment. Lady Macbeth is no longer the powerful decision maker. She has been reduced to a raving hysterical female.

Macbeth on the other hand seems to have taken on her aggressive attitude. He commands the doctor to “Cure her of that” (5.3.41) just as Lady Macbeth commanded him to go back and place the daggers and blood on the servants in Duncan’s room. As Lady Macbeth loses her mind her power also decreases, and Macbeth seems to latch on to and carry it for a little while. From the beginning of the play it looked as if the women would hold all the power as they did in King Lear. But as the actions in the play unfold Lady Macbeth is left powerless. Even her death is not seen on stage. Malcolm informs the audience that she has presumably committed suicide. This is the ultimate diminishing of power. Lady Macbeth began the course of action that propelled the plot of the play; and by the end she is stripped to nothing. The last time she is on stage she is raving like a mad woman and then she is seemingly forgotten.