Lady Macbitch

I just reread Shakespeare’s Macbeth again. This is probably the 3rd or 4th time I’ve read the play. I’ve also seen it performed twice and watched Roman Polanski’s awesome version too. Everytime I read the play I’m struck with just how unbelievably unsympathetic Lady MacBeth is.

A Shakespeare teacher I once told me that there is great importance in the first things a character says within a play. Taking that advice to heart, when we first meet Lady Macbeth, her first action is to scheme and fantasize about Macbeth taking over the kingship. Now granted this track was initiated by the Weird Sisters and Macbeth’s own letter relating the sisters’ prophecy, but seriously… The first thing she does in the play is to scheme murder.

I would say Shakespeare absolutely makes Macbeth into a character that fits that Aristotelian model of the tragic hero set forth in the poetics. Macbeth is at heart a morally good man (though flawed) who chooses to make the wrong decision, which leads him down a path of further wrong decisions and destruction. As Aristotle says, he is supposed to evoke feelings pity and fear from the viewer, and he does. However, I can’t call Lady Macbeth a sympathetic. Due to her position within the play she seems poised to become a tragic heroine, but instead she becomes at best a pathetic character and at worst a rank villain. There are several reasons for why I feel this way.

1. Lady Macbeth is a coldhearted schemer.

As mentioned earlier, Lady Macbeth’s first reaction when hearing of the prophecy and Macbeth’s investment with a new rank is to plot the murder of King Duncan. However, there’s more evidence. In Act II Scene II, after Macbeth has murdered Duncan in his sleep, he returns to his wife outside the king’s chamber. Macbeth is so shaken that he cannot will himself to return and place the murder weapons by the king’s attendants. Not only does Lady Macbeth angrily take over for Macbeth in his “weakness” but she adds the cherry on top. She places the sanguine dangers by the king’s men and then smears Duncan’s blood on their faces. Unlike Macbeth who questions whether or not the murder should be committed, Lady Macbeth gleefully leaps onto the train to her oblivion through murder.

2.  Lady Macbeth questions Macbeth’s tenacity yet has none herself

Throughout the early portions of the play, Macbeth questions whether or not he should murder Duncan. Righfully so too. Of course, there are all the moral reasons not to commit murder, but then there is also the enormous risk that goes hand in hand with treason. However, Lady Macbeth continually nags at Macbeth, questions his manliness, and boasts her ability to do the deed if she were a man. However, once the murder is committed she falls to pieces. While her mental breakdown certainly is pathetic, it is difficult to feel sympathy for a boastful person who gets their comeuppance. She certainly was able to talk the talk, but once their was blood on her hands (literally) she couldn’t take it. Macbeth certainly has his moments of mental breakdown, especially during the dining scene in Act III Scene IV, but not only is he able to pull it together, he can also still retains our sympathy. After all, he was pushed into this and his bad decisions snowball into his prophecized doom.

3. Lady Macbeth is NOT subject to prophecy.

If we take prophecies of the weird sisters to be fate, much like the edicts handed down by the Delphic Oracle in Oedipus Rex, then we have to admit that Macbeth didn’t really have much choice in his fate. If Macbeth is fated to become the next king after a healthy king with two healthy sons, it becomes pretty obvious that some shady dealings would have to occur to interrupt the bloodline. Think of it this way. If all roads lead to Rome, than the only real choice you have is which road you take…to Rome. However, Lady Macbeth’s fate is never revealed.  It’s her own choosing. She chooses to embark on the journey of murder. It is also her choice to kill herself, which given the Christian audience is a sin of the lowest order. The fact that Lady Macbeth chooses to do all these things without the influence of any supernatural forces makes her even less sympathetic to the viewer.

Now, while I certainly do feel a measure of sadness for Macbeth when his wife kills herself, you’ve also got to realize that to a certain degree he is better off without her. If he had eliminated such a negative influence from his life in the beginning maybe things would have turned out better for Macbeth. At the least, maybe he could have kept his head. However, I submit that one of the tragedies of Macbeth is the title character’s marriage to Lady Macbeth, a character who rivals Iago in malevolence.