What changes are there to Lady Macbeth's character throughout the play?

Answer 1

Lady Macbeth started out as a practical, organized, intelligent but ambitious character in the play 'Macbeth'. She was focused and motivated in setting and reaching goals for herself and her husband. She told her husband not to think about the murders of King Duncan and the two royal guards. She said that thinking served no purpose other than to drive one mad. That sentence was prophetic. By the end of the play, she suffered from so much mental anguish that it incapacitated her. The craziness even led her to take her own life. Macbeth started out as a hardworking, career military officer. He tried to do a good job, and liked the recognition of work well done. He tended to be a good person, but was manipulable and ambitious. At first, Macbeth's good side predominated. But raging, uncontrollable ambition led him more and more to the dark side. Ultimately, he became as focused, maniacal, and tunnel visioned as his wife previously had been. The more heinous and widespread were the crimes that he committed, the more mental he became.

Answer 2

It basically changes from them being husband and wife to both of them being partners in crime of murdering and on the inside though they really still are a normal husband and wife but greed changed them both

Answer 3

Initially, she was driven by greed and controlled by her emotions, because she desires kingship for Macbeth, and for herself. She was the one encouraging Macbeth to commit the regicide, but irony ensues as guilt overcomes her after helping to murder King Duncan. In an earlier scene she says "a little water will clear us of this deed", but later on contradicts herself in act 5 Scene 1 by saying that "perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand." The Horror of the crime she helped to commit starts to get to her and she begins scratching her hands until they bleed to supposedly "wash Duncan's blood off her hands." She eventually commits suicide.

Answer 4

At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is a respected general, a devoted husband, and a loyal subject of the king. The first of the witches' prophecies bring out his ambitious nature, but he struggles with killing the king. By attacking his manhood, Lady Macbeth convinces him to committ the first of his evil deeds. Macbeth's evil deed causes him to suffer from fear and guilt, which leads to even more evil crimes. Then Macbeth becomes paranoid, suffering from hallucinations and sleeplessness. He becomes less human as he tries over and over to establish his manhood. His ruthlessness in killing Banquo and Macduff's family shows how perverted his idea of manliness really is.

Macbeth's degeneration is also seen in the collapse of his marital relationship. They are loving and have a mutual respect for one another at first. Lady Macbeth becomes more and more unimportant to her husband after killing Duncan, however. He leaves her out of the plan to kill Banquo, Fleance, and Macduff's family. Macbeth allows the witches to take the place of his wife by allowing them to boost his ego, thinking he cannot be harmed by any man. Macbeth is, of course, mistaken about the witches' prophecies, but this just that he now allows his evil nature to control his actions. By the end, Macbeth has degenerated into evil personified, totally inhumane in his actions.

SECOND PART

Concerning Macbeth's character changes in Shakespeare's Macbeth, I'll just elaborate slightly on the first answer above. When Macbeth first receives the prophecy predicting he will be king and Banquo's heirs will be kings, he is satisfied with the idea of being king. Banquo's heirs do not concern him at this point. Once he assassinates Duncan and is crowned king, however, this isn't enough. Now he wants his heirs to be king. He asks himself, why should he have taken all this risk just to put Banquo's heirs on the throne? Unsatisfied with just ruling himself, he plots to kill not only Banquo, but Fleance. His ambition has grown and become even more menacing.

Answer 5

When we first meet her, Lady Macbeth seems tough as nails, sneering at Macbeth for being "too full of the milk of human kindness". She continues to be like this right up to the point where she puts the bloody daggers next to the grooms to frame them, and says, "My hands are of your colour but I shame to wear a heart so white."

Something changes though when Macbeth follows through on the frame and kills the grooms. She faints. Why does she do that? The reality of the death of the innocent grooms, who she was going to accuse of the murder and have hanged anyway, seems to unnerve her, probably because she didn't plan for it to happen that way. Things are starting to get out of her control.

By the time Macbeth is crowned she has changed completely. "Nought's had, all's spent where our desire's got without content" She is the queen but she is not happy with the situation at all. Macbeth is a changed man. He is full of secret plans of murder ("Be innocent of the knowledge dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed") and tortured by guilt ("Full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife") Instead of being her tool, he is out of her control and she is frightened by him. As she tries to play the hostess to a dinner party, surely one of the the delights she imagined when she imagined herself as Queen, he wrecks it by going insane and acting like a maniac. She cannot control him, and his ravings come dreadfully close to spilling the beans.

Our last vision of Lady Macbeth shows a person whose mental grip is slmost gone. She is now raving and spilling the beans regularly. She, like Macbeth, has "murdered sleep" so her nights are filled with the horrors of the murders she has set in motion. She is a wreck of the person she once was. And, if Malcolm is to be believed, she does herself in shorly thereafter.

Answer 6

He learned to take responsibility for his actions = even to the point of accepting the justice of his death. (Lay on MacDuff, and cursed be he who first cries 'hold enough.')

Answer 7

They were overwhelmed by greed and evil after hearing the witches' prophecies.

Answer 8

he gets crazier and crazier because he is regreting killing banquo.

Answer 9

he changes his mind by doing something else