Macbeth

She had no job. She was simply the wife of the main character in Shakespeare's play Macbeth.

In the play, Lady Macbeth is more aggressive, insightful, and reactive than Lady Macduff. Lady Macbeth looks at a situation and a person and analyzes their strengths and their weaknesses. Then she comes up with a winning strategy. Readers and viewers see this in Act 1 Scene 5. The Lady sees the possibility of crowns for her and her husband, identifies the kind streak that her husband has and that she lacks, and goes straight for the jugular in calling up the evil spirits to bring her ambitions to success. In contrast, in Act 4 Scene 3, Lady Macduff shows herself more passive, naive and reflective. She gets caught up in her husband's flight, in terms of how that impacts on her personally. She doesn't seem to know her husband wel, because she sees his departure as a personal betrayal. And yet the entire kingdom is falling to pieces around them all! She doesn't think of the consequences to the safety of her or her household. In fact, she doesn't pay attention to the messenger's warning of imminent danger.

Act 1 Scene 3, d'ya think?

The witches are the first thing we see on stage. What do they say? "When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning and in rain?" They are used to meeting in bad weather apparently. "When the hurly-burly's done. When the battle's lost and won." Aha! there's a battle going on. "That will be ere the set of sun." And the battle's going on RIGHT NOW. "Where the place?" "Upon the heath." OK, that's where they are going to meet after the battle later today. "There to meet with Macbeth." They are going to meet someone called Macbeth. We guessed there might be someone of this name in the play since that's the title. Then we find out that they have familiar spirits called Greymalkin and Paddock and they chant "Fair is foul and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air." Yes, we know that the weather is terrible. And that's Act I Scene 1

Welles's version had a Haitian voodoo element that was not in the original.

Even a noble and heroic person can fall into depravity to destruction

Macbeth has both good and bad qualities, but ambition and his wife's arguments are influencing him.

Having Macbeth describe it would be less dramatic. People often forget that Shakespeare was writing plays, and the rule in writing plays is "show, don't tell". From time to time Shakespeare feels constrained to have a character describe something in the middle of a play, because what is being described is hard or improper to stage or not worth staging For example, in Act 1 Scene 2 of Macbeth, the sergeant describes the battle, rather than going through the difficulty of staging it just to provide background. And in Taming of the Shrew we get a description of the wedding because it would be improper to portray a wedding on stage. However, it is much more effective to get the information out by having the characters interact with each other, with props or, as in this case, with figments of their imagination. Having Macbeth say, "The dagger appears to be insubstantial as it cannot actually be grasped and does not lose its form when a hand is passed through it" is pathetically limp compared to "Come! Let me clutch thee! I have thee not, and yet I see thee still!"

According to kermode, what reason does Macbeth provide for killing duncan

Macbeth admits the murders to his wife and hired murderers, who are already privy to the crimes, as well as to the audience. In his soliloquy at the beginning of Act III, he says of Banquo's issue, "For them have I the royal Duncan murdered." That's an admission but only the audience hears it. In a way, he also admits the slaughter of Macduff's family when he says to him in Act V, "my soul is too much charged with blood of thine already."

Some of the women about the castle have found the dead body of Lady Macbeth and cry out. Macbeth asks Seyton what the noise is and Seyton replies that it is the cry of women. Macbeth sends Seyton off to investigate why they are making so much noise while he takes a soliloquy break. When Seyton returns, he has discovered the reason behind the cry: "The queen, my Lord, is dead."

They are both tragic heroes.

In Act 4 Scene 1, he left the royal palace at Forres, to meet the witches. Many editions of the play say that the witches were in a cavern. However, this does not come from the original text of the play in the First Folio, and it is unlikely that it was portrayed that way in any early performances of the play. Their cauldron would have been brought up on the trap door, rather than being in the concealment space, thus enabling their quick departure. In this case, Macbeth sought the witches out; this is when he goes to meet the witches. In Act 1 Scene 2, Macbeth had met the three witches by accident on his part, by design on theirs, and they meet on a "blasted heath" according to Macbeth's line. The witches knew that Macbeth would be crossing the heath. They placed themselves on collision course with Macbeth and his friend and fellow General Banquo.

By playing on audiences fears

They made Hecate angry by not letting her participate in their plans. -Macbeth.

They're being very respectful to each other. Duncan is grateful to Macbeth for his service and wants to give him more honors, and Macbeth says that the honor of doing things for Duncan is payment enough.

The witches

knell

Apart from the obvious fact that everyone's death is inevitable (you don't think that you are going to live forever, do you?) some people view the prophecies which the witches make to mean that Macbeth's life is totally out of his control and totally in the control of the witches. This is not logical; being able to accurately predict the future does not mean you control it, or otherwise we would have to believe that weathermen and pollsters who predict things all the time really have control of the world.

It is not so much what he sees, since that only shows that she is sleepwalking and is emotionally and mentally disturbed. It is what he hears which tells him what is going on. As the gentlewoman says, "she has spoke what she should not." It is from her references to the various murders ("But who would have thought the old man to have so much blood in him?", "The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?", "Banquo's dead; 'a cannot come out on's grave.") that the doctor realizes what the cause of her emotional disturbance and nightmares is. And this is very dangerous knowledge, for knowing that Macbeth is guilty of these crimes would be a death sentence if Macbeth were ever to find out that the Doctor and the gentlewoman knew it.

Macbeth means that Banquo’s blood is better on the outside, than on the inside

Lady Macbeth, in Act 1, scene 7.

The murder of the king.

How long does duncan plan to stay at macbeths castle

Drugged them.