Macbeth: A Struggle for Strength

Macbeth (1606) is a play that shows a struggle of strength between the two main characters, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. It can be concluded that Lady Macbeth's strength seems to diminish as Macbeth's increases throughout the play, which is quite evident by such factors as her control over Macbeth in her plot to conspire to kill Duncan, Macbeth's killing of Banquo to suppress him, and Lady Macbeth ultimately going insane and killing herself.

Lady Macbeth starts off as a very powerful women and has a dark masculine side to her. "Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me, from the crown to the toe..."(Mac.I.v. 40-42). She desires to have the power that a man would have in this situation so that she herself could kill Duncan, yet she knows this is impossible because of her nature and must conspire with her husband to do so. She uses her relationship with Macbeth as leverage to push Macbeth to kill Duncan. Lady Macbeth is clearly in control of Macbeth at this point in the play. Macbeth right now seems inferior to his wife. He realizes he has little strength against her and is realzing the many possiblilites of the reality of what will happen with Duncan when he is out of the way. But, Lady Macbeth does not seem so strong after she says "Had he not resembled / My father as he slept. I had done 't "( Mac.II.ii. 12-13).

After Macbeth commits the sinister murder of King Duncan, Macbeth then suspects that Banquo could be a threat to the throne. Macbeth responds by saying " ... there shall be done / A deed of dreadful note"(Mac.III.iii. 43-44). He is referring to the murder of Banquo to Lady Macbeth. This is a sign that Macbeth is gaining strength and trying to control his destiny to be king. He was not influenced by Lady Macbeth to make this decision to eliminate Bonquo. Macbeth starts to see Banquo's ghost at the banquet but this is not a flaw in his strength but only of a sign of grief.

In the beginning of Act V it is evident that Lady Macbeth is not sane.

She says "Out, damned spot; out, I say . . . Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?"(Mac.V.i. 36-41). Throughout the play Lady Macbeth's strength weakens and she eventually kills herself over the guilt and grief that the murders have caused her. She regrets that she pushed Macbeth to kill Duncan.

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