Do You Have Any Sympathy At All

For Both, One Or Neither Of The Macbeths? Essay, Research Paper

In life everyone has goals that they hope to attain and there are many ways that one can achieve these goals. To achieve what you desire you can either wait for time to take its toll, or take matters into your own hands and do what you have to do in order to fulfil your desires. You can attain your goal as long as you have ambition. In Shakespeare s Macbeth, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth had the goal of Macbeth becoming king: to obtain this they took matters into hands and killed Duncan. In order for somebody to commit such a heinous act as murder the conspirators must be ruthless, and this is what Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were, ruthless.

This ruthlessness provides little support, for any or some sympathy for the characters at the end of the play.

Lady Macbeth is more ruthless than her husband and her ruthlessness is what fuelled the murder of Duncan.

Her ruthlessness and power hunger led ambition is shown when she is first seen in the play at Act 1 Scene 5; the letter reading scene.

In this scene Lady Macbeth comments on her thoughts after having read the letter from her husband, she knows that her husband who is too full o th milk of human kindness (too kind and nice in other words) may have trouble facing up and having the guts to kill the king. She knows that to fulfil her ambition, she will have to persuade Macbeth to kill the king. Lady Macbeth uses different techniques to urge Macbeth into thinking that killing Duncan would be the only to get on the throne, quote, Your hand, your tongue; look like th innocent flower but be the serpent under t Lady Macbeth means that deception will be needed to commit the murder.

Perhaps the most significant events that display that Lady Macbeth is more ruthless than her husband occurs in Act 1 Scene 7. Below is a quote from Macbeth,

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject, Strong both against his deed; then as his host, who should against his murdered shut door, not bear the knife myself.

This shows that Macbeth does (at this point) have a conscience and he does care about being king, but does not want to have to kill for the throne. In this soliloquy, Macbeth weighs up all the pros and cons of murdering Duncan and for a split second, he decides not to kill him, but telling his wife this, We will proceed no further in this business she fools him into changing his decision. At this point I feel some sympathy for Macbeth only because he is so indecisive and can easily be persuaded by his morally stronger wife.

This brings up another aspect, Macbeths and Lady Macbeths relationship. The relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth is a very close one but a strange one. There are several things that Macbeth does not know about Lady Macbeth that she knows about him, for example she knows his weaknesses and the strength of his character. At the beginning of the play Lady Macbeth is the stronger of the two. Although it was the witches that told Macbeth predictions of him becoming king,

It was Lady Macbeth who got the wheels turning, with her art of persuasion, and knowledge of Macbeth s weaknesses, to make him kill the king.

Another scene, which is important about showing the deeper characters, is

Act 2 Scene 2. The murder scene.

In this scene it seems that Macbeth really regrets murdering Duncan and questions his own actions, quote Act 2 Scene 2 lines 50-53, I ll go no more, I am afraid to think what I have done look on t again I dare not. It is as if it is only him that feels remorse and he feels disturbed by the fact that he has killed Duncan, quote, Still it cried, Sleep no more! to all the house, Glamis hath murdered Sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more Macbeth knows that his actions were not right and that he ll lose sleep over Duncan s murder (but we know who actually does lose there sleep in the end ) however his wife does not show the same emotions instead she criticizes him, quote, Who was it that thus cried? Why, worthy Thane, you do unbend your noble strength to think brainsickly of things .

At this point I feel compassion for Macbeth for he is in a situation that he didn t really want to be in the first place but due to his wife hunger for power he was now standing with the blood of the king on his hands. I believe that Lady Macbeth, does honestly care for her husband because she is always saving him from revealing that they are Duncan s murderers, because after the murder, Macduff finds Duncan dead, Macbeth then starts to act suspiciously and draws attention to himself. It is then that Lady Macbeth has to help him out and draw the attention away from him and to her by fainting. She does this later too, during the banquet scene. Lady Macbeth is always there to clean up after Macbeth; Because of this I did feel a little compassion for Lady Macbeth at that point and don t think so badly of her.

A turning point in the play has to be in Act 3 Scene 2. In Act 3 Scene 2, the further deterioration of Macbeth,and in particular, his relationship with Lady Macbeth is emphasised. Here, Lady Macbeth’s character is shown to be a lonely woman who once knew everything that was going on in her life with Macbeth; she played a part in everything. She longs once again to have the relationship that she had with her husb