Lady Macbeth has a fascinating character arc, from the cold ambition she displays upon her first entrance, to the intense throes of guilt she experiences as she comes to terms with her role in Duncan’s murder.
From her very first entrance, Lady Macbeth displays her great ambition: In some of her first words to her husband, she tells him she fears his nature is “too full o’ the milk of human kindness” to kill Duncan...
Lady Macbeth has a fascinating character arc, from the cold ambition she displays upon her first entrance, to the intense throes of guilt she experiences as she comes to terms with her role in Duncan’s murder.
From her very first entrance, Lady Macbeth displays her great ambition: In some of her first words to her husband, she tells him she fears his nature is “too full o’ the milk of human kindness” to kill Duncan and become King. This Lady Macbeth is cold, calculating, and will do anything to see her ambitions fulfilled. Indeed, in the same scene (the first in which we meet Lady Macbeth) she utters these words:
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty!
Here she calls upon the supernatural to strip her of her feminine, nurturing qualities (“unsex me”), and to replace them with the “direst cruelty”. In the same soliloquy (Act I Scene V), she instructs these spirits (‘murdering ministers’) to “Come to [her] woman’s breasts/And take [her] milk for gall”. Lady Macbeth rejects her role as mother and nurturer in favor of ambition. It is interesting that many of Lady Macbeth’s most evil, horrific statements like these involve her rejection of her ‘proper’ role as mother; most notably in Act I Scene VII:
I have given suck, and know
How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.
I have seen these scenes played with stony anger, or shrill anger, and both of these are perfectly good approaches. I think it would be interesting to play with this a little bit though: it would seem very evil indeed for Lady Macbeth to say these lines flippantly, emphasizing Macbeth’s failure to fulfill his oath rather than the horrific details of Lady Macbeth killing her own child. Having said this, the ‘shrill anger’ approach may help to foreshadow Lady Macbeth’s eventual guilty breakdown.
When Lady Macbeth is in her guilt, I would play her as much more feminine, delicate and damaged than she seemed before. Her breakdown can be seen as a punishment not just for her role in Duncan’s murder, but for her rejection of her femininity. For that reason, it may be helpful for her to act as though she is desperately trying to claw back this lost femininity, which indeed she is: her obsessive hand-washing is her (futile) attempt to cleanse herself of her treacherous act, and part of that treachery is her rejection of her God-given, feminine role as mother and nurturer.
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