Lady Macbeth Essay

Lady Macbeth as the Most Unusual Shakespeare’s Villain

Lady Macbeth is often considered to be one of the most interesting and unusual characters in the works of William Shakespeare, and rightly so. Uncharacteristically for himself, Shakespeare gives the major, although rather sinister, role to a woman, while making her husband a little more than the executor of crime.

Although Macbeth is not opposed to the idea of becoming a king, he would have left it that; his wife, however, is ambitious, strong-willed and also completely unscrupulous. Even after Macbeth seems to be a little bit horrified with the perspective of actually treacherously killing Duncan, she still manages to convince him to carry out her plan.

Lady Macbeth belongs to the type of women that perceive the idea of protecting the interests of their husbands very seriously. While staying in shadow themselves, they are ready to do everything that can lead to the ascension of their spouses. In a more usual environment it is usually limited to slander and suchlike, but to everyone his own. Lady Macbeth plays the role of the initiator of the crime and husband just falls for her persuasion – not unlike Adam did to Eve’s.

However, later we see that she, just like her husband, cannot be called a villain in a true sense of the word. She is more like a tragic hero who has committed a heinous crime after succumbing to a temptation. The fact that they both feel compunction, keep imagining things, shows that it is not them who are the true villains here, but the three witches who put the ideas into their heads in the first place.