You can find the best quotes for your project in Act 1, Scene 7 of Macbeth. In this scene, the husband and wife essentially have an argument in which Macbeth expresses all his doubts and misgivings about murdering King Duncan. Lady Macbeth overcomes all of his scruples because of her passionate desire to see the accomplishment of the violent act they have previously discussed. Shakespeare does not want Macbeth to be a pure villain like Richard III or Iago. The playwright wants the audience to feel some degree of sympathy for this man because it is supposed to be his tragedy. Shakespeare accomplishes this partly by showing Macbeth's strong misgivings in the soliloquy which opens Scene 7. Then the playwright passes on some of the guilt to Macbeth's wife for the sole purpose of making Macbeth look like a somewhat better man than the audience would take him to be if he had no doubts, scruples, misgivings, or apprehensions. The most significant lines in the scene are spoken by Macbeth when his wife intrudes on his meditations and he tells her:
We will proceed no further in this business:
He hath honor'd me of late, and I have bought
Golden opinions from all sorts of people,
Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,
Not cast aside so soon.
He is saying, in effect, that he can be content with what he has already achieved and doesn't really want to be king. He is Thane of Glamis and Thane of Cawdor. He is loved by King Duncan and honored and admired by everybody because of his leadership in the recent war. He is trying to assert his authority as the lord and master in the marital relationship. But we can sense that he is acting more confident than he really feels. His wife shows that her ambition is greater than his by giving him a tongue-lashing in which she uses every rhetorical device at her command. She is using "sexual blackmail" when she suggests that she cannot believe her really loves her if he is disappointing her after building up her hopes that she might become queen.
Was the hope drunk
Wherein you dress'd yourself? Hath it slept since?
And wakes it now, to look so green and pale
At what it did so freely? From this time
Such I account thy love. Art thou afeard
To be the same in thine own act and valor
As thou art in desire?
She seems to be suggesting that she will lose all respect for him if he doesn't go through with the murder; and this will have a negative effect on their sexual relations. He has become dependent on her love and is persuaded that he has to do what she wishes in order to retain her affection. It is questionable whether she really loves him at all. She does not seem like a loving person. But she is the woman he is married to. He loves her deeply, regardless of whether she loves him or not.
At the end of the scene, Macbeth is entirely compliant and submissive. He speaks the final lines:
I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
It seems obvious that Macbeth would never have murdered King Duncan if it hadn't been for the influence of his wife. She is inflexible in her determination to become queen, whereas his vacillation shows that he does not really care all that much about becoming king. He is right, of course. He has risen far enough in life. He is not qualified to be a good monarch. He shows this throughout the rest of the play in the way his misrule brings Scotland to ruin.
There is no better scene than Act 1, Scene 7 to contrast Macbeth and his wife in the relative strength of their ambitions. This is where they both "have it out" and reveal themselves to each other and to the audience.
No comments:
Post a Comment