Macbeth Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Macbeth - Essay Example The lady here unsexes herself and questions the manliness of Macbeth. A powerful witch in her is active now to tempt and unsex a powerful nobleman, to lead him into his tragedy. The devices she uses make the lines highly poetical. She plays upon words like hope, drunk, dress, pale, love, valour, and coward. She knows that Macbeth’s strength is in his valour. His weakness is his ambition, overvaulting ambition. Using the metaphor of dress, which pervades throughout the play, she questions the rationale behind cherishing a hope for which either Macbeth is not courageous enough to fulfill, or it was merely a hope in him born in a drunken moment. Whatever the case is, she cleverly hurls the words like desire, valour, fear, and love and waits for his reaction. â€Å"I dare do all that may become a man†, answers Macbeth. This answer compels his wife is to resort to stronger spurs. Still harping on the word â€Å"man†, Lady Macbeth now asks whether he was not a man when he had cherished a beastly ambition. She now strikes upon the most sensitive chord of a gentle character by asking Macbeth whether breaking an oath is manly or beastly. Unsexing herself, she tells him that â€Å"had I so sworn as you†, she would have plucked her nipples from her smiling baby and â€Å"dashed the brain out†. The structure of the passage under discussion here is clear; it is used by Shakespeare to reveal the true character Lady Macbeth. She is shown as a witch, a monster, whose concern as a wife is selfish and mechanical. The passage also shows that Macbeth is dominated by his wife, which precipitates his tragedy. At the same time, the metaphors in this passage reverberate again and again in the play to heighten the qualities of the character in Macbeth. He admits that it is â€Å"better be with the dead† than live a tortured life. Macbeth, like Hamlet, is aware of the predicaments from which a man