Macbeth Conscience Essay

Perhaps the most forward-thinking theme of William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Macbeth is its relentless attack against the stereotypes pertaining to the qualities of what it meant to be a man during the period in which Shakespeare wrote, as well in the postmodern era. The vehicle through which Shakespeare delivered most of this theme is through the contrast of conscience between Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, who at the beginning of the play requests for the devil to castrate her to make her more manly, is begging to remove the blood from a dagger that she had thought water would have easily cured. The antithesis to Lady Macbeth, is her husband, Macbeth. In Act Two, Macbeth is witlessly scared of murdering his king and kinsman, …show more content…
When she is first seen in the play, she is requesting for evil spirits to filler her from top to bottom with, “direst cruelty. (1.5.41)” By the end of the play, she has devolved into a character who is begging for invisible bloodstains to disappear. Upon her first line delivered, she is seen as possibly the cruelest character within the play. She asks for herself to be castrated so that she could be more of a man, which in her mind were the epitome of cruelty. During her discussion with the, “murd’ring ministers, (46)” Lady Macbeth requests to have her, “passage to remorse,” blocked. This is at a stark contrast to Act Five, where her heart is so, “sorely charged (5.1.44)”, that not even, “all the perfumes of Arabia, (43)” could cure her of her sins. It is quite likely that Lady Macbeth’s cruel qualities existed in her far before the beginning of the play. This especially shows that men are not inherently cruel, as for the majority of the play, the most malignant role was that of a woman, a castrated one, but a woman nevertheless. This further disproves that man is inherently more cruel than woman, as Lady Macbeth is implied to have more intrinsic cruelty than any character within the