A soliloquy is a device used in drama when a character speaks to himself or herself, relating thoughts and feelings, thereby also sharing them with the audience. However, other characters are not aware of what is being said. William Shakespeare’s soliloquies are written in blank verse of unparalleled variety, invention, and rhythmic flexibility, suggestive of the rapidly changing moods of their speakers. Through soliloquies, Shakespeare’s Macbeth explores the way characters wrestle with their private thoughts under pressure, often failing to perceive the flaws in their own thinking.
In Scene One of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth calls on spirits that assist murderous thoughts to make her less like a woman and more like a man. “… unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. Come to my woman’s breasts, and take my milk for gall.” This soliloquy shows the audience that Lady Macbeth is the steel behind Macbeth and that her ambition will be strong enough to drive her husband forward. The language suggests that her womanhood, represented by breasts and milk impedes her from performing acts of …show more content…
Lady Macbeth drugged the king’s servants in order for Macbeth to kill the king conspiratorially. “Do mock their charge with snores. I have drugged their possets, that death and nature do contend about them, whether they live or die.” Although it appears that Lady Macbeth has lost all humanity in boasting with excitement at the prospect of the king’s death, “That which hath made then drunk hath made me bold. What hath quenched them hath given me fire,” her soliloquy reveals that compassion still flows through her veins when she is unable to kill King Duncan herself due to his resemblance of her father. “Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had
In Scene One of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth calls on spirits that assist murderous thoughts to make her less like a woman and more like a man. “… unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. Come to my woman’s breasts, and take my milk for gall.” This soliloquy shows the audience that Lady Macbeth is the steel behind Macbeth and that her ambition will be strong enough to drive her husband forward. The language suggests that her womanhood, represented by breasts and milk impedes her from performing acts of …show more content…
Lady Macbeth drugged the king’s servants in order for Macbeth to kill the king conspiratorially. “Do mock their charge with snores. I have drugged their possets, that death and nature do contend about them, whether they live or die.” Although it appears that Lady Macbeth has lost all humanity in boasting with excitement at the prospect of the king’s death, “That which hath made then drunk hath made me bold. What hath quenched them hath given me fire,” her soliloquy reveals that compassion still flows through her veins when she is unable to kill King Duncan herself due to his resemblance of her father. “Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had