lady macbeth is to blame for macbeth's downfall essay

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Macbeth Tragic Hero: The Power of Ambition and The Downfall of a Flawed Character

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Published: Mar 6, 2024

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Key traits of a tragic hero, the consequences of unchecked ambition, macbeth as a sympathetic character, macbeth's tragic downfall.

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Who is to blame for Macbeth's downfall?

                                                                    01/05/2007                

      MACBETH

Lady Macbeth is the one who influenced Macbeth into killing King Duncan. Lady Macbeth asked the evil spirits to assist her in influencing Macbeth. My opinion is that the actual evil spirits were the three witches. My guess is that William Shakespeare originally thought of this idea when writing the play.

Lady Macbeth was power hungry and all she wanted was the power that Macbeth was due (according to the three witches).  Lady Macbeth did not want to kill the king herself because she said that he reminded her of her father. Macbeth did not want to kill the king, not out of loyalty but because he was a good king. Lady Macbeth persuaded him to do it, for her own causes.

The witches are also responsible because they raised the hopes of Macbeth. I know this because Macbeth wrote a letter to Lady Macbeth saying what had happened regarding the encounter with the witches. The witches were twisting Macbeth about and watching him suffer and drown in his own guilt. After all, that’s what witches do!

The witches had got Banquo killed. Banquo was a very close friend of Macbeth and they had been in battle together but the witches had made Macbeth kill Banquo and Fleance. Fleance escaped. Macbeth was now even more worried. Macbeth then said to himself that the worry of Fleance was not now but when Fleance would grow up.

Brave Macbeth had turned into a horrible monster on a killing spree. This monster was made by the three witches and Lady Macbeth. Later on Lady Macbeth is overwhelmed also by her guilt but not as much as Macbeth who’s life had gone completely wrong.    

At the beginning of the play, Macbeth is seen as a courageous soldier who is loyal to the king but is corrupted from the witches’ prophecies and by his and Lady Macbeth’s ambition. This is because of the weakness of Macbeth’s character and the strong power of Lady Macbeth and how she is easily able to influence him. Her strength motivates him at the start but afterwards he realises what he has done. It is himself that continues in his murderous, bloody path.

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In the beginning of the play, Macbeth is a brave knight who fights for the king without mercy but his strive for ambition and his curious nature leads him to the witches who gave him a prophecy. Banquo realises that there must be a trick hidden somewhere but Macbeth refuses to accept that, and when Lady Macbeth finds out about the witches, her strong desire for ambition and her cold nature leads Macbeth astray.

Macbeth is a little ambitious at first, but Lady Macbeth’s far exceeds his and so she is able to get Macbeth to kill King Duncan. Macbeth still has a conscience at this stage because he is very hesitant about killing the king, but his weak nature comes over him. He has a conscience throughout the entire play as this is seen by the hallucinations of the dagger and the ghost of Banquo and his vivid imagination and his constant worry also provokes him. This is also evident in his terrible dreams which give the solid theme that he has indeed ‘murdered sleep’.

Throughout the play we see the character of Macbeth change, not from just the way he thinks and what we hear from the play, but from the actions he takes in the play, from killing Banquo, then having Lady Macduff and her children murdered, shows the insecurity that was present in Macbeth.

After the murder of Duncan, Macbeth becomes paranoid and his first step of killing the guards is one of the many things that Macbeth does to secure himself. Macbeth is also very superstitious (most people were at that time) and this is shown when he believes the prophecy the witches told him that Banquo`s offspring would become kings.

Towards the end of the play when Lady Macbeth dies and the battle is drawing closer, Macbeth shows some of his good qualities. He wishes for a normal life for which he would have lived to an honourable age but he recognises that he has denied himself of this. Even when Macbeth hears that the prophecy has become true of Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane, he rejects this idea and fights on until he realises that Macduff wasn`t in a natural birth but instead was ‘Untimely ripped’ from his mother’s womb. When Macbeth realises what he has done and how he has been tricked by the witches, he realises that it is useless and so he fights on, only to be slain.

Macbeth can be summarised into a character although strong physically, he is very weak mentally and it is the weakness which causes the downfall and the change of Macbeth. Other factors are also involved such as his wife whose ambition is very strong at first and is much stronger mentally than Macbeth but it is also Macbeth’s ambition and his trust in the witches which ultimately change him.

Lady Macbeth is the person who is able to persuade Macbeth into killing Duncan, assuring Macbeth that it will succeed, as Lady Macbeth’s ambition is far greater than of Macbeth.

This change in character of Lady Macbeth is apparent after she reads the letter from Macbeth and goes and talks to the evil spirits to make herself evil with quotes like ‘Fill me from the crown to the toe-top full of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood’. She goes to the extent of planning the murder of Duncan and assumes full responsibility of this.

Lady Macbeth exerts a lot of power over Macbeth in this part of the play and even calls him a ‘coward’ and this shows just how determined she is and how much ambition she has for her husband. It is this confidence in herself plus the persuasiveness on her words that makes Macbeth act on her words without hesitating.

After performing the necessary acts in preparation for the murder of Duncan, she thinks of performing the murder herself but shows a sign of humanity and doesn’t because it resembles ‘My father as he slept’.

After the murder has been done, Lady Macbeth shows just how strong a person she really is by using kind words and confidence to clamp down Macbeth and prevent him going insane. Lady Macbeth however jokes with Macbeth about forgetting the incident as ‘these deeds must not be thought after these ways: so it will make us mad’. Afterwards she gets the daggers that Macbeth had brought with him and smeared them with blood and then told Macbeth to change into a nightgown. At this point, Lady Macbeth is in complete control and has tried to make Macbeth free of guilt even though in fact, he did do the deed.

Lady Macbeth is then able to exclaim in horror ‘What! In our house’ to the murder of Duncan but whilst in complete control, to draw away suspicion from Macbeth or possibly she fainted from shocked dismay. I believe she was shocked because I think that Lady Macbeth was surprised I think that Lady Macbeth was surprised that she was able to get Macbeth to commit the murder of King Duncan, but was even more shocked at how over one night and in fear, Macbeth could kill two more men in cold blood.

Lady Macbeth is strongly in control as the play proceeds and is able to handle crises very well which is shown at the banquet incident where Macbeth lost his head. Lady Macbeth had to conceal the real ideas that are happening.

As Macbeth progresses with his evil acts, however, Lady Macbeth starts to go mad which is almost like what her prophecy mentioned. She also hallucinates like her husband but this time about trying to cleanse her hands of the blood will not wash off. Even though she may be a strong character, greatly supporting her husband, she is reduced and battered by the deeds and her conscience which she is able to rid from Macbeth, eventually drives her insane. She the kills herself, unable to remove the ‘damned spot’. At his wife’s suicide, Macbeth has already thrown away his conscience, so much so, that Macbeth commits even more evil acts afterwards without even admitting to his conscience. Over the course of the play, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth greatly change with respect to their characters, but mainly Macbeth. Although Macbeth was weak at first, it was the strong Lady Macbeth who helped him through the first murder but in sacrifice to controlling Macbeth and his conscience, she lost control of hers and in consequence, turned insane and killed herself. Thus in end it was worth to call Macbeth a ‘Dead butcher’ but it must not be forgotten that at the beginning of the play, Macbeth and his wife were ordinary nobles at the time.

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Revision Guide: Macbeth

Written by: Collins Revision

May 20, 2024

Time to read 9 min

If you’re studying for your GCSEs and need some extra help getting to grips with William Shakespeare’s classic play Macbeth , then Collins has got you covered with their Snap Edexcel GCSE 9-1 English Literature Text Guide , perfect for the upcoming exam season!

Read on for an extract taken directly from the revision guide, which gives you all the tips you need to know about the setting and context of the play, including 11 th century Scotland, Renaissance England and stagecraft.

SETTING AND CONTEXT

Eleventh-century scotland:.

You must be able to: understand the play’s historical context so you can link it to your analysis.

Macbeth : fact or fiction?

Macbeth was the real King of Scotland from 1040 to 1057 but Shakespeare’s character bears very little resemblance to this historical figure.

However, the play is set in the eleventh century so it is useful to understand a little about life and attitudes at that time.

What was society like?

Scotland had a clear social hierarchy . The King was at the top and ruled the country; below him were the thanes who governed different regions on behalf of the King; within these regions, important families would look after smaller areas and below them were the serfs who worked the land.

This social structure can be seen in Shakespeare’s play. Macbeth is already Thane of Glamis and is then made Thane of Cawdor, showing him progressing upwards in society.

Were they religious?

By the eleventh century Scotland was a Christian country.

These deeply held beliefs can be seen in the play through various references to God and Heaven. Macbeth believes he will go to Hell for the sins he has committed.

There was also a religious belief in the Great Chain of Being, whereby God gives every living thing a place in an ordered hierarchy. To upset this order was a crime against God and nature. Shakespeare explores this in the play by describing nature being in turmoil after the King’s murder and having the Macbeths driven mad by their actions.

How civilised was society?

Despite a clear social structure and an established religion, the country was regularly involved in battles, whether it was against Viking invaders raiding Northern England or different Scottish lords fighting amongst themselves for more land or the throne.

The opening of the play refers to this situation, with King Duncan’s armies having just defeated Norwegian invaders who were being helped by a treacherous Scottish thane.

Battles were particularly brutal. For example, in 1032 the real Macbeth is said to have burned 50 of his enemies to death. This kind of behaviour can be seen in Act 4, when Macduff’s entire family are murdered.

What was the status of women?

Some women had power in society but this came from their husbands, for example, if they were married to an important thane.

On the whole, partly due to Christian beliefs, women had a domestic role and were seen as physically and morally inferior.

This is why Lady Macbeth is an unusual character. Not only is she a powerful woman but she is often presented as more powerful than her husband. She is aware of her social limitations as a woman when she voices her wish to be ‘unsexed’. However, her manipulative nature could also be seen as following the idea that women were less moral.

James I and Renaissance England:

You must be able to: understand how the play is affected by the time in which it was written.

When was the play written?

Macbeth is believed to have been written in 1606.

As the play is about a Scottish King, it is important to remember that, at the time, England had a new King: James I.

James had been King of Scotland since 1567. When the Queen of England and Ireland, Elizabeth I, died in 1603 she had no children, nieces or nephews. Because he was a distant relative, James was offered the English throne in 1603 and became the first King of Great Britain.

How were ideas in the play influenced by James I’s kingship?

Because Shakespeare relied on the benefits of royal patronage , he included lots of things in Macbeth that the new King would enjoy.

Most significant is the play’s criticism of people who usurp the King. This is shown through Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s downfall.

In 1605, a year before the play’s first performance, the Gunpowder Plot was foiled. Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators hoped to replace the monarch by blowing up parliament and killing the King. As punishment, they were hanged and quartered.

Various people thought they had an equal claim to the throne because James was not a direct descendant of Elizabeth I. James had previously written a book about the Divine Right of Kings, developing the Great Chain of Being to establish the idea that the monarch was chosen by God, so to challenge his position was a terrible sin. Shakespeare includes this idea in the spiritual consequences that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth face for killing King Duncan.

James was also interested in the supernatural and had visited several witch trials in Scotland. This may be why Shakespeare included witches in the play (using the traditional image that the public had of them as evil, powerful women) and has Macbeth haunted by Banquo’s ghost.

Had attitudes to women changed?

Even though there had been a female monarch from 1559 to 1603, women were still seen as physically and morally inferior. Just as Lady Macbeth would have been unusual in her eleventh-century setting, an audience of the 1600s would have found her surprisingly assertive and scheming.

You must be able to: understand how Macbeth fits into the genre of tragedy.

What is a tragedy?

As well as being historical and social, context can also be literary, so the type of play that Shakespeare has written is relevant. His plays are often categorised as tragedies, comedies or histories; Macbeth is a tragedy.

When the word is used in the news, a ‘tragedy’ is an event that causes great suffering or distress.

However, when it is a type of play, it is a story that usually features tragic events, the downfall of a central figure through a flaw in their character and an unhappy ending.

What are the tragic events in Macbeth ?

The most obvious event that causes distress is the murder of the King.

Imagine how people would feel, and how the media would react, if our royal family were murdered. Shakespeare dramatises this reaction in Act 2 scene 3.

Shakespeare heightens the idea of tragedy by drawing on the idea of the Divine Right of Kings. So, as well as it being a national tragedy, the murder of the King is a universal tragedy with God angered and the natural world in turmoil.

The slaughtering of Macduff’s entire family is also tragic. Shakespeare focusses the tragedy by showing the murder of Macduff’s young son to emphasise the family’s innocence and to get a stronger emotional response from the audience.

Do the audience see Macbeth’s downfall?

At the start of the play, Shakespeare deliberately portrays Macbeth as a good man. He is a dutiful subject of the King, a brave soldier, a loyal friend and a loving husband.

As the play progresses, these different qualities vanish and the audience watch his personal, moral downfall. The loss of his goodness is actually more important to the dramatic tragedy than his final downfall, when he is killed by Macduff.

Is it an unhappy ending?

The play closes with Malcolm ready to be crowned the rightful King of Scotland so there is a positive ending.

However, Malcolm’s final speech reminds the audience of all the terrible things that have happened in the play.

Shakespeare also gives some redemption to Lady Macbeth in order to add sadness to her death. In Act 5, he shows her to have been driven mad by guilt and it is implied that she kills herself. Despite her crimes, the audience often feel some sympathy for her in Act 5 scene 1.

Stagecraft:

You must be able to: to explore how the staging of the play affects its meaning.

Soliloquies and asides

A soliloquy is when a character speaks their thoughts aloud on stage, heard only by the audience.

Soliloquies are especially interesting with villains, such as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, because they allow the audience to see a side to the character that is usually kept hidden.

Important soliloquies in the play include Lady Macbeth’s in Act 1 scene 5, Macbeth’s speech about conscience in Act 1 scene 7, Macbeth’s speech on his way to killing King Duncan in Act 2 scene 1 and his sharing of his fears about Banquo in Act 3 scene 1.

Quick ‘asides’, when characters speak briefly to themselves, are also used. This is particularly notable in Act 1 scene 3. Macbeth’s asides show him considering the witches’ prophecies and the news of his promotion to Thane of Glamis; they reveal that he is changing from a good, honest man to someone secretive and duplicitous .

Plays written during the time of James I are often called Jacobean plays.

Playwrights often write to appeal to their audience and Jacobean theatre-goers wanted more edgy and shocking stories to watch. These plays are often characterised by bloody and horrific scenes, with Macbeth being an early example of this.

Banquo’s murder in Act 3 scene 3 can be quite horrible. The stage direction ‘[The First Murderer strikes out the light]’ means it takes place in sudden darkness with only sounds for the audience to imagine what is happening. This also creates a shock when Banquo’s ghost, covered in bloody wounds, appears in the next scene and the audience see exactly what happened.

Similarly, after Macbeth is slain, Macduff appears in the last scene carrying his severed head.

Lots of murders also happen off stage (such as King Duncan, his guards, Macduff’s entire family). Some of these are described in a particularly gruesome way to please the audience, such as in Act 1 scene 2 when it is retold how Macdonwald was cut open from his stomach to his mouth before being decapitated.

The supernatural

The Jacobean audience would also have enjoyed the supernatural element of the play. Shakespeare specifies sound, lighting, props and specific exits in the scenes with the witches to create an engagingly sinister atmosphere .

The witches are accompanied by ‘[Thunder and lightning]’, they have ‘[a boiling cauldron]’, each apparition ‘[descends]’ through the floor of the stage and an effect must be used to allow the witches to ‘[vanish]’.

Macbeth takes place over quite a long period of time. The changing acts allow time to pass so Shakespeare can intensify the action.

This can be seen with Act 5 where enough time has passed for Macbeth’s reign to fill Scotland with terror, for different thanes to desert Macbeth, for Macduff and Malcolm to raise an army and march on Scotland and for Lady Macbeth to go mad.

Act 5 is also noteworthy for its nine very short scenes. By alternating quickly between Macbeth’s castle and the attacking armies, Shakespeare creates tension and excitement on stage that builds to the climactic swordfight between Macbeth and Macduff.

Exam Board: Edexcel

Level: GCSE Grade 9-1

Subject: English Literature

Everything you need to revise for your GCSE 9-1 set text in a snap guide

Everything you need to score top marks on your GCSE Grade English Literature exam is right at your fingertips! Revise Macbeth by William Shakespeare in a snap with this new GCSE Grade 9-1 Snap Revision Text Guide from Collins. Refresh your knowledge of the plot, context, characters and themes and pick up top tips along the way to ace your Edexcel exam. Each topic is explained in an easy-to-read format so you can get straight to the point. Then, put your skills to the test with plenty of practice questions included in every section. The Snap Text Guides are packed with every quote and extract you need. We’ve even included examples of how to plan and write your essay responses! For more revision on Shakespeare, check out our Snap Revision Text Guide on Romeo and Juliet (9780008353049).

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Guest Essay

A Different Way of Seeing Justice Alito’s Blame-the-Wife Defense

By Jennifer Weiner

Ms. Weiner, an author, writes frequently about gender and culture.

By now, you’ve surely seen the latest round of high-end wife blaming in Washington. In seeking to shift their controversies onto their marital partners, Justice Samuel Alito and Senator Robert Menendez joined a tradition that extends across party lines and stretches back through the centuries.

We might have hoped we’d be past such things by now, but the news is not all bad. These old tropes should give us cause for fresh hope. Stick with me as we briefly review the evidence.

First up: Justice Alito, who was presented with photographs of an upside-down flag flying in front of his house. The flag is a symbol of the “stop the steal” movement, whose adherents say the 2020 presidential election was stolen; the photograph was taken three days before Joe Biden’s inauguration and just over a week after the invasion of the Capitol. Justice Alito bravely, manfully, clearly announced to the world that his wife did it.

“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito told The Times, in an emailed statement. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”

Then there’s Senator Menendez, charged with 16 felony counts related to accepting cash and gold bars in exchange for furthering the interests of Egypt and Qatar, among others.

During opening statements in his trial last week, Mr. Menendez’s lawyers said he was innocent of wrongdoing. The blame, they said, instead lies with his wife , Nadine — currently being treated for Stage 3 breast cancer — who allegedly “kept him in the dark” about her money woes and the creative but not necessarily legal steps she took to address them.

If it’s good enough for a New Jersey Democrat, apparently, it’s good enough for a California Republican. When Representative Duncan Hunter was indicted along with his wife on federal charges of stealing more than a quarter of a million dollars in campaign funds, he said, in effect , “That’s on her.” He had given her power of attorney, and she handled their finances. “So whatever she did,” Mr. Hunter said in an interview, “that’ll be looked at, too, I’m sure, but I didn’t do it.”

Senator Ted Stevens, a legend in Alaska politics, one of the most powerful Republican senators, tried it, too, in 2008. He was charged with accepting and then covering up more than $250,000 in bribes that were delivered in the form of home renovation expenses. I’m sure by now you can guess his excuse : Don’t blame me; the home renovation was my wife’s project.

Which is pretty much exactly what a former Virginia governor, Robert F. McDonnell, told the court, in 2014, when he and his wife, Maureen, were charged with using the favor of the governor’s office in exchange for loans and lavish gifts.

Ever since Adam bit the apple and Eve took the rap, women have been blamed for their husbands’ missteps. How many wives did Henry VIII dispose of, by various means, for his failure to produce a male heir? Lady Macbeth didn’t actually kill anyone — and yet she’s seen as her story’s villain, while her murderous spouse gets at least a partial pass.

This recent flurry of wife blaming isn’t just morally dubious; it’s illogical. If Justice Alito disagreed with his wife’s very public gesture, he has had more than three years — and counting — to dissent. Martha-Ann Alito might have hoisted that flag, but at this point Justice Alito owns it.

So why is this flimsy excuse getting trotted out again and again? Maybe it’s all an anxious reaction to the era of ascendant female power, of #MeToo and Taylor Swift and Beyoncé and Barbie and Caitlin Clark. It’s a great time to be a famous woman, though less so to be a pregnant woman in Texas or Alabama, and some men are still figuring out how to navigate the new terrain.

On the other hand, blaming the missus may just be an irresistibly convenient excuse, equally handy in any era: Women! Can’t live with ’em, can’t trust ’em not to hang the American flag upside down and hide gold bars in the closet, amirite?

All this finger-pointing may be dispiriting to those who wish for women to be entire people, real and flawed and multidimensional, not just saints or scapegoats. However, if you squint and tilt your head just so, you may discern the faintest glimmer of progress. Because even as these stories feature men cheerfully tossing the women they pledged to love and to cherish under the bus, they also position those women as their own people with their own free will. It’s a debate I can hardly believe we are still having, but here we are.

When a Supreme Court justice blames his wife, he is also acknowledging that his wife has the ability to act on her own ideas, has a mind confoundingly of her own. When a congressman or a senator blames his wife for financial chicanery, he’s also saying that she had the power to make important decisions for herself or her family. When a male politician blames his wife for soliciting bribes and hiding their fruits from him, he’s telling us — however self-servingly — that she was smart enough to pull the wool over his eyes.

And as new pilloried wives take their turns in the headlines, it’s worth considering their predecessors who were not blamed for things they did or might have done but instead were shamed for things that were done to them. Better, perhaps, to be Mrs. (Duncan) Hunter than Mrs. (Eliot) Spitzer or Mrs. (Mark) Sanford or Mrs. (Anthony) Weiner or, of course, Mrs. (Bill) Clinton, all of whom endured searing scrutiny and cloying pity when their husbands’ sex scandals were revealed.

Better, perhaps, to be the wife whose husband says, “I did not hang that flag upside down” — or take those bribes or steal that money — thereby making you the focus of the nation’s blame — than one whose husband says, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” and leaves you the object of its ridicule.

Jennifer Weiner is the author, most recently, of the novel “The Breakaway.”

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