The character of Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s greatest literary achievements. She possesses a manipulative cruelty that influences the characters to do evil. But the true genius of Lady Macbeth is perhaps overlooked by casual readers of Macbeth who are unfamiliar with Elizabethan society. Shakespeare appealed to the audiences of his day by transforming Lady Macbeth into a “fourth witch” through blatant parallels between the Weïrd Sisters and Macbeth’s wife to create an antithesis between kingship and witchcraft and demonstrate by contrast the value of the ideal woman in the Elizabethan family system.
Macbeth shows the “witch” in Lady Macbeth through actions that connect her with Elizabethan concepts of witchcraft. Perhaps the most apparent witchcraft associated with Lady Macbeth is the invocation scene, wherein she calls upon evil forces to fill her heart with cruelty so that she may plot Duncan’s murder (1.5.28-33; 45-61). Harold C. Goddard, in his essay “Macbeth,” says that an Elizabethan would consider a witch as one who was not only invited by supernatural forces, but who actively invited them into his or her heart. With Lady Macbeth’s declaration to the evil spirits, “Hie thee hither” (1.5.28), she is actively calling them to her (28-30). Shakespeare’s audience would likely see, as modern audiences do, Lady Macbeth’s invocation as a direct connection with the witchcraft of their time. If Lady Macbeth is connected with evil forces after the invocation scene, then she would exhibit traits or actions similar to the witches. When Macbeth enters, she greets him thus: “Great Glamis, worthy Cawdor / Greater than both by the all hail hereafter!” (1.5.62-63). This echoes the Weïrd Sisters’ salutation to Macbeth two scenes earlier: “All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis! / All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor! / All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!” (1.3.51-53). Lady Macbeth never sees the witches; her only knowledge of them comes from her husband’s letter to her, and so the startling similarities between these two greetings indicate a likely connection between Lady Macbeth and the witches, and thus to witchcraft.
Less obvious evidences exist within Lady Macbeth’s choice of words in her dialogue. Goddard notes that Lady Macbeth, in her plan to kill King Duncan, refers to the drunken chamberlains as in “swinish sleep” (1.7.77). Earlier, the Second Witch mentions that she has been “[k]illing swine” (1.3.2). The sacrifice of swine had connections with witchcraft since ancient times. Lady Macbeth, by placing the blame on Duncan’s servants, who are murdered by Macbeth’s hands, sacrifices the human “swine” in her own way. (29) While a physical animal sacrifice onstage would seem distracting as best and offensive at worst to the Elizabethan audience, a symbolic sacrifice is a less risky way of expressing the same connections to witchcraft.
Despite connections with the contemporary witches of the 1600s, Shakespeare sought to embody a subtler and more sinister evil in his Weïrd Sisters and Lady Macbeth. Cumberland Clark, in his book Shakespeare and the Supernatural, contends that they are not the physically fatal witches of Shakespeare’s day (Clark 84). The First Witch reveals that she cannot destroy the ship of a shipman, but only make his journey perilous: “Though his bark cannot be lost / Yet it shall be tempest-tost” (1.3.24-25). The witches cannot kill people, nor do they make animals ill, prevent butter from churning, or any of the other maladies that old women in the Elizabethan period were often accused of causing. Rather, the Weïrd Sisters are a “psychological poison” to threaten the soul, as evidenced by their primary function to indirectly lead Macbeth to murder, and to mislead him into a false sense of security within his precarious reign. In the same way, Lady Macbeth herself cannot kill Duncan: “Had he not resembled / My father as he slept, I had done ‘t” (2.2.16-17). Lady Macbeth has limitations to her evil and cannot physically slay a man. However, she, like the witches, can influence Macbeth to do the evil deed (Clark 84). Lady Macbeth and the Weïrd Sisters are thus alike in limitations and abilities, hinting at a connection between them.
Why would he establish recurring motifs of witchcraft? A lesser playwright might have added witchcraft into a play only to gain attention, much as directors today make movies with paper-thin plots more appealing by adding special effects and other “filler.” To answer this question, one must look at the Elizabethan antithesis of kingship and witchcraft. From the ancient pharaohs to the kings of Shakespeare’s day, monarchs often claimed that God charged them to rule over their subjects. Peter Stallybrass, in his essay “Macbeth and Witchcraft,” defines the ideal concept of Elizabethan kingship as male rule, divinely ordained, and promoting the Elizabethan order of the universe. Witchcraft, in direct contrast, is female rule, ordained by the devil, and destroys the Elizabethan system of order by embodying chaos itself (Stallybrass 190). Thus, a good king becomes an ideal force of good, and a witch the embodiment of evil. Shakespeare would have seen the potential for a powerful conflict that would captivate his audience.
What is the purpose for so many connections between the witches and Lady Macbeth? Clark maintains that supernatural plot devices are best used only sparingly. If the Weïrd Sisters appear too often in the play, the dramatic effect of the supernatural is diminished, and featuring them any more than necessary makes them ridiculous or tiresome and their influence convoluted or unbelievable (47). The suspension of disbelief is vital to any sort of fantastic tale, and if the witches influence events too often or too much, the audience loses the suspension of disbelief. Shakespeare no doubt understood this, for the Weïrd Sisters appear only rarely, and for reasons vital to the course of the play. A more amateur playwright would likely have used the supernatural unnecessarily only because it is a convenient plot device. Because the supernatural cannot be used too often, Shakespeare needed another way to keep the focus on the kingship-witchcraft antithesis. Otherwise, this theme would be pushed into the background, the witches would not seem as menacing, and the play would lose much of its drama. One possible way to achieve this is by creating a character that will subtly remind the audience of the witches. Lady Macbeth “replaces” the witches during Act 1 to reinforce the contrast of witchcraft and kingship at the play’s beginning, when it needs to be firmly established to affect the audience throughout the play. Consider that in Act 1, the witches or Lady Macbeth appears in Scenes 1, 3, 5, and 7. The even-numbered scenes in Act 1 are male-dominated. This back-and-forth focus quickly and effectively establishes the contrast between good and evil, male and female, and order and chaos.
If Lady Macbeth only functions as a contrast with monarchs, she would not be the complex character that Shakespeare designed. The witches and Lady Macbeth also contrast with the Elizabethan concept of the “ideal woman.” Women in the Elizabethan period were pressured to exhibit a wholly feminine appearance, and to not betray the natures of their sex. Lady Macbeth, in her invocation scene, cries, “unsex me here […] Come to my woman’s breasts / And take my milk for gall” (1.5.48-55). As she discards her feminine traits, she becomes similar to the witches, about whom Macbeth declares “You should be women, / And yet your beards forbid me to interpret / That you are so.” (1.3.47-49). Stallybrass contends that the ambiguity of gender creates a “perverted femininity” that Shakespeare’s audience would recognize and abhor (196).
The ideal image of womanhood was that of a loving and motherly figure, whose life was devoted to the home and family. Lady Macbeth declares, “I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me.” (1.7.62-63), demonstrating that at one point in her life, she has had children. But consider also her lines that follow: “I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums / And dashed the brains out” (1.7.64-66). Such unloving words from a former mother certainly are no signs of a good matron! Thus, Lady Macbeth contrasts further from the ideal woman, and becomes more like the witches.
A cursory analysis of Lady Macbeth shows that she is one of the most insidious and manipulative characters in Shakespeare’s tragedies. But when one studies more deeply to understand the audience for whom Shakespeare was writing, it is apparent that Lady Macbeth would have seemed even more corrupt to the Elizabethan viewer. Her many connections to witchcraft go against the Elizabethan system of order. She defies the divine system of kings and the seventeenth-century place of women. If Lady Macbeth is evil to modern eyes, then she would be even more so to Shakespeare’s audience.
Works Cited
Clark, Cumberland. A Study of Macbeth. Stratford-upon-Avon: Shakespeare Hear Press, 1976.
Goddard, Harold C. “Macbeth.” Modern Critical Interpretations: William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1987. 5-38.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. Eds. Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992.
Stallybrass, Peter. “Macbeth and Witchcraft.” Focus on Macbeth. Ed. John Russel Brown. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982. 189-209.
