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The Tragic Downfall of Lady Macbeth by William Shakespeare Essay

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The Tragic Downfall of Lady Macbeth William Shakespeare’s play entitled Macbeth is a bloody tragedy about ambition, evil, guilt and moral corruption. The story emphasizes a lot on the consequences or aftermath of the bad deeds that Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth do and the growing impact it has on them in turn. Lady Macbeth a woman driven by her assertiveness, boldness, strength and ambition for her husband could not escape the guilt that eventually caught up to her and destroyed her. In Act 5 scene 1, Lady Macbeth is sleep walking and goes insane due to the guilt and remorse that finally catches up to her. This scene is the most important because it changes the reader’s view on Lady Macbeth and Macbeth as characters and it also …show more content…

Furthermore, this scene is important in terms of plot development because it is the last appearance of Lady Macbeth in the whole play and also the most revealing and memorable. The whole plot of the play changes drastically once Lady Macbeth is no longer there to give strength and courage to her husband and to keep him stable. She was once a woman driven by her assertiveness, boldness, strength and ambition for her husband and later destroyed by guilt and corrupt power. Throughout the play, Lady Macbeth is known to be a powerful, ruthless, assertive and strong woman who is capable of manipulating and persuading anyone in order to get what she wants. She is portrayed as a woman who cannot be tamed and never shows weakness until her last appearance in the play and the most important scene of the play, Act 5 scene 1. Looking back at the beginning of the play, Lady Macbeth always persisted to be in absolute darkness, while in this scene she is obsessed with having a light next to her. The Gentlewoman who is watching her tells the Doctor “Why, it stood by her. She has light by her continually. T’is her command” (Shakespeare, V I 23-24). This demonstrates a dramatic change in her. The candle represents one single fragile light in the darkness of her soul. That light in her soul is a symbol of goodness and virtue. This is very revealing about Lady Macbeth, because it proves that she is not completely evil

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