MACBETH: THE DRAMA THAT MOVES AROUND THE VILLAINY OF LADY MACBETH

 LADY MACBETH: THE FOURTH WITCH OF THE DRAMA

Lady Macbeth is such a character in the drama 'Macbeth' that attracts all attentions of readers and audiences only towards herself.When Lady Macbeth appears in the drama,she is most commanding and awe-aspiring.She is fired by the same passion of ambition as Macbeth.She plans how she may help Macbeth achieve his promised greatness.She finds his nature to be full of of the milk of human kindness. She finds him to be a man whose ambitions,the will to achieve his ambition. So she but without taken upon herself to prepare him.She appeals to the spirits to help her by changing her sex from a woman to man and filling her body and mind with cruelty.She wants them to take away all her feelings ie. kindness and pity from her heart and feel it with gall and poison.She wants them to cover the night with the darkness of hell.So that her eyes may not see the wound that her hands cause and stop her from committing murder of the king Duncan.
when Macbeth meets her,she rouses him to action.She provokes him for murder of the king.She animates him by picturing the deed as heroic and willfully ignores its cruelty and faithfulness.She uses her sneers and taunts which Macbeth is unable to bear.She tells him;

"What beast was't, then

That made you break this enterprise to me?

When you durst do it, then you were a man

And, to be more than what you were, you would

Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place

Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:

They have made themselves, and that their fitness now

Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me:

I would, while it was smiling in my face,

Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,

And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you

Have done to this."

This works  affects upon Macbeth.He tells her-

"Prithee,peace ,I dare do all that may become a man who dares do  more, is none."

Thus,Macbeth is persuaded to commit the deed of murder of Duncan.Clearly she appears to play the role of an accomplice,instigator,a bettor and the wicked woman.So dramatic critics level to call her a Fourth Witch in the drama.As A.C. Bradley comments;

"In the earlier sevens of the many,Lady Macbeth's character is the most prominent.And if she seems invincible,she seems also inhuman.We find no trace of pity for the kind old king,no consciousness of the treachery and fussiness  of the murder,no sense of the value of the lives of the wretched men on whom the guilt is to be laid;no shrinking even from the condemnation or hatred of the world"                      But if one examines her character closely,one finds it to be an unfair judgement of her character. There are quite good  reasons to believe that she may be partly but not wholly responsible for the tragedy of Macbeth.

Firstly,one finds that that Lady Macbeth in the end of the drama is not the Lady Macbeth of the beginning of the drama. She is quite a different woman at the beginning of the drama. She is feared, afraid and weary. She is afraid of darkness. She walks in light (burning candle) by her all the night. She losses her sleep and peace of mind. She turns mad and commits suicide. This shows clearly that she is essentially a woman -weak,cowardly,sentimental,and nervous. Her will and courage at first act is momentary. It is a pretending  and show-done purposefully to get Macbeth to commit murder of the king and persuade him to become the king. Had she been really bold and courageous,she would not have been a weak,suffering woman to die by committing suicide.

Secondly,whatever she does to incite Macbeth for deed of murder is done from a sense of wifely duty to her husband. As a wife she thinks it to be part of her duty to help her husband achieve the glory and greatness of life. Had she not done as she did,then she would have failed in her duty and fallen in the estimation of people.

Thirdly,and the most important reason is that Macbeth,being a man and valiant soldier should have refuse to accept her suggestion. He would have told her sternly that murder is a crime and immoral sin and he would not commit it. But he yields to her. How unreasonable to believe that a soldier who could conquer many battles in life and could not prevail over a woman at the home. But the soldier is not unreasonable. There is an expectation for it. the fact of Macbeth's acceptance of his wife's suggestions makes it clear that the thought of murder of the king and seizing his power and authority has been already in mind it has been there from before. So when Lady Macbeth makes the suggestion he accepts it and acts upon it. The result of his deed of murder is his misery and tragic death.

Again Shakespearean tragedy is a tragedy of character. This means that the tragedy of a Shakespearean hero is all due to some weakness evil passion in his own character. It is never caused by any external power or agent.

As A.C. Bradley says:

"what we do feel strongly . . . is that the calamities and catastrophe follow the inevitably from the deeds of men and that the main source of these deeds is character."

Clearly,Macbeth's tragedy is the result of his vaulting ambition, that blinds him to the resultant consequences of his act and murder. Thus one may say that Lady Macbeth is at least partly responsible for Macbeth's tragic misery and death. Macbeth himself is wholly responsible for the tragic misery suffering and death in his life.