In the play "Macbeth" by William Shakespeare, Macbeth is driven into a murderous rampage so that he may become king. In doing so, he must first off kill the King Duncan himself and everyone that is heir to the throne. Lady Macbeth, his wife, is suggested to be the mastermind behind the whole ordeal. She has a great deal of power over Macbeth and could have easily been the reason why Macbeth did embark upon his murdering spree. Macbeth had the ability to murder the king, although he had his doubt. He just had his wife's encouragement to push him the rest of the way.
At the beginning of the play, Macbeth does indeed have the ambition to kill King Duncan. Even Lady Macbeth knows he could, but she also knows that he wouldn't without a bit of encouragement. She says, "The illness should attend it: what thou woulds't highly." So, in a way, Lady Macbeth somewhat brainwashes her husband into killing the king by subtly taunting his masculinity, like when she says, "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 that what you were, you would Be so much more a man." Lady Macbeth would have even killed King Duncan herself, except she claims that he looked like her father. Lady Macbeth states, "Had he not resembled My father as he slept, I had don't." Even so, Macbeth went along with the plan and murdered Duncan.
After his first murder, King Duncan, Macbeth becomes very ashamed of what he has done, "to know my deed, "twere best not to know myself." Lady Macbeth doesn't even seem to care in the slightest, but she is aware that if they think about what they have done too much, it will drive them mad. "These deeds must not be thought After these ways: so, it will make us mad," she says. So instead she thinks that if they just get rid of all the evidence, then they will both be fine and no one will find out. "A little water clears us of this deed.