"Discuss the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. How does it change and why? To what extent is their relationship the engine that drives the tragedy?".
In Shakespeare's tragedy, Macbeth, the characters and the roles they play are critical to its plot and theme. Many of the characters, especially Macbeth, and his wife, Lady Macbeth are well developed and very complex. The relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth is a very strange one that involves many elements of death, deceit and corruption. As the play progresses, their relationship changes and their roles are essentially switched. The relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth is a very important factor in Macbeth, because with out Lady Macbeth's strong influence on her husband, Macbeth would not have acted and made some of the decisions he did. .
Lady Macbeth plays a significant role in influencing Macbeth to choose the path that he does. She plays the dominant character throughout the opening scenes, in which she asserts her ambition for her and her husband to gain hierarchic status. They seem to have great concern for each other, as illustrated when Macbeth races to tell Lady Macbeth about his encounter with the witches. When she hears the news, she immediately begins plotting how to gain her husbands desire to be king.
"Lady Macbeth's immediate reaction to the prophecy is to try to occupy, immediately, the promised future, as if the consequential moment of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow could somehow be finessed: " They letters have transported me beyond/ This ignorant present, and I feel now/ The Future in the instant."(I. V. 55-7)" (Danson, pg. 123).
At this point Lady Macbeth is portrayed as the resolute strong women, while Macbeth is portrayed as her indecisive, cowardly husband. It is fair to say that Macbeth does have ambition, but at this point in the play, his conscience is stronger than ambition.
