Lady Macbeth (Shakespeare)

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Lady Macbeth by George Cattermole

Lady Macbeth is a character in Shakespeare's play Macbeth. While based on the real Lady Macbeth, Queen Gruoch of Scotland, both her character and the play's events are tied very weakly to actual history.

Lady Macbeth has become an archetypal character: the standard template for a wife pushing her husband to do harm to further her own ambition.

Shakespeare used Lady Macbeth to subvert the traditional Jacobean attitudes towards femininity, as Lady Macbeth is manipulative, ambitious and ruthless.

See other meanings for Lady Macbeth.

Memorable Lines

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth by John Singer Sargent (1889)

• "Come, you spirits who tend on mortal thoughts...unsex me here and fill me from the crown to the toe, top full of direst cruelty...come to my woman's breasts and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers."

• "A little water clears us of this deed."

• "Out, damn spot! Out I say!!"

• "To bed, to bed there's knocking at the gate! Come! Come, come, come, come, give me your hand! What's done cannot be undone. To bed, to bed, to bed..."

External links

• [For a good idea of synopsis/motivation etc]

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