William Shakespeare, Macbeth (Penguin Popular Classics)

The play is deeply disturbing due to the complex and murderous pyschological make-up of the two protagonists. Their relationship dominates their world and of course that of the play.

Lady Macbeth is a danger to herself too. Her lack of considered reflection anticipates the her 'madness' in the play. For Lady Macbeth lacks imagination: she has no insight into connotation and this lack costs her both her marriage and her life. I hesitate to talk of sanity as the frenzied way in which Lady Macbeth embraces thoughts of murder so quickly, worries me! This contrasts directly with the gradual (relatively for this is a Shakespearean Tragedy so everything is relative to 'real' life chronology!) escalation of Macbeth's reflection about killing King Duncan. The husband is torn with conscience before the act, the wife not at all.

And it is Macbeth of course who has killed before. His warrior status that is celebrated in the early stages of the play is an ironic marker to the bloody world of Scotland. Duncan's first words refer to a 'bloody man'..an ironic encapsulation of his government and the world of the play.

Remember he has 'unseamed' other warriors. He is the means by which Duncan has clung to power and he knows what it is to murder...'legitimately.' He has exteranl outlest for his internal nightmares.

By contrast Lady Macbeth is gulity of not knowing herself! She has no idea about her own repressions. She believes her thoughts are without affect on the thinker. She fails to recognise the relationship between cause and affect. She is left at home after the murder to ponder the inescapable truth, that she has 'killed' the child of their passionate union and in doing so has kiled herself and him.