Essay about The Transformations of Lady Macbeth and Hamlet

The Transformations of Lady Macbeth and Hamlet In William Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, we experience a completely different Lady Macbeth at the beginning of the play, than we do as the play unfolds. Lady Macbeth is the perfect example of a character playing a dramatic role reversal. At the beginning of the play, her character was that of a strong, controlling wife, whose goal was to make her husband commit a murder in order to become king. Lady Macbeth ends up going crazy and having a nervous breakdown, eventually killing herself. Hamlet, on the other hand, is another one of Shakespeare’s tragic plays in which the main character, Hamlet, is faced with a similar situation. He saw the ghost of his father, and was greatly troubled†¦show more content†¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"In the mind of Lady Macbeth, ambition is represented as the ruling motive, an intense overmastering passion which is gratified at the expense of every just and generous principle, and every feminine feeling.† (Jameson, 191). Lady Macbeth is a very ambitious woman with a relentless hunger for power, longing to satisfy her role among the high society. She urges her husband Macbeth to commit a murder, and comes up with a plan for him to kill the king while he sleeps, then blame the kings’ guards. â€Å"Lady Macbeth, upon receiving word that King Duncan of Scotland will be arriving that night, begins sharpening her talons. She isn’t sure there’s enough manhood to go around between herself and her husband, so she calls scheming spirits to ‘unsex me here.’† (Macrone, 1). When Lady Macbeth says â€Å"unsex me here†, she is basically saying that she wants power. â€Å"But having evoked her husband’s murderous ambition, having dared him to stop being a child, she suddenly finds that when he is a man, she is powerless.† (Orgel, xli). Act 3, Scene 4, is when the king is found dead and Lady Macbeth makes a scene by saying, â€Å"Help me, hence, ho† (Orgel, 3 5). She then pretends to faint, hoping to divert the attention from the king’s murder, and all of the men immediately refocus their attention on her. It is very obvious that Lady Macbeth is not worried about the murder at all, when she tells her husband that â€Å"a little water clears us of this deed†Show MoreRelatedWho Should You Trust?1543 Words   |  7 PagesTrust Issue in Macbeth â€Å"Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air.† (Page 323). This line is one of the most important ones from Macbeth. Macbeth is one the most popular plays by William Shakespeare. Moss and Wilson state, â€Å"Some details of William Shakespeare s life are still shrouded in uncertainty. What is known is that he rose to prominence as a playwright in London toward the end of the sixteenth century and that he died on April 23, 1616. He wrote Macbeth sometime betweenRead MoreMacbeth by William Shakespeare1154 Words   |  5 PagesMacbeth is a play written by Shakespeare in the 1603; it is based on themes of ambition, power and authority. Macbeth is a tragic hero who becomes ‘Thane of Cawdor’ and meets three witches that predict he will become a king, which leads him to commit the regicide. Rupert Goold and many other directors have altered and interpreted Macbeth in many ways. In this essay I will compare and contrast the ways in which La dy Macbeth is presented in the original play and Gold’s 2010 film adaptation. ShakespeareRead MoreMacbeth as a Tragic Hero1513 Words   |  7 PagesMacbeth as a Tragic Hero William Shakespeare s plays have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature. Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, considered some of the finestRead MoreLiterature And Poetry s Influence On Our Mind1842 Words   |  8 Pagesand is clearly the reason for their great interest which eventually led to the conceptualization of human mind in the subsequent years. Shakespeare has widely presented insanity as a way to liberate frustration and constraints from oppression. From Hamlet, Ophelia and to Lear, these characters that have shown a composed and balanced disposition at the beginning of the play slowly begin to lose their thread of sanity after a series of catastrophic events. It shows how people who appear to be calm andRead Moreshakespeare influences16068 Words   |  65 PagesQUESTION 5. SIGNIFICANCE AND RATIONALE 6. ANALYSIS 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. ABSTRACT This thesis analysis the textual and symbolic similarities between Shakespeare s tragedies Macbeth and Hamlet and William Faulkner s the sound and the furry and Absalom, Absalom!. Faulkner absorbed essential characteristics of Shakespearean tragedies and utilized them consciously and unconsciously in the creation of his own tragic figures. Comparison