William
Shakespeare: "Macbeth", Act I, Scene VII
Lady Macbeth has a conversation with her husband with the aim of
convincing him to kill the king, Duncan, while he is their guest.
Just at the beginning of the scene, Macbeth
holds a monologue, expressing his inner struggles about his cruel thoughts of murdering
his king, showing his fear of the consequences. Then, after Lady Macbeth's
enter, a conversation starts between her and her husband. Actually one couldn't
talk about this scene as being a "conversation", it is more a persuasive speech
of Lady Macbeth´s, which Macbeth interrupts several times, but only for short
statements.
Lady Macbeth's line of persuasion is a very
clever one. She directly catches Macbeth at a very vulnerable point: his
masculinity. He, presumed to fulfil the role of the strong, fearless warrior
and perfect man could not afford to withdraw (be a "coward", l. 43) after
mentioning his cruel thoughts in the presence of his wife ("[what] made you
break this enterprise to me? / When you durst do it, then you were a man", ll.
48-49). After this provocation, she
comes up with a very brutal and shocking image: she would kill their child if
she had sworn it like Macbeth did it with the murder. Here it becomes clear
that Lady Macbeth's only aim is to convince her husband, without taking any counter-argument
into consideration. She even doesn't hesitate to use their unborn child as an
"argument", which does not necessarily mean that she would do as she said, but
shows how important the issue is for her. One could speculate about her motives
to persuade her husband to kill the king. One of the main reasons could be that
the outlook for the position of the Queen is so tentative that she overthrows
with all moral and social obstacles on her and her husband's way to power. As
she completely disregards these aspects (in contrast to Macbeth, who harbours
deep-rooted doubts against murdering his king, his guest, his relative), she
proceeds in her line of argumentation. After the shocking aspect with the child
Macbeth for the first time seems to waver, but is not yet convinced. Now, in a
strategical intelligent way, she immediately fulfils the gap in his thoughts
with the presentation of a complete plan describing how it would be possible to
murder Duncan. This doesn't leave Macbeth any possibility to resist, as he now
recognises how easy it would be to accomplish his objective. It is also his
objective, as it became his inmost dream after the witches mentioned his likely
success, which he is just too restricted to utter. So he gives in, even adding
an aspect to the plan, and finishing the scene with the central quote: "False
face must hide what the false heart doth know" (ll. 82-83).
