1. Assignment Title How do you think Shakespeare makes Lady Macbeth’s change in character during the course of the play so dramatic?

2. Macbeth Ac1 Sc V Summary
Lady Macbeth is reading a letter from Macbeth which tells her about his meeting with the witches and their prophecy. Lady Macbeth says that she knows Macbeth is ambitious, but fears he is too ‘soft’ to take the steps necessary to make himself king. She decides to convince her husband to kill the king and seize the crown. As she waits for her husband to arrive, she delivers a famous speech in which she begs evil spirits to ‘unsex’ her and put her natural femininity aside so that she can do the bloody deeds necessary to seize the crown. Macbeth enters, and he and his wife discuss the king’s forthcoming visit. Macbeth tells his wife that Duncan plans to depart the next day, but Lady Macbeth declares that the king will never see tomorrow. She tells her husband to have patience and to leave the plan to her.

3. Macbeth Ac1 Sc V for the Assignment
To help answer the ‘How’ part of your assignment, in this scene Shakespeare establishes that Lady Macbeth is an evil ambitious woman who will stop at nothing to get her own way. She knows that her husband is, ‘soft’ and knows that she will have to persuade him to join her on her evil path (to hell!)

4. Macbeth Ac1 Sc VII Summary
Macbeth is by himself thinking about assassinating Duncan. Lady Macbeth enters and tells her husband that the king is asking for him. Macbeth says that he no longer intends to kill Duncan. Lady Macbeth is outraged, calls him a coward and questions his manhood: ‘When you dared to do it,’ she says, “then you were a man”. Macbeth asks her what will happen if they fail; she promises that as long as they are bold, they will be successful. Then she tells him her plan: she will give Duncan’s servants wine to make them drunk, and then she and Macbeth can murder Duncan. They will smear blood on the sleeping servants to make them look guilty. Macbeth is persuaded by her plan and tells her she is so strong and forceful she will only give birth to male children. He then agrees to proceed with the murder.

5. Macbeth Ac1 Sc VII for the Assignment
To help answer the ‘How’ part of your assignment, in this scene Shakespeare establishes that Lady Macbeth is able to get her husband to do what she wants. She does this by questioning his manhood and using emotional blackmail. She also presents him with a plan so Macbeth has not got to work out what to do and worry about it being successful, he just has to carry out her plan.
So, in Scene V we learn that she is prepared to call on the forces of evil to help her. In Scene VII we learn that she has a plan and uses her stronger personality to persuade her husband to carry out that fatal plan.

6. Macbeth Ac2 Sc II Summary
Having drugged the guards of Duncan's chamber, Lady Macbeth now meets her husband as he emerges from the king's room, his hands covered in blood. Macbeth's conscience is clearly disturbed by what he has done, and once more his wife criticizes his lack of firmness. The success of their plot is also in jeopardy because Macbeth has brought the daggers with him. Lady Macbeth returns to the scene of the murder in order to place the daggers and to smear the king's sleeping servants with blood, a deed that seemes to present her with none of the horror that now affects Macbeth; but the King’s blood is now on her hands can ‘never’ be washed off. The scene closes with a loud knocking at the door.

7. Macbeth Ac2 Sc II for the Assignment
To help answer the ‘How’ part of your assignment, in this scene Shakespeare establishes that though Lady Macbeth describes herself as drunk with boldness she is just as easily as scared as her husband is by the tiniest noises and this is the first hint that she is not as ‘strong’ as she makes herself out to be. Lady Macbeth would have committed the murder herself but the sleeping king looked her own father and this image haunts her and helps drive her mad. It is ironic that Macbeth says all Neptune’s oceans won’t be enough to wash Duncan’s blood away, but Lady Macbeth says “a little water” will wash them clean; yet in the sleepwalking scene we learn she has never been able to wash Duncan's blood from her ‘soul’.

8. Macbeth Ac2 Sc III Summary
Macduff goes to see the King and returns crying ‘horror’ at what he finds. Macbeth and Lennox rush in to look, while Lady Macbeth appears and expresses her shock that such a deed could be done under her roof. Malcolm and Donalbain arrive and are told that their father has been killed, most likely by his servants. Macbeth declares that in his rage he has killed the servants. Macduff is suspicious and questions Macbeth. Lady Macbeth then suddenly faints, and is carried offstage. Duncan’s sons flee, Malcolm south to England, and Donalbain to Ireland. 

9. Macbeth Ac2 Sc III for the Assignment
In this scene Shakespeare shows us that from now on Lady Macbeth must live a lie and pretend in public to know nothing about the death of Duncan. Once Macbeth begins to be questioned about the killing of the servants though, she suspects that Macbeth is going to admit his guilt, so she suddenly faints and saves Macbeth from further questioning. So at this point in the play she still seems to be the more in command of events than her husband.

10. Macbeth Act 3 Sc II for the Assignment
This scene mirrors Act I, Scene 5 when Duncan's death was being plotted. Now though Macbeth, not Lady Macbeth is most in command. Despite Macbeth's personal bravado, neither he nor his wife seems entirely at ease. In the world that the Macbeths have created for themselves, total peace no longer exists. Just as Lady Macbeth earlier wanted to lose her sex, Macbeth now desires to be rid of his humanity. So this scene continues the shift in power started in Act 2 sc III, with Lady Macbeth becoming weaker and Macbeth becoming the stronger of the two.

11. Macbeth Act 3 Sc II for the Assignment
Driven by the need to make things look normal, Lady Macbeth desperately tries to get Macbeth to calm down. Once the ghost returns, Lady Macbeth realises that as the guests are trying to question Macbeth there is a real danger he will reveal the truth about Duncan’s murder, so she gets the guests to leave as quickly as possible. She shows her ability to think quickly in this scene and use her position as Queen to get the guests to depart. The whole episode though, has shaken Lady Macbeth’s confidence and she now fears that Macbeth is becoming unstable through lack of sleep and he might expose their evil deeds at any time. This fear now adds to her guilt because the next time we see her, the pressure she is under has driven her to sleepwalking, and perhaps more importantly sleep-talking!

12. Macbeth Act5 Sc I Summary
At night, in the king’s palace at Dunsinane, a doctor and a gentlewoman discuss Lady Macbeth’s strange habit of sleepwalking. Suddenly, Lady Macbeth enters in a trance with a candle in her hand. Bemoaning the murders of Lady Macduff and Banquo, she seems to see blood on her hands and claims that nothing will ever wash it off. She leaves, and the doctor and gentlewoman marvel at her descent into madness.

13. Macbeth Act5 Sc I for the assignment
Lady Macbeth, who once naively thought she could just wash her hands and forget Duncan's murder, is now sleepwalking and so full of guilt that she imagines her hands are always covered in blood. Lady Macbeth's guilt makes it impossible for her to hide the horrors that she and Macbeth have committed. Her conscience is rebelling against the evil fiend that ambition has turned her into.
So we have now moved fully away from the woman who wanted to ‘unsex’ herself and kill the king at the start of the play, to a character who is being driven mad by guilt and a lack of sleep; so mad in fact that she can no longer live with herself and shortly takes her own life.