Shakespearean Woman: Lady Macbeth - Research Paper Example

? Shakespearean Woman: Lady Macbeth College Shakespearean Women: Lady Macbeth William Shakespeare wrote plays that were defined by the human experience, his ability to define emotional expression as it relates to life transcending time and culture. The poetic language that was used to develop the dialogue was well structured and has stood as an example of the highest form of theater in modern society. Although acting was not well respected at its time, contemporary top actors compete to achieve roles in order to have the opportunity to show their skills as they become the richly developed characters within his work. Macbeth is a story of complexity and intrigue in which the characters are explored thoroughly in an examination of some of the darkest emotional states that human beings can endure. The play is uniquely situated in its culture as it works as a supportive literary metaphor for the agenda of King James I. The ‘evil’ within the play speaks to two aspects King James I felt were important: that of witchcraft and that of establishing the legitimacy of his reign over Scotland. William Shakespeare wrote during the last half of the 16th century and the first decade and a half of the 17th century. The plays that he wrote were defined by their iambic pentameter poetic form which is notoriously clever and intellectually framed. The well developed emotional contexts are explored through an understanding of how human beings relate to one another and respond to conflict and challenges. Not only was the poetic form of the highest quality, the substance of the plays were filled with a complexity of emotions, while still being accessible to contemporary audiences of the time. The body of work attributed to William Shakespeare remains as some of the best work done for the theater. There are almost 40 plays attributed to him and over 150 sonnets. One of the most controversial aspects of his work is that it is possible that not all of the plays attributed to him were written by him, or possibly not entirely written by him. One example of this that fuels the controversy is the way in which Romeo and Juliet begins like a classic comedy, but has a decidedly tragic end. Speculation about the origins of the work has never diminished the association that William Shakespeare has had to those plays. Hudson, although a critic from the turn of the 19th century, suggests that Shakespeare did not write all of Macbeth, especially the second act, which seems to be far more similar to the work of Thomas Middleton in rhythm and timing (Shakespeare & Hudson, 1900, p. 126). During his career, he wrote during the ending period when Queen Elizabeth I reigned until her death when James I became king in 1603. Shakespeare’s theater company had been renamed The King’s Men from Lord Chamberlain’s men when King James I took the throne. James I had contributed a great deal in literary form, and had considered the occult and the pursuit of witches as a part of the theological discourse of the period. It was James I work Daemonologie was used as the foundation for the addition of the element of witchcraft and the nature of the witches in the play Macbeth. According to Shamas (2007), it is likely that the work Macbeth was a commissioned work, by King James I as the play seems to support the agenda of the king as well as legitimize the Stuart myth of Scottish history. Shamas (2007) states that Macbeth “was an instrument of the state, and in so being, was expected to illustrate and glorify the political causes of King James” (p. 19). One of the primary issues that King James I was concerned about was the eradication of witches within his state, having been integrally involved in many of the trials and ’confessions’ that were attained through torture. In combining this focus with the nature of his promotion of the Stuart myths, Macbeth served the purposes of the King. The first way in which Shakespeare engages the agenda of King James I in the play is through the use of witches to provide dark prophesy, almost as if to blame them for the dark deeds that will follow. Another way in which the play engages the agenda of King James I is through a distortion of history. Macbeth is known in Scottish history as a good and noble king, but Shakespeare writes him to be a cowardly murderer, taking the life of his king in his own home, a violation of hospitability which from a cultural point of view was almost as despicable as the murder itself. In addition, Macbeth has used un-Godly forces for his own benefit, listening to ‘witches’ and utilizes dark forces as a resource from which to enact the belief he has in the destiny that has been foretold. The play is designed to legitimize the progeny of Banquo as the true rulers of Scotland, thus legitimizing the line of James I who was James IV in the rule he held over Scotland (Clausen, 2005, p. 294). The nature of hospitality in the 17th century was an important aspect of social relations in the Renaissance. In a time when interaction was limited by distance and a lack of ways in which to easily close those distances, hospitality was an important cultural form of connectivity of the populations. For those of the upper classes, hospitality was a way of expressing courtliness. The way in which Lady Macbeth uses language during her time as hostess to Duncan, there are references that are less seemly that are infused in her conversation. Berry (1999) shows that she uses the word compt, a term that is also a more fowl term use for female genitalia, and “her speedy abuse of the role of good hostess and housewife equates Lady Macbeth rather with the false c(o)unt of ’huswife’ who is a whore or brothel keeper” (p. 54). In framing the hospitality of Macbeth and his wife in terms that suggest it was poorly done and that they were the equivalent of low class in a world where hospitality was a sign of appropriateness with society. Lady Macbeth is a role in which the darkest desires are explored through her ambitions for her husband. This paper will explore the ways that gender, ‘otherness’, and the supernatural were applied to her character in order to pervert her femininity and to make her into an individual who worked outside of the mandates of her gender. Lady Macbeth has been considered evil as often as she has been considered a victim of her husband’s imposed will. However, her identity is complex, even as it is immersed in the discourse of her femininity and how she either defined or rejects that role. The character of Lady Macbeth works as a contrast to that of the character of Juliet from Romeo an Juliet a “transgressive and parody alternative” which calls on the cloak of night to hide her dark deeds, where Juliet had called on that same cloak to hide her love (Alfar, 2003, p. 125). Lady Macbeth is the anti-feminine representation, where Juliet is the epitome of the desired wife, Lady Macbeth is the anti-wife, the manifestation of darkness in her support of her husband. According to Bamber (1982), she “prefer(s) a bloody ambitious sort of honor over traditionally feminine values in general and womanly love in particular” (p. 91). Lady Macbeth is the woman who will do what is required to support her husband, and in so doing, defend what he holds. She also serves as an extension of the characterization of the witches as she becomes a symbol of dark deeds ‘conjured’ through the invocation of spirits. While her conjuring can be seen as symbolic or metaphorical, the imagery continues the discourse on the invention of witchery that was taking the lives of women in the Jacobean English countryside. The association of the female to the witch and the occult is often a commentary on her sexuality. Berry (1999) states that this is a comparison that comes from “the choric incantations and dances of the three weird sisters, in an oblique allusion to the association of a transgressive female sexuality with supernatural powers” (p. 54). Lady Macbeth “seeks the phantasmatic state of mind and body enabling a masquerade. Because the power Macbeth desires lacks mercy, sympathy, and tenderness, she asks the spirits to thicken her blood, to masculinize her, not because she wants to be a man, but because her role requires her to mime Macbeth’s necessarily violent, and equally masculine ambitions” (Afar, 2003, p. 126). In creating a depth of character that is defined by her nature in putting her female self aside to commit the acts required of her, Shakespeare has developed a woman who is ‘other’, her nature not defined by the normalcy of female characterization, but is developed through associations to masculinity and witchery, her own nature subverted and perverted. The idea of gender as it was defined by Elizabethan England had become perverted by the notions of witchcraft that were emerging and then blossoming during Jacobean England. While reflecting the agenda of James I, the character also works to reflect the changes of the time period as the idea of woman as sexual being was being perverted into a sense of ‘evil’ that was resulting in the destruction of the female presence through fear and oppression. Bamber (1982) states that “in the violence of her ambition, Lady Macbeth renounces womanly love for the spirit of murder” (p. 91). Lady Macbeth states “Come you spirits/that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here” (McLuskie & Shakespeare trans. 2009, 1. 5. 40-41). Thus, in one, two line section, Lady Macbeth has defined her state of conjuration and of defying her gender. Bamber (1982) reveals the de-feminization of Lady Macbeth as evident in her thoughts of infanticide. Lady Macbeth says “I would, while it was smiling in my face/Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums/And dashed the brains out, Had I so sworn as you/Have done to this” (McLuskie & Shakespeare trans. 2009, 1. 5. 40-41). In identifying Lady Macbeth with infanticide, Shakespeare manages to place her into the role of evil, her sense of self subverted towards her husband’s destiny, her willingness to act for him beyond that of anyone whose morality was higher than that of the self. Chamberlain (2005) equates this as a sense of independence in which she would not be tied to children, but that was not the nature of life in Renaissance England where women of the court did not typically raise their own children. It is more likely to indicate that she is representative of a woman divorced from the nature of her gender. Lady Macbeth presents a great number of challenges when attempting to study her motivations and the consequences of all that she does for her husband. Examining her from the point of view of her gender and the events of the period of time in which she was created allows for the critic to evaluate her as a part of the discourse of the time of the play. She is the antithesis of the representation of a good woman and wife. Through associations with the supernatural and in the perversions of the nature of female, Lady Macbeth represents the fears and condemnations of the Jacobean era. References Ackroyd, P. (2006). Shakespeare: The biography. New York: Anchor Books. Alfar, C. L. (2003). Fantasies of female evil: The dynamics of gender and power in Shakespearean tragedy. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Bamber, L. (1982). Comic women, tragic men: A study of gender and genre in Shakespeare. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press. Berry, P. (1999). Shakespeare's feminine endings: Disfiguring death in the tragedies. London: Routledge. Chamberlain, S. (July 08, 2005). Fantasizing Infanticide: Lady Macbeth and the Murdering Mother in Early Modern England. College Literature, 32 (3): 72-91. Clausen, C. (2005). Macbeth multiplied: Negotiating historical and medial difference between Shakespeare and Verdi. Amsterdam: Rodopi. McLuskie, K. & Shakespeare, W. (2009). William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Horndon: Northcote House. Shakespeare, W., & Hudson, H. N. (1900). The complete works of William Shakespeare: With a life of the poet, explanatory foot-notes, critical notes and a glossarial index. Boston: Ginn. Shamas, L. A. (2007). We three: The mythology of Shakespeare's weird sisters. New York: Lang. Read More