Lady Macbeth is a malicious and manipulative mastermind.
To begin, she conceives the entire plan and hashes out the details before Macbeth even
truly considers taking action to make the prophecies come true. She is the one who
urges Macbeth to frame the guards by getting them intoxicated and actually prepares the
murder scene for Macbeth to take Duncan's life. In the end, she is the only reason that
the plan works because she forces Macbeth to go back and cover up the murder properly,
he is too upset to actually frame the guards.
However,
Lady Macbeth's influence is more potent than mere plotting. She uses three primary
methods in order to coerce Macbeth into committing the deed. To begin, she calls into
question his manhood and aggressively pushes him to commit the act: "When you durst do
it, then you were a man." This manipulation definitely works on Macbeth to some extent
but is not fully convincing. Then, Lady Macbeth turns to guilt in order to push him to
act. She states:
How tender it is to love the babe that milks
me:/ I would, while it was smiling in my face,/ Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless
gums,/ And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you/ Have done to
this.
This basically makes
clear to Macbeth that, even if she felt the same way that he is currently feeling, she
would not go back on her word to him. This guilt does in fact work to help convince
Macbeth as he then begins to consider the plot more seriously. The final method that
Lady Macbeth uses is her femininity and sensuality in order to push Macbeth to follow
through with the deed. Their final discussion at the end of Act 1 ends with Lady
Macbeth seductively convincing Macbeth that nothing will go wrong with the plan that she
has created. Towards the end of Act 1, Scene 7 Macbeth has clearly been swayed by all
of these manipulative tactics and this leads to his agreement to commit the deed.
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