Character Compare and Contrast: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in Shakespeare's Play

In the play Macbeth, ambition, strength, and insanity play major roles in how the characters Macbeth and Lady Macbeth behave and react. Both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth present all three of these behaviors at one time or another during the play. However, there behaviors progress in very different ways. While Macbeth gets stronger and more ambitious, Lady Macbeth does the opposite. She starts out strong and ambitious but becomes weaker and more reserved.

In the beginning of the play, Macbeth is cautious and somewhat suspicious of the witches. He only starts to really think of the idea that they might be telling him the truth when they hail him as the thane of Cawdor, which shortly after, he receives word he has been named. When the witches tell him he will be king he is surprised but doesn’t seriously consider killing Duncan until Lady Macbeth talks to him about it. Lady Macbeth on the other hand is strong and very ambitious towards the beginning of the play. From the start she has control over Macbeth. When she read the letter about the prophecies and how Macbeth is coming home soon, she immediately starts planning to kill the king, Duncan. She is satisfied with Macbeth’s newly acquired title of throne of Cawdor. This shows how she has a lot of ambition in the beginning. The fact that she can so easily convince Macbeth that he needs to kill Duncan proves that she is the stronger of the two in the early acts.

Even in the middle of the play Macbeth is the weaker of the two characters. When they plan to kill king Duncan, at First Macbeth tries to back out from getting in trouble, however lady Macbeth once again easily convinced him into the plan, killing Duncan, she is still the stronger character. He dreads the dead so much that he have hallucinations and sees the dagger floating in front of him. Instantly starts to show up around this part of the play in the form of Macbeth’s hallucination. It takes a lot of time and courage from lady Macbeth, in order for Macbeth to be able to get her up enough courage to kill king Duncan, this also shows that he still really weak and looking for ambition. Although lady Macbeth is still stronger and mor ambitious then Macbeth the killing of king Duncan is the point where the gap starts to narrow down. She calls Macbeth a coward when he tries to back out of the plan and tries to run away from murdering the king. She also shows a lot of strength when Macbeth returns from killing king Duncan. All this shows that lady Macbeth is a stronger character than Macbeth.

William Shakespeare’s play captures the harming physical and psychological impacts of political ambitions on those who look for control for the good of its own. As a unit Macbeth and Lady Macbeth seek power; however, Lady Macbeth is more ambitious than Macbeth and is determined to become queen. With the desire to become the queen she begins to become ruthless in her plan to receive this title. She uses her influence to persuade Macbeth to abide by the plan with her also taking part in the crime.