Lady Macbeth

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Evil-doer
Full Name	Lady Macbeth
Alias	None
Origin	Macbeth
Occupation	Duchess of Glamis Queen of Scotland
Powers / Skills	Manipulation Seduction
Hobby	Manipulating her husband Instigating murders
Goals	To rule as Queen of Scotland as Macbeth's wife
Crimes	No information
Type of Villain	Conspirator

“	Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between the effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts, and take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers, wherever in your sightless substances you wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, that my keen knife see not the wound it makes, nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark to cry “Hold, hold!”	„
	~ Lady Macbeth's famous soliloquy

Lady Macbeth is the titular deuteragonist/secondary antagonist of Shakespeare's play Macbeth. She is the wife of Lord Macbeth of Scotland, and it is she who gives him the idea of killing the King.

Because of her part in the crimes, Lady Macbeth is so remorseful that she walks in her sleep and eventually kills herself.

In the opera based on the play, Lady Macbeth is a soprano.

Actresses who Portrayed Lady MacBeth

• Sarah Siddons
• Charlotte Melmoth
• Charlotte Cushman
• Helen Faucit
• Ellen Terry
• Jeanette Nolan
• Vivien Leigh
• Judith Anderson
• Simone Signoret
• Vivien Merchant
• Francesca Annis
• Judi Dench
• Glenda Jackson
• Angela Bassett
• Alex Kingston
• Kate Fleetwood
• Marion Cotillard
• Hannah Taylor-Gordon

In the pla

Lady Macbeth goads her husband, Lord Macbeth, into murdering King Duncan so he can usurp the throne. While Macbeth refuses at first, she wears him down by appealing to his ambition and challenging his manhood. She gets Duncan's guards so drunk that they pass out to give Macberth a clear path to kill Duncan. Once Macbeth kills Duncan, Lady Macbeth plants the blood-stained dagger he used on the guards, framing them for the murder. She feigns sorrow at the King's death, and insinuates that Duncan's sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, ordered their father's death, forcing them to flee the country. With all other potential inheritors of the throne vanquished, Macbeth becomes King of Scotland, with Lady Macbeth as his Queen.

Once she has the power she so long desired, however, Lady Macbeth is plagued with guilt over her role in Duncan's murder. Her guilt is so overpowering that she hallucinates that her hands are stained with Duncan's blood, as well as that of the other people who Macbeth murdered to secure his power. Unable to stand it any longer, she commits suicide by jumping off her castle's highest peak.

When she died, MacBeth's only reply was: "She would have died thereafter (meaning she would've died some time sooner or later)."

Gallery

Lady Macbeth portrayed by Marion Cotillard

Vivian Leigh as Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth by Simone Signoret

Lady Macbeth by Sarah Bernhardt

Lady Macbeth by Judi Dench

Lady Macbeth by Judith Anderson

Vivien Merchant's Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth by Jeanette Nolan

Francesca Annis as Lady Macbeth

Portrayed by Sarah Siddons

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

Portrayed by Alex Kingston

Trivia

• Lady Macbeth is considered by some critics and scholars to be the main villain of the play, despite the fact that she never actually kills anyone and plays no part in the dozens of murders that her husband later commits.