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Explore how Shakespeare presents the marriage between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth (30):
The relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth is strange and complex, atypical of a marriage of
the period
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The term “hope” gives positive connotations of the murder,
suggesting that their desires can easily be achieved if he agrees
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The
personification of “hope” also suggests that Macbeth is going against his word, as if he made the
promise when he was “drunk”, making Macbeth feel as if he is betraying his wife
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A typical marriage of the time would
consist of the wife being the lesser of the two, whereas in the play they are relatively equal
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Shakespeare also presents their marriage as quite unbalanced, with Lady Macbeth, in many cases,
seeming to hold more power than her husband
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The phrase,
“know you not” appears to criticise Macbeth’s lack of knowledge, which Macbeth accepts
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This shows how Lady Macbeth is obviously the more dominant of the two, a rarity for the
shakespearean times
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However, macbeth himself is almost the opposite when it comes to their marriage, as he is portrayed to
be very trustful and devoted to his wife
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The fact that he doesn’t reveal his inner emotions to anyone else, not even Banquo, but only to his wife,
shows how close he believes their relationship is
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Macbeth refers to her as, “my dearest partner in
greatness” and “dearest love”, highlighting their intimate relationship, and how, somewhat wierdly, he
considers them as equeals, which would have been out of place in contemporary Jacobean society
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This loving attitude from Macbeth in Act 1 is shown to be the opposite towards the end of the play,
when Lady Macbeth is revealed to have died, most likely by suicide
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Interestingly, Macbeth doesn’t appear sad or fazed at all
by this shocking news
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However, it merely left a space for his nihilistic views to
develop, as shown from the speech that follows
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He does not even care about his marriage anymore,
nor his wife’s death, suggesting that he has realised that they were fates to end this way ever since he
encountered the witches, and so their marriage was doomed from the first place
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To improve, make more of the ways context links in with the writer’s intention- you have done this at
times, but in a repetitive way, rather than a developed approach

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