LM and Macbeth after the murder : Act 2

Question 1

act 2 scene 2

Answer 1

scene used to reveal multiple facets to both lady macbeth’s character and the dynamics of her relationship with macbeth and shakespeare exposes lady macbeth’s cowardice

Question 2

how does lady macbeth emasculate macbeth?

Answer 2

• ‘i shame to wear a heart so white’

Question 3

lady macbeth explaining why she didn’t murder duncan

Answer 3

• ‘had he not resembled my father as he slept, i had done it’

Question 4

‘i shame to wear a heart so white’

Answer 4

• lady macbeth emasculates macbeth
• ridicules his cowardice

Question 5

‘had he not resembled my father as he slept, i had done it’

Answer 5

• attempts to excuse herself
• exposes her inner cowardice and ingrained fear of patricide
• lady macbeth is manipulative as she operates within a liminal gender and takes advantage of alleged female weakness when it works in her favour yet brutally rejects it if it represses her
• perhaps shakespeare is commenting on how arbitrary gender roles were

Question 6

‘a little water clears us of the deed’

Answer 6

• lady macbeth contributes to the theme of appearances vs reality
• shakespeare simultaneously employs litotes (under-exaggeration) and euphemisms

Question 7

litotes - ‘a little water clears us’

Answer 7

• used to downplay the murder and macbeth’s guilt and is laced with irony as lady macbeth shifts to a melodramatic state of insanity and begins speaking in hyperboles as the guilt takes over

Question 8

euphemism - ‘the deed’

Answer 8

• exposes her indifference to the murder as a facade
• by referring to the murder as ‘the deed’, she fails to face up to the reality of it and she must placate it into less heinous words in order to keep her composure

Question 9

COMPARISON TO LADY MACBETH IN ACT 5 SCENE 1

Answer 9

• ‘all the perfumes in arabia will not sweeten this little hand’
• diametrically opposes her former sentiments which could either express the power of guilt or could expose lady macbeth’s insincerity and dishonesty
• as lady macbeth’s insanity peaks, she enters a somnambulist state which denies her the peace that sleep should bring
• used to portray her inner turmoil within her mind outwardly on stage

Question 10

topic sentence

Answer 10

• immediately after duncan’s murder, macbeth and lady macbeth are diametrically opposed in their reactions, showing the fragmentation of their relationship
• this scene reveals lady macbeth’s true nature as manipulative, deceptive and cowardly, she later fragments the facade she builds at this point in the play as she descends into insanity