Lady Macbeth: The Will Behind the Crime

Lady Macbeth reads her husband's letter in Act 1, Scene 5 and immediately identifies his problem: 'too full o' the milk of human kindness.' Her response is to summon spirits to 'unsex' her, to strip away the compassion she believes will stop them. This is not villainy for its own sake. It is strategy, and it works.

She is the driving force of the first two acts. She plans, she steadies Macbeth after the murder, she manages the court. But the guilt she claimed to have suppressed has only gone underground. By Act 5, Scene 1, it is coming out in her sleep: compulsive handwashing, fragments of that night's conversation, the smell of blood that will not leave her hands.

'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.' That line does not read as confession. It reads as despair. She dies offstage, and Macbeth receives the news with near-numbness. The partnership that made the crime possible has consumed both of them.