This Month's Macbeth Feature >>

The very name of Lady Macbeth conjures a legion of evil associations, for the female protagonist of Shakespeare's Scottish Tragedy has come to represent feminine treachery. Lady Macbeth's ambition, her duplicity, and, the unnatural absence, indeed, the outright rejection, of such female values as compassion and nurturance mark her as a heartless villain, more monster than woman. It is, of course, Lady Macbeth herself who spawns the plot to kill Duncan, who determines the setting and the specific actions through which this bloody deed will take place. The speech in which she "de-sexes" herself (Act I, scene v.) is one of the most frightening expressions of unnatural evil in all of Shakespeare's works, ranking alongside the evil speeches of Iago, Richard III and the bastard Edmund of King Lear.