Wednesday 25 January 2017

If you were an interviewing Lady Macbeth, what questions would you ask her? What would she say in response?

If I were interviewing Lady Macbeth, I would very much like to know if she was telling the truth when she said, "I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums / And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you / Have done to this"...

If I were interviewing Lady Macbeth, I would very much like to know if she was telling the truth when she said, "I have given suck, and know / How tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me. / I would, while it was smiling in my face, / Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums / And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn as you / Have done to this" (1.7.55-60). She claims that she has breastfed a baby, a baby that she loved very much. Further, she claims that she would, while that baby smiled up at her, have pulled it away from her breast and smashed its head in if she had promised Macbeth that she would do so. I'd like to know if Lady Macbeth truly means what she says.


My hunch is that she would claim that she does mean it, that she would never break a promise that she had made to her husband.  However, we know that she is not as ruthless as she'd like to believe; she admits that she couldn't kill Duncan, though she'd planned to, because he looked like her father while he slept. I think Lady Macbeth wants to be tough stuff—she prays to be "unsexed" for goodness' sake—but I think she'd ultimately have to admit that she wouldn't kill her own baby just to keep a promise.

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