On April 28th, I watched the RSC’s Live Lesson on Macbeth. It was focusing on the character of Lady Macbeth, and they analysed her personality through two soliloquies from Act 1, where she makes her decision that she and Macbeth will kill the king. The actress who played Lady Macbeth – Niamh Cusack – emphasised different characteristics to perform the speech in two different ways.
The way the actress read the speeches sevral times showed that Lady Macbeth is a more nuanced character than you might think, and not just evil. This makes her seem more human, as her words can be interpreted to show emotions such as sadness and fear. This made me realise how cleverly Shakespear wrote, and how there is a lot of depth to his words. I also found it easier to understand than I had thought, which was a pleasant surprise! I think that it was helpful to hear someone read out the lines instead of just reading them to myself.
The “homework” that they set was to read Act 1 Scene 7, and to think about the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. In this scene, Macbeth has decided not to murder the king, but Lady Macbeth convinces him otherwise. This was a really interesting scene to read, as it shows that Lady Macbeth has the power over her husband to completely change his mind. The scene showed how effective her technique was of calling him a coward to shame him into deciding to murder the king. The way she overruled all his arguments by giving him a detailed plan of what they would do showed how powerful and in-control she is.
In conclusion, this Live Lesson was really useful for me to understand the story of Macbeth and to think about the characters in it. It made me realise that Shakespear did quite a lot of psychological analysis, which was probably very advanced with its time.
Here is a a Wordle with some of the words I have come up with to describe Lady Macbeth’s character.
Leo T 