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COMPARE AND CONTRAST MACBETH AND LADY MACBETH BOTH PRIOR TO THE MURDER OF DUNCAN AND AFTERWARD. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are basically good people who make an ill judgement. It is unfair for Malcolm to describe them as "this dead butcher and his fiend - like queen". In the beginning they are respected people who share a loving relationship. Their downfall is caused by their ambition for Macbeth to be great, sparked by the witches' prophecy, and not because they are evil. Macbeth's indecision on whether or not to kill Duncan, and Lady Macbeth's begging of the spirits to take away her feminine qualities, show that ruthlessness does not come easily to them. Lady Macbeth is a loyal wife with ambitions for her husband. She believes that Macbeth deserves to be King, but thinks that he is too nice to do anything about it. She does not think that he could kill Duncan on his own. She is supportive of Macbeth, and is willing to do what she can to help him get what he wants. She is basically a caring and loving person, though, so she pleads with the Spirits to take away her tenderness and femininity and make her ruthless: " Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me, from the crown to the toe, top full of direst cruelty." This evidence on Macbeth and Lady Macbeth proves that, at the beginning of the play, they are both good, virtuous people. When the witches predict that he shall be king, Macbeth does not think that he should do anything about making the prophecy come true: "If Chance will have me king, why Chance may crown me without my stir." However, when King Duncan places an extra obstacle in his way by naming his son, Malcolm, as his successor, Macbeth realises that, if he is to be king, then he must kill Duncan: "The Prince of Cumberland! That is a step on which I must fall down, or else o'erleap. For in my way it lies. Stars hide your fires, let not light see my black and deep desires." When Lady Macbeth reads in her husband's letter of the witches' prediction, she, too, realises that Duncan must be killed for it to come true. She thinks that Macbeth deserves to be great, and should murder Duncan so that this can be so, but she believes that he is too noble and honest to do something so immoral: "Yet do I fear thy nature: It is too full o'the milk of human-kindness to catch the nearest way.
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