Lady Macbeth is a character in Shakespeare's Macbeth (c.1603-1607). She is the wife to the play's antagonist, Macbeth, a Scottish nobleman. After goading him into committing regicide, she becomes Queen of Scotland, and later suffers pangs of guilt for her part in the crime. She dies off-stage in the last act, an apparent suicide. Her name and age are never disclosed, and, although she mentions early in the play to having suckled and loved an infa...
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Lady Macbeth is a character in Shakespeare's Macbeth (c.1603-1607). She is the wife to the play's antagonist, Macbeth, a Scottish nobleman. After goading him into committing regicide, she becomes Queen of Scotland, and later suffers pangs of guilt for her part in the crime. She dies off-stage in the last act, an apparent suicide. Her name and age are never disclosed, and, although she mentions early in the play to having suckled and loved an infant, her child is never seen nor referenced again.
The character's origins lie in the accounts of Kings Duff and Duncan in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of Britain familiar to Shakespeare. Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth appears to be a composite of two separate and distinct personages in Holinshed's work: Donwald's nagging, murderous wife in the account of King Duff, and Macbeth's ambitious wife in the account of King Duncan. Although Macbeth's wife can be traced to a real-world counterpart, Queen Gruoch of Scotland, Shakespeare's...
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