Lady Macbeth: A Literary Analysis

The character of Lady Macbeth is one of Shakespeare's greatest literary achievements. She possesses a manipulative cruelty that influences the characters to do evil. But the true genius of Lady Macbeth is perhaps overlooked by casual readers of Macbeth who are unfamiliar with Elizabethan society. Shakespeare appealed to the audiences of his day by transforming Lady Macbeth into a "fourth witch" through blatant parallels between the Weïrd Sisters and Macbeth's wife to create an antithesis between kingship and witchcraft and demonstrate by contrast the value of the ideal woman in the Elizabethan family system.