Lady Macbeth’s suicide in the play, Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Lady Macbeth’s Suicide

Q. Lady Macbeth’s suicide in the play, Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Answer: Concerning Lady Macbeth's suicide, there are many thoughts and there are differences among the commentators. Coleridge asserts that she died in the throes of suicide. Gervinus, a German literary and political historian, thinks that she ended her life by committing suicide. Dowden's view is that the thread of her life is suddenly torn. Mrs. Jameson trusts that in Lady Macbeth's psyche, soul should be stirred sooner or later and the apology and demise should be come by despair.

Mrs. Siddons, in general, agrees with Mrs. Jameson, thinking that the woman's fragile constitution eventually broke down under the weight of the remorseful pain which she held tightly to her own bosom. Hudson says that a silence looms over her destiny. We don't know - the poet himself doesn't seem to know, whether the nectar worm has led her to suicidal violence or whether they have cut the thread of her life. And it would not seem impossible that Mrs. Hudson's frank acknowledgment of ignorance is, above all, the fairest conclusion. But somehow - if we want to call it passionate - we can't believe that Lady Macbeth took her own life.

It is true that Malcolm made such an announcement; but he referred to it only as "tis thought". It is also true that the doctor instructed her to remove ‘all means of annoyance from her, indicating that she was afraid of something like that; Still not recognizing Lady Macbeth as a doctor, we think the idea of suicide is inconsistent with her character in the play.

The woman who, when this moment came, could not kill the sleeping king - who had fainted at the announcement of the bridegroom's slaying, would stand at the doorstep of eternity, terrified of the unknown horrible reality that had befallen her.

It is not agreeable with Mrs. Jameson that Lady Macbeth's suffering is a mere remorse - the horrors of the past or the horrors of the future. The revelation of that terrible sleep, (what has been done cannot be undone, like all other things, is an echo of the same word used in an earlier event, when she began to drown herself, she tried to doctrine with such fatalistic expressions, not only to encourage her depressed husband, but to bring back her own lost peace of mind by telling them the truth) but seems to play the role of a screaming-screaming death-bed scene, where a long and desperate fight between death and its culprits takes place. However, holding on to life with her nightmares instead of faces, she knows something more horrible certainty awaits for her.

Now, as to the cause of her death, it seems to us that the combined effects of two deadly wounds happen to occur in the naturally subtle anatomy. Suffice it to say that where we find one of these, the above-mentioned conscience avenges itself. But we believe another, and perhaps the one that provided the basis for the former, to be found in the wounds hidden in her heart. Although we do not agree with Garvinas that her whole ambition was ‘for and through her husband’, we believe that she had courage, based on the strength of her own love for him and her confidence in him - love and need for him.

As long as she has this confidence, she is determined to endure anything - at the first moment it trembles and her apparent superhuman strength begins to bear fruit (after the announcement of the murder of the aforementioned groom). Conscience, suppressed in the service of constant excitement in an effort to encourage her husband up to this point, now finds an opportunity to assert itself and death is the legitimate consequence of these two factors.

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