Act 2 Reflection – Character Emotions

I think that Shakespeare did an excellent job portraying some of the characters good sides but also the bad, conflicted, evil sides of people. This is especially true for Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth. I see this because at the start of the play in act one Macbeth is seen and spoken about as a valiant honourable courageous hero for Scotland but we can quickly see with his opportunity to be king, that he is not an honourable man but rather a savage back-stabbing traitor looking out for himself only but then when he speaks to people and converses he puts on the facade of a courageous and loyal person which we now know is not the case. Shakespeare does this by using things like soliloquies to indicate characters true emotions. We also can see Lady Macbeth’s spectra of emotions with her actions directly, since she is not seen speaking to many other characters other than Macbeth, she isn’t necessarily always faking her emotions on stage when speaking. But we have seen that she is sweet and nice and innocent in ensemble performances and in dialogue but when she has a goal, especially one as sinister as killing the king, she turns into this, for a lack of a better word, badass. She turns all sinister and starts guilting Macbeth and defaming Macbeth for her own pleasure. This shows the audience how polarising she can be with her emotions which sets up an interesting interpretation of who she really is.

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