Macbeth LRJ 2

In Act II, Macbeth appears to have more positive qualities than negative ones. He does not want to kill the king, and after he goes through with it, he is full of fear and remorse. “I'll go no more:/ I am afraid to think what I have done;/ Look on 't again I dare not.” He can’t bring himself to go back into the room to incriminate the servants for Duncan’s murder, which shows he still has a bit of humanity left. However, the fact that he goes through with the murder and then covers it up shows he is becoming crueler. He kills the servants to prevent them from confessing their innocence and pretends to be shocked and saddened when the rest of the household learns the news. “Had I but died an hour before this chance,/ I had lived a blessèd time, for from this instant/ There's nothing serious in mortality./ All is but toys. Renown and grace is dead.”
Lady Macbeth continues to be more savage and cruel than her husband. After he has committed the murder, she scornfully says to him, “My hands are of your color, but I shame/ To wear a heart so white.” This refers to how though her hands are as bloody and guilty as his, she is disgusted by his weakness. She is an extremely good actress, however, and when the household finds out about Duncan’s death, she goes as far as to pretend to faint to keep up the appearance of shock. She exclaims, “Help me hence, ho!” right before she falls to the ground.
The image of a sword or dagger appears many times throughout Act II. The first scene opens on Banquo talking to his son Fleance, and letting him hold his sword. “Hold, take my sword.” Later that scene, when Macbeth is alone, he sees a vision of a bloody dagger and takes out his own to compare it. “Is this a dagger which I see before me,/ The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee./ I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.” In the next scene, Lady Macbeth takes the bloody daggers used for the murder and wipe them on the servants so her husband will not be suspected. “Why did you bring these daggers from the place?/ They must lie there. Go carry them and smear/ The sleepy grooms with blood.” Finally, in Scene 4, there is yet another mention when Donalbain says, “Where we are,/ There's daggers in men's smiles.” The theme of daggers is important because it represents the murder of the king and the slow severing of Macbeth’s conscience and sanity.

Macbeth LRJ 1

Macbeth is an honorable man with good intentions. However, his great love for his wife blinds him from her not-so-honorable actions and he allows himself to be led into an awful situation that might possibly lead to his downfall. “Yet I do fear thy [Macbeth’s] nature;/ it is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness” (Shakespeare 31). Lady Macbeth is not an evil woman, but she has enormous ambition for herself and for her husband. She won’t allow anything to get in her way, and even asks the spirits to make her less gentle and more ruthless. “Come, your spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/ And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/ Of direst cruelty…” (Shakespeare 33). Banquo, the commander of the king’s army, seems like an upstanding, moral man who puts his duty before all else. He is loyal to the king and to Macbeth. “Noble Banquo,/ That hast no less deserved nor must be known/ No less to have done so, let me enfold thee/ And hold thee to my heart” (Shakespeare 27).
There are several important themes in Act I. Mystery and danger play a large part, especially in the first scene with the witches. They all chant “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,/ Hover through the fog and filthy air” (Shakespeare 7). Macbeth and Banquo stumble upon them and hear their prophecies, which introduces the next theme of betrayal. When Macbeth hears “All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!” (Shakespeare 17) the idea to murder the king is planted in his and his wife’s minds.
One of the most striking images in Act I is when Lady Macbeth declares “I would, while it was smiling in my face,/ Have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums/ And dashed the brains out, had I so sworn to you” (Shakespeare 43). This reference to smashing a baby’s head is important because it both expresses Lady Macbeth’s utter devotion to her husband, and the suggestion of the beginnings of insanity.