The Undistinguished Lady of Macbeth William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth features an intimidating and selfish Lady Macbeth as the leading lady. In this article, let's get to the bottom of his character. LC Knights, in the essay "Macbeth", describes the unnatural character of Lady Macbeth's words and actions: Thus, the feeling of the unnatural character of evil is evoked not only by repeated explicit references ("nature is mischief ", "nature seems dead", ""This is not natural, even like the act that is performed", and so on), but by the expression of unnatural feelings and an unnatural violence of tone in such things as Lady Macbeth's invocation of "spirits" who will "desex" her and her assertion that she would kill the baby at her breast if she had sworn to do so. (95) Samuel Johnson in The Plays of Shakespeare underlines how the ambition of the protagonists leads to hatred on the part of the readers: The danger of ambition is well described and I do not know if we should not say, to defend certain parts which seem improbable today; that in Shakespeare's time, credulity had to be warned against vain and illusory predictions. Passions are directed towards their true purpose. Lady Macbeth is simply hated; and although Macbeth's courage retains a certain esteem, every reader rejoices at his fall. (133) In “Macbeth as an Imitation of an Action,” Francis Fergusson clarifies Lady Macbeth's fears: I need not remind you of the great scenes preceding the murder, in which Macbeth and his Lady pull themselves together for their effort desperate. . If you think about these scenes, you will notice that Macbeths understand the action that begins here as a competition and a stunt, against reason and against nature. Lady Macbeth fears her husband's human nature, as well as her own feminine nature, and therefore she fears the light of reason and the ordinary world. As for Macbeth, he knows from the outset that he is engaging in an irrational coup de theater: “I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intention, but only / A leaping ambition, which surpasses itself / And falls on the other. "In this sequence there is also the theme of the unplayability or transcendence of time, an aspect of the order of nature as we know it: catching up with consequences, skipping the life to come, etc...