Shakespeare Manipulation: Lady Macbeth vs. Richard Iii

Lady Macbeth and Richard III: Masters of Manipulation

In Shakespeare’s notorious tragedies Macbeth and Richard III, he unearths the lengths people will go to in order to fulfill their desires and ambition. In Macbeth, Lady Macbeth constantly and effectively persuades her husband to commit regicide; thereby, proving that women can be as ambitious and cruel as men. Richard of Gloucester’s persuasive techniques also allow him to achieve his objective of becoming King in Richard III. Both characters prove that persuasion can be a powerful, yet destructive tool. Although these characters move in different settings among different people, their personalities and persuasive abilities share many common traits. Shakespeare shows that Lady Macbeth and Richard III’s acts of malicious persuasion and immoral deeds not only serve as the means to fulfilling their goals and ambitions, but also to their downfall.

In the fifth scene of the first act of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth reads aloud a letter from her husband declaring that the witches have prophesized him to be king. After reading the letter she exclaims, “you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, / And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full / Of direst cruelty” (1.5.38–41). Lady Macbeth’s monologue illuminates just how determined she is for her husband to fulfill the witches’ prophecy of him becoming king. Lady Macbeth implicates that she is prepared to surrender her femininity and even kill King Duncan herself for the sake of kingship. In the opening scene of Richard III, we discover through Richard’s private thoughts, that like Lady Macbeth, he desires and plots to one day attain the crown. He says, “I am determined to prove a villain…plots have I laid, inductions dangerous…to set my brother Clarence and the king in deadly hat, the one against the other” (1.1.30-35). Although their methods of persuasion slightly differ, they share an unrelenting desire to achieve the same goal and are...