Introduction

Abstract

?erceived as iconic, and experienced as a mythic type haunting America’s cultural memory, Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth migrated from the stage to the White House. This study tracks that migration. Lady Macbeth has no more than half an hour upon the stage in a play that takes two and a half hours to perform. Yet the character appears to dominate, at least initially. Whether at first to goad her husband to action or later in the play to try to subdue him, Lady Macbeth s efforts on behalf of Macbeth s ambitions remain a textual imperative. An actor playing Lady Macbeth may vary her manner and means, play her as a mother figure, scornful or tender or both, or as a sensual and seductive youth, warm and loving or cold and critical. But no matter what the variations, they serve as means or at least attempts to persuade and promote her husband’s advancement to commander in chief and ruler of the country. Performances of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth have provided American audiences with protean images of a political wife able to influence her husband, as the couple climbs to the pinnacle of political power, precariously holds fast to it, and ultimately falls. In Macbet? they do so by criminal means; but Shakespeare has scored their characterizations in such a way that they need not be reduced to melodramatic villains, entirely evil. The script allows for actors to elicit sympathy, even empathy, for their characters, for example, playing Macbeth as a noble warrior, a military officer, propelled into criminal actions by outside forces as well as by his own ambition.