ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the private story, the extraordinary relationship between husband and wife that is at the center of William Shakespeare's play. Shakespeare puts us inside the heads of the Macbeths through their many asides and soliloquies. In the great soliloquy that follows Macbeth's exit from the offstage banquet for Duncan, Macbeth's internal debate reaches its poetic height. It is replete with rhetorical figures and antithetical statements – and is stunning, if somewhat choppy verse. Lady Macbeth is a woman of action: she begins the play with the confidence of a practical person who sees the direct route. Shakespeare is at the summit of his narrative powers in Macbeth, and its glorious language is seldom discursive. One of his shortest plays, Macbeth is so terse and moves forward with such velocity, that you must ensure that the audience registers the significant details such as those above, or its inexorable logic will derail.
