Lady MacBeth’s cold nature and blind ambition are clear to the audience from her very
first appearance on stage. On receiving her husband’s letter detailing his meeting with
the witches Lady MacBeth’s thoughts immediately turn to murder:
“Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, shalt be
What thou are promise; yet I do feel thy nature
Is too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way.”
Lady MacBeth is enraptured with the thought of being Queen and immediately considers
how to achieve this goal and what the complication may be. The character’s main worry
is that her husband is “too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness”, in other words, has too
much compassion. Through this statement, Shakespeare makes it clear that Lady
MacBeth is a cold and heartless woman; a woman who sees empathy and kindness as a
weakness