Dialogue in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Dialogue is the conversations and words spoken aloud by characters in a novel, a film, or a play. Dialogue in a play is not just words put together to form a sentence; but they are words that promote feelings to the audience whether it be direct or indirect. William Shakespeare is famous for the way he wrote his plays, he wrote his plays in iambic pentameter, which is having five pairs of syllables on a line of dialogue that do not rhyme. He also wrote lines of dialogue that rhymed but were not in iambic pentameter.

William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ is about a servant of the king (Macbeth) and his ambition to become king after receiving prophecies from three witches that claim he will be king. Macbeth tells his wife of these prophecies and his wife (Lady Macbeth) produces a plan to slay the current king (Duncan) so that Macbeth will become king. This corrupt ambition of Lady Macbeth is what leads her to insanity towards the end of the play.

Act 1 scene 7 of ‘Macbeth’ incorporates a lot of vulgar insults. These insults attack the contrast between Macbeth’s plans to become king and Lady Macbeth’s plans for Macbeth to become king. Lady Macbeth uses insults to gain power over Macbeth hoping that his conscience will prevail and he will regain the courage to kill King Duncan. An example of such a power play between the two characters; ‘when you durst do it, then you are a man’. This is an insult used by Lady Macbeth; it attacks Macbeth’s ego and his masculinity by expressing that he is not a man until he has killed King Duncan. Lady Macbeth has the power in this dialogue and she is indirectly promoting to the audience that she is willing to kill King Duncan since her husband isn’t ‘man enough’. She has a corrupted vision of morale and jealousy and uses this to her advantage when taunting her husband.

Lady Macbeth reveals her true character directly